Microsoft just released a conceptual video of their vision of the future. The concepts are just brilliant! The main devices are transparent cards which turn into a smartphone. This does seem technologically impossible today as we cannot imagine having a phone that is transparent and just a few millimeters thick, because we believe that the device has a processor, memory, batter, camera and other internal architecture. In the video, all this is abstracted out, there is nothing between the user and the content.
There are other creative ideas as well. These can be incorporated with today’s technology. For example, the person in Hong Kong sees a video that asks for help and as he raises his phone to the screen, he sees donation amounts on the device. He then selects and amount and the payment is done. Apps for today’s smartphones can be made to capture images and quickly match it up with a database of donations. Though this would need a massive database and extremely fast image processing, it is still possible to have this technology.