Date:19/09/2005 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2005/09/19/stories/2005091914870200.htm

Karnataka - Bangalore

Nano computers will rule the future, says expert

Special Correspondent

Today's technology will become obsolete in five years

BANGALORE: The next wave of information technology should not become another lost opportunity for India as in the case of the telecom revolution, N. Seshagiri, former director and founder of the National Informatics Centre, said here on Saturday.

"Much of today's technology will be overcome within five years with computers of one cubic millimetre in size. Leading chipmakers have been developing these "smart dust" devices for the past few years.

They can be implanted into a human body and become the ultimate spying device with new implications for privacy and morality," he said, speaking on "Societal impact of pervasive computerisation" at the annual conference of the Indian Institute of Public Administration.

He cited the example of Bangladesh where the Grameena Banks movement began to first use mobile phones to enable farmers to access distant market prices, before mobile phones became common among the urban rich. "The reverse has happened in India, creating one more social divide as the Internet and computers have," he said.

A new facet of wireless communications will be wi-max technology, which may make most of today's mobile telephone technologies obsolete, Mr. Seshagiri said. "However the telecom companies who have invested heavily in fibre optics may not allow this to happen for some years at least."

If India could go for it, it could become hardware exporter to the world as it is now with software.

"The impact of tiny computers will be more than that of genetic engineering on society.

We need not wait 10 years for the benefits to reach us; overseas funding agencies such as the World Bank or Asian Development Bank can be approached by organisations such as the National Informatics Centre to help fund research," Mr. Seshagiri added.