I am sure when you watched the Iron Man movies, you must have loved the Holograms that Tony Stark plays around with. He just makes it look so damn cool! I just wish this technology was here so I could throw virtual files into virtual recycle bins with my physical hands!
That future is still decades away. Sure, we have holograms already but they are more like gimmicks at this point. You need some sort of a medium like glass or rapidly moving water molecules or they simply won't work.
A true hologram will be one that will be suspended in thin air and you'll be able to interact with it physically. The same way it was shown in the Iron Man movies.
Once they are here, I believe we will have achieved the ultimate form of computing. Computing will finally be completely ubiquitous, intuitive, and super duper cool.
The Ultimate Form
Ever since computers became a thing, the concept of computing has been limited to a physical device with a screen. With smartphones, tablets, and smartwatches, this concept has changed a little bit but overall, things have remained the same. In fact, smart speakers and smart earphones (like the Apple Airpods) have changed the concept of computing more.
The arrival of augmented reality finally kickstarted an era where we are moving away from a device-centric computing experience to virtual elements superimposed in the real world.
This technology will mature more and more and the idea that computers are limited to a single device will die off. In the future, any surface can become your computer. The actual processing may still happen in a single device but the interface will not be limited to it. Any surface would be your virtual screen.
The next evolution of that will be holograms. When scientists finally figure out how to suspend them in mid-air, we will all swiftly move to this type of computing. Since it will be much more intuitive than anything else, people will immediately adapt and learn it.
It might sound super futuristic right now, but it is bound to be the norm in the future. In my opinion, it could be the ultimate form of computing as we know it.
Image Credits: Marvel Studios