|
 Videophone.
Humans communicate
with their eyes as well as their voices. By 2002, early adopters will
use video phones. In time, we all will.
Cynics may point out that the phone company (there was only
one Ma Bell at the time) introduced the PicturePhone at the 1964 New
York World’s Fair. The idea was on target but the necessary infrastructure
was not there to support it. Broadband communication lays the foundation.
By 2002, we’ll
have Y2K behind us, with no financial meltdown or panic in the streets.
The few glitches that do arise will have made software developers more
holistic and users, more cautious.
Looking back, we’ll
see more and more outsourcing of training. Patching up and testing systems
before 2000 ate the capacity to support training initiatives in-house.
Training and marketing departments were forced to bypass in-house LANs
for support. They turned to programs delivered over the Internet. Frustrated
by firewalls, many employees shifted training activities to their homes.
As the frenzy of Y2K passed, many corporations found that outsourcing
both development and delivery of training worked. Employees who had
been too harried when trying to learn on the job found the barking dogs
and shrieking children at home almost soothing in contract.
During the Christmas 2002 shopping season, you’ll be able to
pick up an off-brand desktop computer at Cosco or WalMart for $150.
A 1000 Mhz Dell notebook with wireless communications and built-in video
will cost $999 directly from the manufacturer. Information appliances
from SONY, GE, Matsushita, and Braun are outselling PCs two to one.
Cell phones with the integrated PalmPilot XXII cost but $75.
Microsoft Office, recently renamed
Microsoft Enterprise, rents for 10 cents per hour (and as low as 5 cents
for corporate customers who pay in advance.) Philippe Kahn rents his
simplified word processor/graphics suite for a penny an hour. The Open
Standard Java suite is free, as long as you don’t mind a stream of advertising.
Portable
Desktop.
Think about working
with your computer. Why is it easier for you to work with this
computer than with Joe’s?
You confused the computer with the interface, didn’t
you? For most of us, the computer is what appears on the screen. But
your interface can appear wherever your software setting are running.
By 2002, for most of us, our settings and software will run on the net.
When we log in and identify ourselves, our interface greets us, customized
the way we like it and giving access to our information and ways of
doing things. No matter whether we jacked into the net from home, from
the office, from a public terminal in the Red Carpet Club, or from the
palm link rider we wear to meetings. (See “The Internet Becomes the
Computer” below.)
In
2002, most telecommunication will be broadband and digital. You will
never hang up your phone. Old analog telephones use “circuit-switching.”
When I’m on the phone, I tie up a couple of copper wires; they’re mine
until I hang up and let the next guy use them. Digital communications
networks use “packet-switching.” My data uses up a tiny fraction of
a line when it’s moving. Otherwise, it uses no capacity at all! It costs
nothing to stay on the line all the time.
“Web tone” is like “dial tone” in that it will
seem quite natural for everyone to have it. But you won’t really hear
a tone unless your connection to the Internet is down due to malfunction.
You’re connected unless you hear otherwise.
We asked forty
professionals and visionaries to think outside the box on the role of
the Web in learning. We found not one “killer app,” but many. The web
has the potential to do all these things are more.
|
|
The web will fully automate
the desktop, integrating
all the communication and planning and writing tools I use in
business. Users will attain "unconscious competence,"
using the Web as effortlessly as making a phone call today. I
might tell a colleague anywhere, "Hey, take a look at this"
and immediately, a video appears on both our desktops.
|
|
|
In the morning, when
an employee comes in, she logs on to her personal page backed
by her personal learning server. It serves
up information harvested from the net, manages her learning, and
is her electronic assistant. The Web becomes what Apple's Knowledge
Navigator was supposed to be.
|
|
|
Our portable, personal
computers will be wired
to our bodies to monitor our health, "IP to the pancreas."
The net will connect all people to all content.all the time. Cheap
flat panels will replace paper.
|
|
|
Today's software agents
churn out more and more of the same. In the future, my agent will
shadow-dance for me, exploring
the paths I'd have taken in person. My bots will sniff out information
and produce a custom-tailored daily feed. Intelligent pop-up's
will replace training.
|
|
|
The Web will become
a village. Senior
managers (the village elders) will share their wisdom, values,
and culture with newer members of their corporate tribes.
|
|
|
"Imagine that your
entire working area -- desk
and walls -- was capable of displaying digital images... Your
desktop will have real piles of paper next to virtual piles. Your
cubicle wall will turn into a Web windshield." David
Weinberger. “Thank God for eyelids.”
|
|
|
"The web will be
a 'digital nervous system.' If you think of the human body, what
does our nervous system let us do? It lets us hear, see, take
input. It lets us think and analyze and plan. It lets us make
decisions and communicate and take action. Every company essentially
has a nervous system: Companies take inputs, they think, they
plan, they communicate, they take action." Bill Gates,
Microsoft
|
|
|
The Web will flip from
interactive to transactive. “Weblications” (Web applications).
This new Web will run on auto-pilot,
reducing Internet traffic, and freeing the Web from incessant
intervention by pokey humans.
|
|
|
My heads-up display
will warn me of things in advance, give me decision support, and
find the needles in ever-larger haystacks. Our company, The Understanding
Business, focuses on getting
rid of info-clutter, eliminating redundant communication,
and improving human performance. Five years out, the Web will
perform many of these services, too.
|
|
|
The future Web is a live-in movie. In our virtual reality,
we'll each become actors, directors, editors, and producers. It's
the holodeck on the U.S.S. Enterprise. Is it simulation or the
real thing? Is there a difference? "Be there now."
|
|
|
When I walk into any
collaboration booth, it will recognize me and become my office.
The giant, wrap-around display on the desk
will show real-time images of co-workers and customers, virtual
files, calendar, note pad, mailbox, imbedded phone, shared information
space, and a picture of the kids. My workspace goes wherever I
do. Bruce Tognazzini, Sun
|
|
|
The Web will offer the
sensations of life. "Real
life is just one more window." Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen
|
When
you sign on to the net, your personal portal will greet you. You may
choose one of the many default portals but more likely you’ll assemble
portal building blocks to tailor things to your particular needs and
concerns. Your portal might include your picture-phone interface, to
do list, incoming information organized by your bots, your scheduled
events, a direct link to the corporate knowledgebase, your net-based
software suite, your health monitor, your medical record, your learning
record, and your collection of pointers to worthy destinations.
Computers,
networks, and security systems will identify you by analyzing your unique
thumbprint or eye’s iris. Regulatory authorities and the College Board
can stop worrying about who’s really taking an exam. You won’t need
plastic to purchase things on credit or get money from the ATM. Touchpads
will replace keys on the doors of private offices and restricted areas.
You won’t have to tell anyone your mother’s maiden name or social security
number if you don’t want to. Passwords will be passé. The safety of
information on the net will shift from iffy proposition to being the
best way to do it. No one’s going to hack your thumbprint.
Is
it live or is it Memorex? Given a choice, you won’t fly to that meeting
in Harrisburg when your avatar can go in your place. Our Neanderthal
brains confuse media with reality. When we see a still photo of the
person we’re talking with on the phone, we feel more rapport. The postage-stamp
sized, flickering video of low-bandwidth video conferencing brings even
more immediacy. The full-motion video run on dedicated in-house systems
fills the screen with clear, colorful images. At some point, videoconferences
will become so real that the effect is little different from all being
in the same room together.
My
avatar – a three-dimensional projection shadowing my gestures, voice,
and bearing – could establish a sufficiently human presence to represent
me. And on my end of the conference, my virtual reality gear would paint
a scene every bit as compelling as being in the conference room physically.
For that matter, you could attend the meeting from your mountain lodge,
Sally will beam in from her apartment in Paris, and I’ll join from my
back deck. Forget Harrisburg. Let’s meet in front of a roaring fire
in a chalet in Davos.
Death of Distance
When I was in fifth grade, I read a science fiction story about a machine
that could whisk people instantaneously to any location on earth. Want
to go to India? Okay. Zot! You’re there. “Beam me up, Scotty.”
Reality
is catching up with science fiction.
Bruce
Toganzzini tells us, “Human beings are designed to interact with each
other. Not with computers, and not with some disembodied string of ASCII
characters showing up on a screen. They crave warm human flesh and blood.
If we are to have any semblance of the kind of multi-level communication
through our computers that people need to thrive, we are going to have
to go to high-bandwidth communication. Not ISDN, T1, or even T3. We
are going to have to get serious about fiber, and we are going to have
to show actual-size, real-time images of each other face-to-face, coupled
with high-quality audio and devices that allow us to see and experience
touch, as well.“
A Virtual Private Network (VPN) lets a user log
in to a corporate intranet securely. VPNs are replacing today’s crazy-quilt
of firewalls, centrally administered security policies, extranets, and
intranets. Since VPNs carry encrypted data, they can transport data
on shared lines instead of expensive dedicated lines.
Good riddance to firewalls.
Leave the key in the gate and anyone on the net can walk right in. They
block relationships with those outside the walls with good reason to
get in (i.e., customers); they bottle up those within them with good
reason to get out (i.e., learners). With VPNs, security levels can be
set by user and by application. Customers will be able to transact directly
with corporate extranets, a smoother and less costly way to do business
than electronic data interchange (EDI).
Digital video
will brings more than a clearer picture.
Unlike
the analog video we’re used to, viewers are in the driver’s seat. Viewers
can speed it up or slow it down, start in the middle or review a section.
Learning increases when the learner’s in control. Fast-forwarding cuts
time previously wasted on unnecessary or outright boring material. A
simple index enables a learner to jump to the relevant sections of a
video without having to wade through a presentation from beginning to
end.
Packet-switched
networks, either in-house LAN or outhouse cable, deliver digital video
on demand. At home, the “500-channel future” will be replaced with an
infinite-channel scenario. Connecting through the Internet, you can
watch last week’s ballgame whenever you feel like it.
On the job, you can pull up the marketing director’s presentation
last June, a technical whiz’s advice on repairing a fritzy widget, or
last month’s video conference with the big client.
DVD (digital versatile disk)
is an optical disk technology that will replace both CD-ROM and audio
CDs by 2002. Think of it as CD on steroids.
A digital versatile disk (DVD)
holds 4.7 gigabytes of information on one of its two sides, or enough
for a 133-minute movie. With two layers on each of its two sides, it
will hold up to 17 gigabytes of video, audio, or other information.
(Compare this to the current CD-ROM disk of the same physical size,
holding 600 megabytes. A DVD holds 28 times as much!
DVD uses the MPEG-2 file and
compression standard. MPEG-2 images have four times the resolution of
MPEG-1 images and can be delivered at 60 interlaced fields per second
where two fields constitute one image frame. (MPEG-1 can deliver 30
noninterlaced frames per second.) Audio quality on DVD is comparable
to that of current audio compact disks.
Telecommuters
and SOHO will connect to the net at 1.5 megabits/second via cable modems,
DSL over phone lines, and satellite. Formerly sluggish web pages will
snap on screen. With a fast-access connection, bringing up a Web page
takes no longer than calling up a file from the local hard disk. The
entire Internet becomes a peripheral to the PC, bonded as tightly as
the PC and its local printer.
Already, connected users are running certain applications
via the Internet. Professional “road warriors” maintain calendars, phone
directories, and e-mailboxes on the net. This enables them to share
their calendars with others and to check email from anywhere they log
into the net. (At Internet conferences, message checkers line up behind
banks of connected PCs as well as the telephones.) Quicken’s TurboTax
enables payers to calculate and submit tax returns over the net; unlike
a tax  program you buy at the store, the on-line version
is always up-to-date.
Consider
back-up. Everyone knows it’s important – all hard disks crash eventually.
Most users don’t back up religiously because it’s a troublesome nuisance.
Providers of on-line back-up rent you space on a system at their shop.
Think of it as a remote hard drive attached to your computer. On-line
back-up is as easy as copying a file to a local hard disk. It’s so simple
that users needn’t even be aware when it’s going on.
|
Traditional
Back-up
|
On-line
Back-up
|
|
Not current.
Often deferred because it’s a hassle.
|
Always
current. Runs in the background whenever new files are created.
|
|
Requires
special hardware and media.
|
No additional
hardware required.
|
|
Back-up
media generally stored on site. Let’s hope the house doesn’t
catch on fire.
|
Stored
off site. The service provider even backs up your back-up.
|
|
Reading
back-up requires physically inserting tapes, disks, whatever.
|
Files
can be retrieved from any port on the net.
|
|
Half
of all backups don’t work.
|
Always
readable – even the back-up is backed up.
|
Using
Microsoft Word to jot down a memo is like using a jackhammer to perform
surgery. Overkill. By 2002, many users will be running word processors,
spreadsheets, graphics programs, and everything else Microsoft bundles
into Office directly off the net. The availability of simple, easy-to-use,
net-based software will severely eat into the bloatware market. You
rent what you need when you need it. You’ll choose the right tool for
the job. Instead of a general-purpose word processor, you may select
a memo processor, a report processor, a brainstorming processor, or
a book processor. Apply this logic inside the firewall, centralize application
programs on servers, and chop $5,000 to $10,000 TCO from every desktop.
When you’re running applications off a server, you no longer need an
operating system designed to do everything locally. Chop it back. Close
the Windows. The network has become the computer.
@Backup.com is
developing the back end for just such a portable environment. Their
ideal customer:
|
SkyDesk™ Customer Profile
SkyDesk™ is the only "whole computing" solution
for users away from their pc making it an ideal solution for the
following kinds of customers:
Mobile Professionals
Consultants, engineers, attorneys, and sales professionals all
need quick and simple access to their data files and applications
wherever they are and whenever their customers or clients demand.
SkyDesk™ helps these users effectively respond to these ever-changing
demands without having to guess what customers will need from
their computer next.
Small Business/Home Business Owners & Managers
The SOHO market is employing computer technology faster than ever
and effectively using it to compete against the world's largest
corporations. SkyDesk™ provides these users with a simple way
for them to share information securely and access their data remotely
without having to purchase extra notebook pc's.
Telecommuters & Home Users
Business users in companies both large and small may need to work
from home periodically or just want to be able to complete a spreadsheet
or document after dinner. SkyDesk™ provides these kinds of customers
with complete access to all of their applications and data without
having to install any new software on their home computers. Best
of all, SkyDesk™ helps these users maintain a "safe"
copy of their entire desktop should a child or other user corrupt
their or disable their system.
Corporate Teams or Workgroups
Although SkyDesk™ is not intended to replace sophisticated corporate
groupware installations, it is an ideal solution for small team
computing, particularly where file and application sharing are
a premium consideration. SkyDesk™ can be set up by any corporate
user without IS support to provide file and application access
to anyone in the team, making it well suited for today's fast-changing
corporate environments.
|
More
info: http://skydesk.backup.com/
Jini is Sun Microsystems’
project to interconnect your television, thermostat, toaster, burglar
alarm, answering machine, and all the other chips imbedded in your home
and workplace. Sun calls this “spontaneous networking,” because devices
can start talking with one another without the software “drivers” and
operating system that are required today. Jini is the next step after
the Java programming language toward making a network look like one
large computer. Jini is expected to hit the market in late 1999.
“The PC is maturing
from a universally adaptable, “one-size-fits-all” system into a wide
range of targeted appliances designed to solve specific user applications,”
says Gordon Moore, Chairman Emeritus, Intel.
 An information
appliance is a special-purpose computer. Because it has fewer options,
it’s cheaper and easier to use than a general-purpose PC. Today’s PalmPilot,
used mainly to keep track of appointments and check phone numbers, is
a good example. It’s not very hard to figure out how to use because
there’s not that much you can use it for. PalmPilots have, in fact,
entered the consumer market. Yesterday at Fry’s we noticed shoppers
making the tough decision of which model to buy – the plain black plastic
one or the model V in the sleek titanium case.
Imagine
a portable, wireless, combination phone, pager, fax, personal organizer,
e-mail agent, and web surfer that weighs less than a pound. Whoops.
That’s not a good example of what’s to come; the Nokia 9000 wireless
phone already does all that.
Why
are information appliances crowding out PCs. Because dedicated tools
work better than general-purpose ones. Consider the Swiss Army Knife.
It’s a wonderful invention, but it doesn’t pull corks as well as a real
corkscrew, it doesn’t drive screws as well as my ratchet screwdriver,
and it doesn’t slice bread as well as my serrated bread knife. The PC
is the Swiss Army Knife; information appliances are the tools.
Consider
an appliance that will find its way under many a Christmas tree in 2000,
the Sony Playstation II. Engineered to perform highly specialized tasks,
the Playstation delivers graphics that until now could be produced only
by supercomputers. Sony and Toshiba have invested $5 billion in the
“Emotion Engine” chip that powers the Playstation at three times the
speed of a Pentium III. The result? Graphics as good as Toy Story, but
delivered in real time! Although Sony denies any intentions of competing
with the general-purpose Wintel standard PC, analysts noted that the
Playstation does come with slots for connecting modems, hard disks,
and a new generation of digital video cameras. This machine heralds
the merger of film, television and the video game businesses,” said
one Wall Street analyst. A Silicon Valley entrepreneur calls the Playstation
II “the first credible alternative to the PC for reaching people on
the Internet.”
You
can already buy a wireless web tablet, a handheld scanner, a combination
phone/PIM/web surfer, a frame that rotates your digital Photographs,
a set-top box to capture your favorite t.v. shows, electronic books,
and a cell phone the size of a wrist watch.
The
cathode-ray tube monitor, taking up a lot of real estate on the desk
and sucking more amps than the rest of your computer put together, is
going the way of the punched card.
In
the office, thin, lightweight display film will be the rule. You’ll
have several: one will display your “dashboard,” your control interface.
Another will display live images of people you’re communicating with.
One 3x5 card displays will show a real-time sales chart, another a recent
video snip of your daughter playing in the snow. At home, a 6’x4’ flat
panel in the living room will show any program you’re willing to pay
for. In your office, you’ll have one of the old rigid flat panels, a
corporate hand-me-down.
In
addition to wall panels, we’ll have flexible display films that look
and feel like paper. Impregnated with “digital ink” to form high resolution
images, content for these films will be downloaded from the net.
Uh-oh.
We’re ahead of ourselves. These displays won’t be widely available until
2008.
By 2002, rigid flat panels will cost less than today’s CRT monitors
but the CRTs will still be emitting their radiation on a majority of
the world’s workers.
By
the time notebook computers morph into full-feature palmtops, and palmtops
are shrinking into wrist-wraps, “i-glasses” will replace battery-hungry
LCD panels. From the front rim of the glasses, an electron gun the size
of a ladybug will beam signals directly to the retina, creating the
illusion of a 20” screen floating a yard away from one’s face. (“Is
that trainee in deep concentration or watching Jerry Springer?”)
These days things
are happening so fast one day’s three-year forecast is tomorrow’s technical
news item. The day we were writing this, an article appeared in the
San Francisco Chronicle describing the “World’s Smallest Web Server.”
We went to the URL and found this message:
 “Fifty years ago, a
computer with less computational power than a modern pocket calculator
filled a whole room, and ran programs consisting of only a few hundred
instructions.”
“In the intervening decades
computer hardware has continued to shrink while computer software has
continued to grow, so that today we can fit the extensive software needed
to drive a World Wide Web server into a computer the size of a box of
matches.”
“The web page you are reading is served to you
by the computer in the photo.”
The
photo shows a circuit board the size of a matchbox, maybe 1.2” x 1.8.”
Our
brave prediction: By 2002, some things will be unbelievably small.
 Speech recognition.
Computers
are getting good at recognizing human voices. The Wildfire phone system
takes messages, maintains a phone book, reads you faxes and email, and
even recognizes the voices of frequent callers. A new palmtop records
dictation and beams to your desktop computer, which converts words to
text. By 2002, technology will have jumped the hurdles of misspelled
words and the requirement to speak dis-tinct-ly.
Superb
speech recognition will enable us to issue verbal commands to any plugged-in
device (“Hey, coffee pot, do your stuff!!”) Voice commands will be the
standard in mobile computing. But we’ll still have keyboards and visual
pointers like the mouse. Microsoft Windows is confusing but just imagine
trying to control your computer with the equivalent of voice mail. We
can click an icon or enter a few words on a keyboard faster than we
can say the words.
With network appliances at home, where we work, and
in our pockets wherever we go, we’ll always be online to the Internet.
Ponder the implications. Will you really need a permanent office? You’ll
want a place to meet visitors and gossip with colleagues, but if you’re
a knowledge worker, you’re not going to commute just to sit at a desk.
Anywhere you work, your co-workers will be as close as if they were
right down the hall. A Silicon Valley visionary expects
innovative Internet services to be marketed with the slogan “anyone,
anywhere, anytime: connected.”
 Some of us have wireless cell phones, pagers, and modems.
In 2002, carrying a wireless communication device will be as commonplace
as wearing a wristwatch. Today it’s chic to whip out your StarTac or
Nokia wireless phone. Last year in Milan, the most suave characters
always seemed to be chattering into cell phones. “Pronto! Pronto!” When
everyone has a wireless netphone, it will undoubtedly become hip to
venture forth unconnected.
Wireless net connection will be commonplace in 2002.
Mobile workers will be truly mobile. Office real estate will become
cheap. A new LAN standard will turn wireless network adapters into commodities.
Wired magazine will need a new name.
. Micropayments
Lots of people would be will to pay a nickel to
read a good article, but in a world where credit cards and hard cash
are the coin of the realm, it’s impossible to buy anything for a nickel.
Enter micropayments, a structure to make it feasible to buy things of
a tenth of a cent.
Several daring entrepreneurs
have broken their picks trying to bring up micropayments but the consensus
is that they were ahead of their time. E-commerce didn’t have much credibility
until the Christmas buying binge of 1999 and clearly, it takes lots
of 1/10 cent transactions to turn a profit.
By 2002, micropayments
will be a fact of life. Unimaginative learners will buy Stephen Covey
at a penny a page.
Craig McCaw's
Teledesic is preparing 300 satellites to enable global Internet access
THE PACIFIC OCEAN,
AUG. 31, 2002 - The last of 288 satellites went into orbit today, completing
a constellation that, on Oct. 1, will begin providing the entire Earth
with access to broadband communications. Teledesic Corp. Chairman Craig
McCaw says his company expects to break even within two years on its
$12 billion investment in the global data communications network. Investor
Bill Gates says Microsoft Corp. will shift all its internal communication
needs to Teledesic, through AT&T Corp., its main service provider.
Lead contractor Motorola Inc. followed suit, as did Boeing Co. and General
Motors Corp.
http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/printhigh/83198/beam.html
In fact, as August
1998 draws to a close, the idea that, in the next four years, the Net
will have established itself as the primary means of exchanging not
just numerical data, text and Web graphics, but also sounds, sights
and voice conversations themselves, is no longer some technology wonk's
spirit-induced "vision.'' That public communications in the
year 2002 will be synonymous with the Internet, at this juncture, seems
more realistic than strained.
http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/printhigh/83198/thenet.html
|
Internet
Time Group
