While many of us were enjoying time off last week, our colleagues at IBM were busy unveiling their fifth annual “Five in Five” — a list of five technology innovations that have the potential to change the way we live, work, and play over the next five years.  On this year’s list:

– You’ll beam up on your friends in 3-D. Three-dimensional interfaces will let us interact with 3-D holograms of our friends.

– Batteries will breathe air to power our devices. Advances in transistors and battery technology will yield devices capable of lasting ~10 times longer than they do today before requiring re-charging.

– You won’t need to be a scientist to save the planet. Sensors installed in our phones, cars, wallets, etc., will make all of us “citizen scientists,” allowing new massive data sets to be contributed for research.

– Your commute will be personalized. Predictive models combined with real-time sensor network data will help us understand when and where a traffic jam will form, enabling us to take alternate routes and save time and money.

– Computers will energize your city. Innovations in computers will result in excess heat and energy given off by data centers being recycled for use in heating buildings, powering air conditioning units, etc.

More details about each of these innovations is available as part of IBM’s press release.  And here’s the video accompanying the announcement:

You can also view the “Five in Five” from 2009, 2008, 2007, and 2006. These past predictions have met with mixed success. For example, a 2007 prediction that our “cell phones will be wallet, ticket broker, concierge, bank, shopping buddy, and more” has largely come to fruition, but a 2006 prediction calling for instantaneous speech translation to become the norm still has some ways to go.

What do you think about this year’s “Five for Five”?  Share your thoughts below.

(Contributed by Erwin Gianchandani, CCC Director)