15 to 20 years out
— Cell phone? What’s a cell phone? Bio-electronics (a fledgling science back in 2006, when scientists at the University of Nebraska coated bacteria with gold) makes great strides, junking the portable hardware people have gotten sick of carrying around. The new trend is to build the peripherals right into the human body.

— Using 2006 research from Panasonic’s Nanotechnology Research Laboratory, a cell-phone manufacturer releases the first phone that runs off your body’s own electricity from metabolizing food. Delighted users of the Slimfast-embedded phone boast that the more they talk, the skinnier they get.

— All portable telecommunications and multimedia devices are merged into the “thumb chip,” a microscopic device implanted under the thumbnail that substitutes the ringer with an unobtrusive tingling sensation.

— Braingate, a technology originally developed at Brown University to allow the disabled to control computers by brainpower, is adapted to all manner of electronics controls for the broader consumer market. There’s no more receiver or speakerphone: it’s all integrated directly into the audio-visual cortices of the brain. Simply “think” the phone into talk mode, and you can carry on a conversation without opening your mouth. “Hands-free” gives way to “mouth-free.”

— Watchmaker Seiko issues a 15th anniversary edition of its video-teleconferencing wristwatch phone, which was a sensation back in 2009 but went obsolete not long after mandatory thumbchip-telecommunications-device installation at birth became federal law in 2017. The hip, retro device temporarily reinvigorates Internet2, and it makes geek wear sexy again.