2 . Forecasting the technological future is difficult at best. Back in the 1980s,the thought of carrying around a small, portable phone seemed to belong in the world of science fiction. Then in the 1990s, imagining a phone that would allow you to surf the Internet something that didn't even exist until 1990was unheard-of. Today, smartphones can surf the Web, run applications and play games, and those with a near field communication (NFC) chip can act as away to make purchases. Oh, and they can still make phone calls, too.

So what will phones look like in 2050? Based upon phone customer behavior, I imagine the future phones will rely more on combining our physical lives with our digital lives. They probably won't be similar to the ones we’re reusing now. They’ll be built into other devices and products. Imagine a pair of glasses that can display a digital overlay on top of your physical surroundings.

I don’t think video chat is taking off despite services like Skype and FaceTime. Rather, the trend seems to be toward asynchronous(非同步的）communication. That means the two or more people in a conversation complete а discussion over time.

We might even see the phone part of phones disappear. Recent phone customer behavior suggests that texting is a more popular way to communicate than telephone calls. Future phones will need a way to display messages but don’t necessarily include voice communication.

Since we’re talking about 2050 here, there’s even the possibility that research into brain-computer interfaces(脑机接口) will have reached a point in which we won’t need a physical screen or microphone at all. Electronics could be built into clothing. You’d link the devices to an interface connected to your brain and post messages just through thought. It’d be a form of telepathy(心灵感应).

But what do you think? Will we be wearing devices that let us communicate easily? Or will we be carrying around the iPhone 47 and answering texts between games of Angry Birds? Let us know your predictions.