ArchiveOriginally published 2010

Concept Gadgets of 2010: The Spider PC, Eye-Controlled Laptops and the First Quantum Computer for Sale

Around 2010 this site ran a steady stream of concept and prototype stories: a computer shaped like a spider, a phone charger driven by a bicycle wheel, a laptop you controlled with your eyes, a mirror that showed the weather, and a machine that claimed to be the first quantum computer anyone could buy. Here is what each one was, and what became of the idea.

The spider computer

A design concept from Ericsson showed a computer the size and shape of a large spider: a compact body that projected a keyboard onto the table and a screen onto the wall, with legs that folded for carrying. It was never a product and was not meant to be; it was an argument that the laptop's clamshell shape was a habit rather than a necessity. Projected keyboards did ship from a few companies and were universally disliked for lacking any feel. The wider idea, that a computer could be a small core with its screen and keyboard supplied by the environment, came true instead through phones casting to televisions and docking into monitors.

Nokia's bicycle charger

Unlike most items in this list, the bicycle charger kit was a real product: a small dynamo that fitted a bicycle's front wheel and charged a phone through the connector Nokia used at the time, aimed at markets where mains electricity was unreliable. It sold, quietly, for a few years. The idea returned in the 2020s as USB dynamo hubs for touring cyclists and as power banks built into bike lights, both of which do the same job for any phone.

The eye-controlled laptop

In 2011 a Swedish eye-tracking company and a laptop maker showed a prototype notebook with tracking cameras built into the bezel, so you could select windows, scroll and zoom by looking. The demo worked. Built-in eye tracking did not become a standard laptop feature, but the technology found two lasting homes: assistive computing, where it lets people with limited movement operate a computer, and research and gaming accessories, where a small bar below the screen tracks attention. Some premium laptops later added the cameras for security and presence detection rather than control.

The mirror that showed the weather

An architecture practice unveiled a bathroom mirror with an embedded display that could show the time, weather, news and your weight from a connected scale, all while still working as a mirror. It was priced as a luxury object and sold in small numbers. The smart mirror never became a standard fixture, but it did become one of the most popular do-it-yourself electronics projects of the following decade, built from a one-way mirror, a flat display and a small single-board computer.

Driverless vans from Parma to Shanghai

In 2010 an Italian university team sent electric vans fitted with cameras and laser sensors on a 13,000 kilometre journey from Italy to China, driving autonomously for long stretches with a lead vehicle to handle situations the software could not. It was a research expedition and it took three months. Within a few years autonomous driving had become one of the best-funded fields in technology, and within fifteen, driverless taxis were carrying passengers in several cities. The 2010 trip looks in hindsight like the moment the field moved from laboratory to road.

The first quantum computer for sale

In 2011 a Canadian company announced that a large aerospace contractor had bought its first commercial quantum computer, a machine using a technique called quantum annealing to tackle a narrow class of optimisation problems. This site reported it with a headline about the first quantum PC being available to purchase, which was true in the narrowest sense and misleading in every other: the machine filled a room, cost millions and was not a general-purpose computer. Fifteen years on, quantum computing is a serious field with machines from several companies, real but limited demonstrations, and a long road to broad usefulness. The 2011 machine was a genuine first, and the debate about what it could actually do continued for years.