Some things about the future of technology are puzzling. Twitter, for example. This web service allows you to send little messages to the whole world (by SMS if you want) announcing what, exactly, you are doing right now (“hey, just using Twitter!”, etc). Totally moronic, but strangely popular. I hardly need to mention the counter-intuitive triumphs of the open-source software revolution. Or Wikipedia, which created an encylopedia of 6 million articles with just 5 employees.
But you see that there’s a pattern there. The social impact of technology has always been a bit of a surprise. Think of the inventor of the telephone, who saw no prospect of frivolous chit-chat using his device.
What is not difficult to foresee is the hardware of tomorrow. Moore’s Law has safely predicted the progress of microchip performance since the 1960s, for example (it doubles every 18 months). Computers have got a bit smaller than people imagined, and teleportation hasn’t been invented yet. But TVs are now at last hung on walls, and the zero-emission car is surely not far off.
And yet for some reason Apple’s “revolutionary” iPhone took the world by surprise, and now Microsoft’s Surface computer is causing gasps of astonishment.
In order to be able to say “I told you so” in a few years’ time, I’m going to put my cards on the table now. Because I think it’s easy to predict the future shape and aspect of mundane electronic devices. As technical constraints disappear, and the wireless network becomes omnipresent, all that is left is ergonomics. The miscellaneous computery things in our lives will be defined by form-factor alone. Duh.
We will therefore use as many of these devices as our physical context demands:
- At home we’ll have a largish touchscreen tablet powered by razor-thin solid-state electronics. Perhaps we’ll add peripheral modules, for comfort’s sake – but these won’t include a mouse, that supreme complication of the human-machine interface. The network will make local storage redundant and DRM impossible, and we’ll be consuming text, music and video for free or at necessarily reasonable, demand-driven prices.
- While out and about, we’ll carry a smaller version of the same tablet, naturally with the same light-speed network access, but also with useful built-in tools to interact with and record the environment (camera, satellite positioning etc). There will surely be something else to this very personal device: a bay for radio ID chips to identify us in various contexts, allowing payments and access (for example to public transport, parking, one day our own house). The object will therefore replace the keys-cards-cash combo, it will represent a threat to our privacy, and it might even still be called a phone!
You have perhaps noticed that the first of these items sounds a bit like Microsoft’s exciting new Surface computer, and the second resembles an iPhone somewhat. Interesting, that. And totally predictable too.
► Travelog from the western Balkans
not convinced. In a fully networked world there is no need for you to carry anything – just interact with the ubiquitous devices surrounding you.
— Anonymous 2007-07-30 23:21 #