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I know it looks like we have everything we need right now, but there are some hot new inventions waiting for the light of day that should be out soon, if all goes well. Some of these new inventions will drive the price of familiar devices even lower because they replace more expensive items, while others will make new devices possible.

Electronic paper is just waiting to come out. Can you imagine something that looks like paper, can display any writing and images, but can be written on over and over again. So how does this paper work? An invention by Xerox called a Gyricon sheet contains many two colored beads. The beads are usually black and white or red and white. A small electrical current is run through the sheet and this makes the beads set up with the correct color facing the reader, which in turn displays text and images. If I were asked to describe it, I would say that the beads are like pixels but with only two color choices each, and one of those colors is always white if the paper is white. The text and images remain until another electric current is run through the electronic paper. You could use this material to print out your daily paper and then run it through the next day for the next edition. There will probably be many other uses for this cheap material that haven't been thought of yet. I heard that a watch company is going to use it on the face of a new watch as a display medium.

A new vinyl that is in the shape of a lens on glasses has been invented. The vinyl fits over the lens and clings to it without any adhesive. The purpose of the vinyl is that it filters out most of the sunlight and 99% of UV rays, making a great pair of sunglasses. When you are done you can just peel off the vinyl for use later.

The new fuel cells look promising, especially the reusable ones, where you just pour in a little more fuel. These miniature power plants are scheduled to replace batteries in many of our devices and offer us the promise of much longer use without recharging (refueling) than batteries ever did. You might be able to run your favorite notebook computer for 8 hours at a time, instead of the usual 2, and think what it will do for your cell phone. Instead of the usual three or four day charge, it make become the three or four week refueling.

What do you think about those memory cube that are being promised to us in the future? They will hold so much data that our whole concept of storage will change. I don't know who is old enough to remember, but I remember when ten megs was considered a huge hard drive and the drive itself cost over $10,000. As you know, today you can buy a 300 gig hard drive for about $250. The new data cubes will start by giving us terabytes of info storage in a tiny space and the cube will be non mechanical. The cube will be able to store data even when the computer is off. Huge amounts of memory will be available in devices that we never though of as using memory before. It will make things much more efficient and allow many devices to do things that we didn't dream of.

The light bulb, as we know it, doesn't have long to go. It is only a matter of time before it is replaced with leds that are bundled together to put out the equivalent amount of light. Some cities are already using these leds for their traffic light systems since the leds have such a long life and seldom need replacement. The power consumption is also a lot less, saving on power resources and taking a burden off of power plants.

Intelligent clothing is also right on the horizon. Can you imagine a fabric that is computer controlled and can become warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer. There is even talk of a fabric that can become denser, making it bullet proof in certain situations. There will be no more need for heavy outer garments, just the same type of clothing year around. For those that want more than ordinary clothing in the summer, air conditioned clothing will be available. Miniature tubes woven into the material will supply circulating liquid designed to cool the wearer.

A new type of plastic is being developed that can actually be used for computer screens. If this is successful, and it looks very promising, than the price of laptops will fall dramatically. The screen on a laptop is one of the most expensive parts right now. With the falling price of memory, hard drives, mother boards etc., it is not hard for one to imagine a laptop selling for under $300 in the future, and I am not talking about the cheapest one.

Robots are becoming more human like every day. NASA has a program for having humans and robots work together. The idea is to make robots more human like in their methods and responses so that they will be easier to work with. Eventually NASA hopes that humans will be able to work with robots the same as with other humans making tasks much easier. I hope they don't forget what HAL did? (HAL was the murderous computer in 2001 A Space Odyssey)

There is so much being worked on in the field of medicine that it is impossible to keep up with it all. I find the idea of nanobots fascinating. Can you imagine injecting a microscopic robot into you blood stream that will swim to a problem spot and repair any damage? These same nanobots may carry medicine to the exact spot where it is needed or even perform miniature surgery on things like arteries. The future looks bright indeed for medicine.

As more and more new devices enter the market place, we will be amazed at how fast things are progressing, for with each new device the time to the next one will shrink. New inventions lead to more new inventions.