The Future of Computing

There are so many possibilities as to what the future holds in the technology realm. It’s possible that in the future DNA could be used in computing. DNA has the capability to perform different calculations. It has been used to find the shortest route between 7 cities as in the article located at http://computer.howstuffworks.com/dna-computer1.htm. Utilizing the abilities of DNA the shortest route to 7 cities was easilly discovered but it took time and a lot of assistance from humans in order to accomplish this goal. So, right now using DNA in computers may not be possible but it could be in say about 10 - 20 years from now.

I think that a computer based on integrated circuits will not be replaced in the short term. However, new computers such as superconducting computers, nano computers, optical computers, DNA computers, and quantum computers are currently being researched. I believe that no matter what kind of computer is developed in the future, it will become smaller faster and more energy-efficient.
Another possibility to examine as far as the future of computing is the browser based operating system in the 'cloud.' Increasingly, many functionalities of the computer are being moved to web servers. Document editing, presentations, image editing, storage, etc are all available as cloud based solutions and Google specifically seems to be spearheading these efforts. Recently, it released a beta version of its 'Chrome OS' - an operating system made up almost entirely of the Chrome Internet Browser and containing applications that really just function as bookmarks to other web services. There are some challenges with this new way of approaching computing however. One is security. Security on the Internet is increasingly becoming an issue, and with all our information being moved to the Internet, a tremendous security risk ensues. Another issue is ownership - once your content goes onto a companies web servers, who really owns it? Facebook has been involved in a few skirmishes about claiming in its terms of use that all content uploaded to Facebooks servers belong to Facebook, not the user. If this precedent is followed, what does that say for all our documents, pictures, and misc other personal files that we will be uploading onto these 'cloud' solutions? Bottom line is, its a very interesting time we live in as far as computing as there are efforts out there currently to redefine the computing experience. While there are definitely pros to this movement, there are also major cons; cons that indicate that adoption of cloud solutions, at least on the enterprise levels, aren't quite ready for primetime.