IBM Predicts That Someday Movements Will Power Gadgets

IBM has released its annual IBM Next 5 in 5 list, which describes five technology visions likely to become reality within five years.

Part of the list is the approach to power mobile devices through energy that is created by the human body and the capability to capture kinetic energy in your environment and convert it to electricity for electronic devices. That energy source could be body movement, water flowing through pipes or even thermal energy emitted by a computer.

Body power has been published several times by IBM on this list, but there is no information about the progress that has been made or when it could be expected to be commercially available.

Other visions for the future include biometrics that will completely replace the need for passwords, early mind-reading applications in the gaming and entertainment industry, the end of the digital divide as well as a scenario in which spam emails will be personalized to a point where we perceive it to be regular email. However, in a move that his reminiscent of Bill Gates' 2004 prediction that spam would be nonexistent by 2006, IBM said that spam filters will be accurate enough to filter out every email you don't want to get.