Touchscreen technology will expand beyond fingertips, evolving to incorporate artificial intelligence, light and even sound.This year's Computer Human Interface conference featured several new touchscreen inventions, as over 2,500 international researchers presented their work in Austin, Texas. Scientists and inventors showcased everything from medical to social networking and gaming-related touchscreen technologies, touching on a variety of intriguing directions that interfaces will take in the future.

The Google driverless car is a project by Google that involves developing technology for autonomous cars

Everyone dreams of an electronic display they can roll up and shove in their pocket-but now it's closer than ever. These flexible e-paper tablets are the stuff of dreams.Developed by Queen's University, Plastic Logic and Intel Labs, the displays look pretty much like sheets of paper. Actually, though, they're 10.7-inch plastic displays which are flexible and touch sensitive.

In our era of instant gratification, the world of medicine seems like an outlier. The path from a promising discovery to an effective treatment often takes a decade or more.But from that process-of fits and starts, progress and setbacks and finally more progress-grow the insights and advances that change the course of medicine.

"It might look like two circuit boards trapped inside some glasses, but Avegant's prototype Virtual Retinal Display (VRD) is not your run-of-the mill head-mounted display (HMD). Using an array of two million micro mirrors, this dorky-looking pair of spectacles is able to deliver an incredibly sharp virtual 3D experience by projecting two separate images directly onto each of your retinas."

"A virtual retinal display (VRD), also known as a retinal scan display (RSD) or retinal projector (RP), is a display technology that draws a raster display (like a television) directly onto the retina of the eye. The user sees what appears to be a conventional display floating in space in front of them. (However, the portion of the visual area where imagery appears must still intersect with optical elements of the display system. It is not possible to display an image over a solid angle from a point source unless the projection system can bypass the lenses within the eye."

"Future of the Computer: Mind over Matter[edit] Kaku begins with Moore's law, and compares a chip that sings "Happy Birthday" with the Allied forces in 1945, stating that the chip contains much more power,[1][6] and that "Hitler, Churchill, or Roosevelt might have killed to get that chip." He predicts that computer power will increase to the point where computers, like electricity, paper, and water, "disappear into the fabric of our lives, and computer chips will be planted in the walls of buildings." He also predicts that glasses and contact lenses will be connected to the internet, using similar technology to virtual retinal displays. Cars will become driverless due to the power of the GPS system. This prediction is supported by the results of the Urban Challenge. The Pentagon hopes to make 1⁄3 of the United States ground forces automated by 2015.[1] Technology similar to BrainGate will eventually allow humans to control computers with tiny brain sensors, and "like a magician, move objects around with the power of our minds.""

Chapter one summary "Future of the Computer Near Future: Internet Glasses, Driverless Cars, Flexible Electronic Paper, Virtual Worlds Midcentury: Augmented Reality, Universal Translators, Holograms & 3-D Far Future: Direct Mind-Computer Interface, Tricorders"