The utterly unprecedented leaps forward in technology that have made the last five years so exciting will almost certainly continue for many years to come. Every week it appears a new story hits the headlines, announcing the latest mind-bending breakthrough that will change planet earth as we know it. Though it is difficult to predict which of these will actually make good on the praise, here are three of our favourites from recent times.
Leap Motion
Dragging desktop technology into the future is Leap Motion – a system that allows the user to control what's on their screen by hand, without touching a controller or touching the monitor. The user merely moves their hands above the motion sensor, sending their commands to the device. It's already being incorporated into many games but Leap Motion also allows you to scroll through the web, zoom into maps or images or sign online documents.
Key to its success is the fact that it is both smoother and more responsive than previous attempts at this kind of technology.
The Driverless Car
Sounds crazy, possibly is crazy but, apparently, it's true. Boffins at Google have developed artificial intelligence that allows cars to be driven without any human input. It works off a system of video cameras and sensors within the vehicle and has already driven 1609 kilometres on its own.
Though the ins-and-outs of the technology are being tightly guarded, Google believes driverless cars will be available to the public within the next decade.
Firefox OS
Mozilla's decision to build a brand new mobile operating system from scratch was a bold but smart move. While iOS and Android worked great individually, they came with their own systems and made cross platform development tricky.
So, Firefox OS and its focus upon openness and user choice makes it an ideal solution. Built upon Gonk, Gaia and Gecko software layers, this is open sourced and carries HTML5 and CSS3. The good news for developers is that they can create and share apps with real simplicity, while the good news for users is that they can customise the interface without the previous blockages.