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Computer Expectations of Today, and a Decade Hence?
Luciq asks: "The other day I was cleaning out my closet and started reminiscing about all the good times I had with my 33Mhz 486DX. I got the machine 10 years ago just as the first Pentiums were coming out. With a 33Mhz processor, 212MB hard drive and a whopping 8MB of RAM, I could surf the net at 2400 baud, manipulate photos and even play games with full-screen video like The Seventh Guest. Today I use an Athlon XP 2400, 80GB HD, 512MB [not 512K!] RAM. While I can do some neat things with it, I must say that it's fallen short of the wonderous expectations I had for such a system in 1993 (no immersive VR?, no seamless voice recognition?). What expectations did you have for today's PC, 10 years ago and how does the reality match up? What do you expect from computing, 10 years from now?"
A stable, secure, low-cruft OS.
Maybe in the next ten years.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
I was dreaming of a day when I didn't have to buy extra software for my computer to correct it's inheirent defects, like vulnerability to viruses.
Oh wait, I do that now, thanks Linus...
Hire me...
10 years ago I thought about how a computer was still like a keyboard with a TV (and a mouse). I expected better input technologies. Why do I have to move the mouse pointer with my hand? Why can't I guide it with my eyes, just looking around the screen and moving the pointer? Why are input devices so far behind anything else?
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
1. Be really small and run on almost no power. (Screw 70 Watt processors, gimme something i can implant!) 2. Automatically negotiate ad hoc networks with passersby, immediately establishing whether or not they are similar or dissimilar to you based on MP3 collections, web bookmarks, etc. 3. Thereby facilitating a new form of social selection in humans, whereby our computers automatically figure out whether we are meant to fall in love, be friends, etc.
The flag just makes more sense than the constitution. - Judas Gutenberg
Life will start looking more like it did in the middle of the last century, as computers disappear from sight and banal old devices start containing little bits of a massively distributed system.
I won't miss sitting at a keyboard and staring fixedly at a monitor, that's for sure.
...90% of hardware improvements are essentially wasted by programmer inefficiency.
Look at those amazing 4K demos that people did (and stll do) for DOS. People are doing wild stuff here-- things like real-time pseudo-3D rendering, fractals, you name it-- all inside of 4 kilobytes of code. And most of these demos will run just as well on a '286 or (at most) '386 than today's space-heater chips.
Contiki is a lovely example of what can be done with efficient coding. In my experience, this sort of efficiency is NEVER achieved today in "commercial" projects or even in OSS/FS code-- people never even come close. The only areas of computing which have seen significant improvements (I don't just mean "more widgets" or "better interfaces" (the latter has nothing to do with hardware improvements, so don't even mention it)) in recent years have been:
* Gaming (perhaps the only area where efficiency is even SOMEWHAT appreciated, as it leads to higher FPS)
* Rendering (ditto)
* Real-time scientific simulations
In 1980, I could flip on an Apple II and have a usable prompt inside of a second or two. Nowadays, even with a screamin' P4 or Duron will get you a 30-second startup time-- if you're lucky. That's just to boot up the OS. Wanna start a word processor? That'll take even longer.
If you want to get a sense of what MY expectations were that were shattered, go grab a good Apple II emulator and some appropriate software and fire the emulator up. Make sure that it's running at the full possible speed-- not "compatible" speed (which is 1.02MHz, if I remember correctly). Look at how fast stuff runs... and that's in emulation. Sure, there's no fancy GUI, there's no clippy, whatever you think "modern" OSes have to have... but the point is that even in emulation, old stuff runs REALLY, REALLY FAST. If the same mentality of "efficiency is everything" that was necessary during the days of limited hardware power was voluntarily adopted today... well... imagine Windows XP starting up in one second (and not crashing). Imagine being able to swap cool new games on floppy disks. Imagine most games being distributed on Mini CDs, even those with lots of videos and speech, since a full (650-700MB) CD would be overkill for them.
Then wake up and realize it's time to go buy some more RAM again... ho hum...BillG just raised the bar on hardware requirements. Back to the treadmill we go...
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
from my experience, computer technology is mostly driven by computer games.
anyone can still type up a letter using an old computer. science/research are adapting to what's currently available, rather than creating the needs, but i might be wrong.
on the other hand, not many game developers are still writing games for the current computers, instead, manufacturers are trying to come out with something so that their consumers can finally play GTA3 smoothly.
so a question to answer your question - what do you expect to see in computer games in the future.
I got my first computer when I went to college (1995). I shelled out a ton for it, too. $3000 for a Pentium 133, 32MB RAM, you know the story...
I sit here, typing code on a 2400+ XP, 512Mb RAM and you know, the saddest part is that I'm still the slowest component of the computer. Sure, code compiles faster, but that's only a few moments compared to the hours I spend hitting keys.
It seems that hardware is just keeping up with the software that keeps bogging it down. Sure, my windows desktop is a '32-bit' blue rather than that sad '256 colors' blue. It's still the default color.
I wished that we had truly-emmersive 3D desktops. The kind where you can stack desktops on top of each other and you could control the mouse in 3 dimensions.
I wished that messages from the computer would be synthesized in a super-sexy voice. I wanted a holographic (Max Headroom-ish) interface that I could talk to. I wanted hot-swappable PCI devices.
I remember voice-recognition was just on the verge of becoming commonplace. I think it still is. Perhaps a vapor-ware award is in order...
Yes thats right, most modems still operate at 2400 baud...
OK, I don't know if you're being funny..
I have a 2.4ghz box sitting under my desk, but would be delighted if Intel made a commitment to bring back the turbo button.
Push it, and you have successfully doubled the speed to 4.8ghz.
Actually, that would be "push it, and you have successfully halved your speed to 1.2GHz.
I disagree with the common case that "all games today are eye candy and the real innovation was in the 80's etc."
Of course, there are games that are manufacturered purely to capitalize on a market. Such as games based on movies and tv shows (who wants to be a millionaire rings a bell). However, there are games out there that are breath-taking in an eye candy sense and also in a game sense.
For example, Quake III Arena might be remembered for it's graphics but it also brought multi player internet gaming to a whole new level.
Half life may be a similar concept but it has really brought game hacking and modifications forward. Maybe not truely novel concepts (quakeI had internet play and ID was allowing users to hack their games for a while) but they really created their own cult followings and people play those games for hours just as people played the paralax scrolling games of the late 80's early 90's for hours too.
What about GTA and the ever so popular vice city? I think vice city is probably THE perfect game (for me anyway). It combines so many different types of games into one: role playing, fighting, racing, mission based, shoot-em-up, business etc. Plus it brings you into this whole virtual culture and world where every detail from the people on the side walks to the radio stations are considered. Making it more of an interactive movie that sucks you in and keeps you there.
How about The Sims? Another novel concept. My wife still plays that game for hours at a time. She's got her own little neighbourhood kicking where she can control everything and build up her characters etc. What do you call that kind of game? Role playing? Simulation? I'm not so sure. I definitely don't remember any games in the 80's and early 90's having a game concept like that.
The fact is that gaming is just like any other business. The people who are there to capitalize on it want to market proven products that aren't so risk based. So you do get a lot of games comming out that just seem to be the same as last month's big eye candy. You see this in movies and music and television too. But don't neglect the games that do bring new concepts forward. They're there, you just have to notice them.
- Garett
Here is my pre-emptive response to all of the pro-status-quo zealots (yes, the most annoying sort of all, contrary to a recent poll).
Let's say you had a time machine. (Let's say it was built out of a DeLorean, just for fun's sakes.)
So you fire up your DMC chariot, head back to 1965, and pick up some computer scientists.
You then take them back to the present and start showing them things.
After they get past the whole "You elected RONALD REAGAN President!?" bit, they'll probably faint dead away when you tell them about modern computers. "WHAT? The system REQUIRES 64MB of memory to boot!!!??? And 128MB is recommended!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?" At this point, they would probably punch you in the face, and tell you how much of a failure the modern computer world is (by virtue of being the most prodigious waste of perfectly good supercomputing hardware conceivable... short of using all the world's hardware to render an animated video of Britney Spears's assets bouncing... using a renderer written in BASIC, of course.)
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Please stop that bill gates stuff. That post is so out of context. He said it was enough *because* the dos system at that time had a capacity of only 640 KB. How are you going to put 1 MB where only 640 KB is possible?
You know, every time there is a "640K joke", we get some pointy haired pencil pusher who just has to inform everyone, as if we didn't know already, that that quote was "out of context", or "a myth." Relax, it's a joke. Jesus.
will actually be usefull. There are many ways for computers to improve. Hopefully multiprocessor systems that share the same memory will be useful in a sence, allowing true multitasking. Diamond and not sillicone microprocessors, no hard-drives (flash RAM cards with hundreds of Gigabytes on them?) Peripherals will communicate to the main computers without wires. Maybe even hot-pluggable boards for multiple flash-cards.
:)
True voice recognition systems?
DRM everywhere.
You can't handle the truth.
Writing very complex software means that you can't write it in Assembly and hope to be done in the next 10 years. Sorry to burst your bubble.
Well, first off. I use my 486 as a great monitor stand, punch out the front panel and I even have a "shelf".
;)
My main "hope" was that portable pcs would actually become trully useful. I'm really dissapointed about how slow they are - I have a 300mhz pocket pc and it is painfully slow - my palm m105 is roughly as fast and has a better battery life. I know a new generation of pocket pcs is coming out, but my 486 sx33 can open big text documents faster than the 300mhz pocket pc can. Not cool. The newton kicked ass as an idea, but never picked up. Upsetting really, but hey. The tablet pc is going in the right direction I think. A bit bigger, but the screen space doesn't hurt.
Voice recognition also blows - I'd rather type. I type faster than speak to the computer and have it understand me. This tech is still a pat pat"That's nice dear" technology. I just can't take it seriously. I'm sure people who can't type find it useful, but I don't really.
Removable storage. When I got my first zip drive with my 200mb hard drive, it was very "WOW". A dvd does hold 4.7GB, but just doesn't have the same "wow, this is half my hard drive" effect. Tape drives and tapes have remained hellishly expensive for the home users. And why the hell are floppies still used, someone, please kill the floppy - the usb "keychain" is a great replacement, especially with regards to price per mb now.
Where the hell are the touchscreens? The technology is cheap, but nobody has implemented it. Another reason I think the tablet pc is a good idea.
The "quality" of lcds. I have 486 laptops with no dead pixels, my friend bought a new laptop and it came with 3 dead ones - WTF?
I have a lot of gripes, but what has surpassed my expectations:
- 3d rendering, lightwave and the like. Sure, what I can do in lightwave might look as good as something for Babylon 5 in its first couple seasons, but I do this on my own box and it doesn't take too long at all. I set up all my boxes to be render nodes for one project, but
Of course, I'm a nUb with lightwave compared to others, but just the fact this technology is available to the masses.
- photoshop - a-friggin-mazing. What it can do today was inconceivable in '93
- Games / on the fly rendering. Also really good, I'm not jumping in glee, but it definately has improved.
-Cheap old server hardware still surviving - perhaps this is a testament to how computers used to be built (at least servers, workstations began to suck for longevity after 386s came along ) Anyways, there is so much of this great equipment still around, working and available for cheap, it is really cool. Nothing is wrong with a quad xeon system with a raid array for $400 (proliant 6500s, great boxes).
As for the future? feh, work on getting my flying car goddamnit
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computers will not start to look like unpowered, non-electronic objects. there are lower bounds to the energy required to produce all the state changes which a computer is constantly undergoing. plus with that amount of energy in use by the device there are lower bounds on the amount of heat which is generated as a side effect. these problems increase as the device gets smaller, although with more efficient memory and processors, that could be offset. so far it seems to me that the energy and heat is getting to be more, not less, though.
I'm sorry I just re-read your post. Yeah if the main processors and memories were off in another room that would help. However with all the multi-sensory IO that IO device is going to need to do no small amount of work to talk to you, and to its network... And you'll still have to go mess with that box, I'd bet!
...90% of hardware improvements are essentially wasted by programmer inefficiency.
.Net. Byte code/virtual machines eliminate the need to port our application 50 times, but in trade we give up a whole bunch of speed. If speed doesn't matter, it's all upside.
While this may be true, it's largely done on purpose.
Professional programmers are in the business of making tradeoffs: time versus space, speed of execution versus speed of development, etc.
While it's true that a crack team of assembly programmers could probably rewrite the whole of MS Office for optimum performance, chances are:
1) It would take them years.
2) Users would hardly notice a difference ("Wow, the about box comes up in 100 ms instead of 500!")
3) The code would be impossible to maintain.
Nowadays, professional programmers who are working on performance-critial software tend to write first and optimize second (after they profile the code to determine where 'hotspots' are).
Just look at 'write-once-run-anyware' languages like Java or
10 years ago I was fiddling with autoexec.bat and config.sys files so I could play some game I just bought from Babbage's. Using your computer as an entrainment device, aside from gaming never went beyond some .mod or .wav file, and short video clips -- usually as filler in some "multimedia' game.
Things have gotten bigger, but not necessarily better. Now instead of well-thought out games, there's a ton of 3d animation and filler. Instead of the fun conversations on IRC and BBS's, there's spam filled usenet and E-Mail.
Ease of use hasn't drastically occurred -- because face it, nerds (who develop software) always turned their noses up at "the easy way" of doing things. Which is why the kids with Macs and Amigas got made fun of. The real thing the nerds were hating in the GUI was the inability to get under the hood.
10 years ago I couldn't have imagined downloading full music files and movies so easily, or creating your own with a few hundred dollars worth of equipment. Even getting your own home network going is insanely cheap nowadays.
I don't know about everyone else, but I'm pretty happy with how things have gone. What I didn't anticipate was how much Microsoft would totally dominate, and ruin computing. If I could have seen that then, maybe I would have bought a Mac in 1993, not another PC. Apple has flaws, but I just can't see them contaminating the Internet the same way Windows users and Microsoft has.
I'm happy to see the open source movement making waves, and 10 years ago I wouldn't have imagined a free OS could provide so many options. Nowadays your average cable modem provides the kind of bandwidth many universities had . . . I never would've imagined that 10 years ago.
Of course, the things I was doing in 1993 (using IRC to chat, looking at web pages, sending E-Mails), I'm still doing now. Except, with IE's non-compliance to standards and Windows viruses, it's actually worse than it was 10 years ago.
Saying all that, I love what Linux and BSDs offer for free alternatives -- a few of my computers are running Linux right now. As far as being completely satisfied though, OS X is exactly what I wanted in a computer 10 years ago. It's easy enough to deal with, stable, and I can get tinker with UNIX whenever I need to. I really became disinterested in computers from 95-98 or so; OS X is what made me buy a few programming books and get back into things though.
What sucks in 2003 is Microsoft and people not following standards on the web. DRM applies here too. A lot of really great things have happened in 10 years, what's held them back is MS dominance.
I think they would be rather amazed at the power of the computers themselves. Show them that we can store 2 trillion bits of data on something thats about the size of a paperback book. Oh yeah, and it only costs about $200 too. However, they may not be so impressed when they discover we use it mostly to store vast quantities of bad music, bad movies, and porn. Oh well.
Or the processors that run at 2 billion cycles per second that cost less than $100. It would blow them away.
You can tell them, "Sure, the thing won't boot with less than 64MB of memory, but who cares when that much memory costs $15?" Oh course they will probably say that's our problem - what incentive do we have to elimate bloat when it's so much cheaper to throw more hardware at a problem?
BTW, be sure to tell them to put all their money into the stock of a small company named "Microsoft" in the early 1980's, and that around 1999 you'll be expecting a nice check in the mail.
grib.
maybe
What I expect? Every new home to have it's own LAN that will replace phone lines. A Central server in every home that acts to manage everything from your home's Voice over IP, to storing your family photos, securing your important docs, providing VPN tech to any hardware behind the server like your fridge so you can tell if you need to pick up some eggs thanks to the RFID tags, to storing and recording all TV shows/movies that you rent on PPV/and mp3s...the key will be some form of TCPA encryption to protect all that data from leaving the server. 10 years from now there will be 1 computer for a home. Terminals will come back into play as people realize they don't need a 2Ghz machine to use MS word. Every TV/plasma or not will be hooked up to it....you'll have a 23" LCD at your desk which will become a desk again when those huge ass towers leave the scene...you'll have a 14" LCD in the kitchen to help with your cooking...you'll have a small LCD outside your front door as a keypad....
But in the end the most important thing that will change with PC's in 10 years is that people will NOT be buying PC's in 10 years...they will be expanding the cluster of PC's they already have. Systems like MOSIX clustering that will have shared memmory support to make such clusters as efficient as SMP systems. In the future OEM's will become obsolete...the only hardware will be the Server...diskless terminals...and expanded CPU add ons for the cluster. Then after this takes hold the biggest step ever...all these homes will join into a central source for research. AI's using evolution algos will develop the techs of the future on the PC's we buy today...as they sit in the closet instead of by our side.
Of course I could be way off...quantom computing may take hold...but in the end I don't think we will ever see the PC hardware boom like we had in the 90's. Look for less hardware not more...embeded systems are being oversold...unless they are outside of the home they will not be used.
Interestingly enough, my calculations show that 4096x4096 is pretty close to the point of diminishing returns -- it's the point at which you can't see individual pixels if you're far enough away to see the whole screen. Any further increase in resolution is only usefull if you're only going to use half the display at a time.
An handheld computer the size of a large paperback, with integrated rugged LCD (no glass, solid plastic), virtual keyboard (touch keys with a stylus), and an 800x600 display in True Color. At least 512MB ram, at least 100GB disk. Waterproof, shockproof, rubberized, and available in a variety of colors. You carry it around, and at work or home, you plug it into a monitor and a "real" keyboard and mouse with a single plug. Wireless connectivity of course... Linux/Java based. Powered by an alcohol fuel cell. If they called it the "Ono-Sendai Cyberspace 7" I'd preorder several of them in sheer joy.
;)
Heads up display glasses that don't cost a thousand bucks, with built in nightvision and thermal vision (to see today's REAL version, which isn't *that* unwieldy, check out www.tekgear.com, and look for the "spectre").
Mapping software for the computer described above. Also, some kind of VR overlay, so you can use it while you walk.
Game consoles that are *even better* than today's. Fully cinema-quality 3D immersion, usable with a HUD to really draw you in, and controls that strap on like gloves.
Hydrogen-powered everything! It's the future, you know...
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
Although hardware speeds have increased a 100 fold software has not kept up with it, instead software has become bloated and slow. Windows still takes a minute or longer to load, applications still crash and overall realibilty still has not improved.
My random guess:
I hope that systems become cheap enough for computing to become even more ubiquitous. Go to a resturant, there's a cheap, elegant system, completely display, as the menu. If it needs replaced, it's only $30, most of that for the custom software for the menu display itself. Want to watch TV?
Walk up to the wall with the special wallpaper, drag your finger as a rectangle forms to the size you want, select TV from the menu, then grab the remote. The special wallpaper cost $175 a roll last year, now it costs $120.
Computers themselves will become more lego-like as they grow smaller. Because the components are so small, sensitive, and solid state, they will have to be contained in a protective case. Because of this, you won't have to have the computer intelf in a case, you just have to put the parts together somehow, have some connection to your outputs, to your inputs, to power, and to your network. As interconnection standards between parts becomes more robust and tolerant, computer parts will become more than ever, completely interchangeable along with software. Eventually, even average grandparents will be able to intuitively put together a system based on what they need to do with it, and the parts will be everywhere from checkout lanes to garden supply stores.
Ryan Fenton
10 years ago I had a huge collection of 3.5" floppy disks, one of the first things I did when I moved from a 40 meg HD to 512 was move everthing to the HD. about 6 years after that my music became Mp3's and all of my cd's went on to a 5 gig drive. These days my movies are ripped to divx and stored on the HD. Give me another couple of years and I won't rip them to divx, I'll be storing hundreds of movies on terabyte drives in raw format.
To go with all this new storage I'll need faster cpu's. Remember when mp3 encoding was used as a test for processor speed? These days dvd encoding is going the same way. One day I hope to drop a dvd in and rip it to HD in 5 minutes.
I also hope for more bandwidth at home. Yes DSL is great but It could always be faster. I want tv on demand from foreign companies. No need to pirate that anime, just select it and watch. My anime started with renting licensed vhs tapes, then went to ordering "imported" dvd's, to downloading series on newsgroups, to kazaa, and now to bittorrent. Each step got me what I wanted quicker and easier. A popular series now takes me 4 hours for a popular series of 24 episodes, taking 3.5 gig. 1 dvd used to take 3 weeks. This will get faster in the future.
All of this moving of media is currently questionably legal (hence the ac post) and the media companies would love to wipe it out, I don't think it will happen. People want instant gratification, and when it comes to copyright infringement most of them won't even slow down their downloads long enough to think about it. The media compainies will change or will be crushed. SO I'm also predicting all DRM features will be removed after a short and disasterous entry into the market.
I'll also add a bit or troll value here by predicting someone will get serious about a virus or worm and they won't ddos a site to send a message. They'll simply leave a few million machines wiped clean causing billions in damage.
What expectations did you have for today's PC, 10 years ago and how does the reality match up?
Why not step into the ol' time machine, aka Google Groups' Usenet archive? The thread What specifications will the standard year 2001 PC have? is a fascinating read (really -- I recommend reading every post).
I noticed a few common thoughts throught the thread that didn't pan out: Multiprocessor desktops becoming commonplace. The demise of X86. Also on a whole people's estimates on HD space were very conservative. People predicted ridiculous resolutions for video.
Some people were right on the money though: 1GHz processors, 512MB RAM, and permanent connections to the 'net.
This is one of the best finds I've come across on ye olde Usenet.
At the risk of showing my age, the original (mainframe, text based) Adventure game of the 1970s appealed to me in terms of general concept to a greater degree than anything since (with the possible exception of The Sims). Much imitated since, of course, but the graphics versions are no more addictive than the original.
On method of interaction, games consoles have a slight advantage over PCs and PCs have a big advantage over mainframe/mini based systems owing to the availablity of peripherals appropriate to game play (even the mouse is far better than a keyboard). For the most part, though, progress in enhancing this part of the gamers' experience has been diappointing in recent years. Some multi user shoot-up type games have resulted in incremental improvements in interaction, but we are really no nearer to true virtual reality than we were ten years ago.
Why is eye candy of limited importance? Mainly because the effect is transitory. You are no more likely to watch the same movie many times than to repeatedly read the same book. In both cases, if well crafted with an engaging story line, you may. But dramatic visual effects alone will not draw you back again and again to the same movie.
It seems to me that machines today are really what I *thought* the Amiga was 10-12 years ago.
:^)
Gaming is one of the greatest reasons to soup-up your PC today... and strangely was one of the reasons the Amiga was never taken seriously in it's day.
Many Amiga programs supported external scripting via AREXX, to control certain functions (like Digipaint3)-- much like the use of XML today for configurations of of apps like... Trillian.
3-D rendering/ray tracing (Sculpt/Animate4D - Turbo Silver) -- yes it took 2 weeks to render a ray-traced silver-sphere on a red/white checkerboard, but it was photorealistic.
Music production hasn't ventured far either...
though it was 8-bit sound, it was two channel stereo with 4 complex wavforms triggerable simultaneously...
You had more professional software (Bars & Pipes, Dr. T's) and then your more underground software - ProTracker, Delitracker, etc..
just comparing tracker software to Sonic Foundry's Acid, the difference being that you "paint the waveform" in a track and apply effects through plug-ins, In tracker software it was ALL hex addressing,(even effects!) and a screen filled with multiple (dizzying at first) columns of numbers, it was all sample based -- they (music modules, "MODS") sounded a hell of a lot better than sucky general midi and the "M-PC" of the early 90's...
The problems I see with PC's today is there is really too much integration to be supported by the operating system of popular choice (windows).
The operating system is not LOGICALLY extensable in the way that unix was (before linux became easy to install)
application software should NOT put it's meathooks into your OS. ever.
games will transcend polygon count alone. I imagine that some people will spend their entire waking life immersed within massivly multiplayer simulation that will become so life-like they won't want to leave... less like EverQuest, more like THE MATRIX -- without the kung-fu.
input devices -- mouse is dead, joystick dead. your screen-mounted webcam will track your eye movements, a stylus will be provided for "detailed" work.
I imagine that we will have so many networked devices that our machines could aggregate computing power wirelessly in parallel with other devices, in effect, becoming virally faster, and temporarily intelligent.
speech recognition will never work.
your OS will heal itself BEFORE it breaks.
storage costs will decrease, while capacity increases allowing an economic means of transaction auditing and journaling file-systems for general use (our PC's will work like a Mainframe, but with the power of an entire datacenter of today!) Imagine being able to roll your pc back 20 seconds ago, on the fly! you can change the past....roll forward... your browser cache history will no longer have ANY record of that accidental click to goatse.cx!
Yep, in ten years I expect that all computers and media devices will have DRM systems installed, complete with regional encoding so the local governments can filter the content and ensure that your viewing pleasure is safe, and the news you are exposed to does not lead to any confusion.
That and more networked monitoring devices to ensure that we can live in a terrorism free society worldwide and enjoy the elimination of even the most petty crime.
Also we can look forward to that "paperless society" we've been promised, which will not only reduce the demands on our forests, but will eliminate the horrible firehazards known as libraries. Eliminating print media will do wonders for reducing littering, as well as ensuring that the news stories correspond well with the (electronically) published hiostory. Getting rid of all of those mouldy books will do wonders for public health and safety.
So all in all, it seems we've got much to look forward to, and as long as we leave the future of technology in the capable hands of our legislators and those corporations that have served our interests so well for so long, we just may get to see all of that come true!
Read, L
Many of you expect so much, but have no idea how hard it is/was to create...
These billion-transistor CPU's that people use every day go unnoticed. Do you know how much genious was poured into it's creation?
And you go on to ask for voice recognition and perfect speech generation? Why not perfect AI while you're at it?
Be greatful and don't ask for much... until you go out and contribute to the development of this technology you ask for then you have not right to complain when you don't get it.
Did anyone see the DMCA or RIAA legal pack of business coming ten years from now? Just think of what life in the future will be like post-resolution-of-said-issues. Orrin Hatch wants to crack our cases with destructive virus files...what will electronic entertainment of the future be like?
Cold War II: The Race between Digital Rights and Hackers.
It is a rather well known (at least as far as I have seen) "fact" that many game dev studios pump out crap, usually under the license of franchises from the media but sometimes just their own in-house crap. This has plagued writers for a long time as well. Yet we see that once again the solution to this all lies with *drum roll please* the CONSUMER. When the consumer exercises discipline, constraint and wisdom through informed buying decisions, they send a clear message that crap doesn't have a market. They force the industry (all of them) to raise the bar. Complacency however is rewarded with complacency resulting in more crap.
This all rolls into computers as a whole. With bloatware and crapware inefficiently wasting computer resources and more efforts going into advertising rather than development, innovation and refinement it is not surprising at all that many have very expensive web browsing and solitaire devices. Demand more if you want it, don't bitch about it then pay for it. Your wallet is the voting ballot.
First, the bad news... computing in the large...
I generally see less and less interest in formal methods, formal design, disciplined approaches to software construction (by which I am referring to the use and adherence to serious models, not just fodder for coffeehouse discussions). Small, proven O/S kernels, supertight code, and emphasis on requirements analysis as the sorts of things that make for well-built and defined systems are costly, and just don't sell well in a commercial market which demands and receives revenue and, increasingly, waivers from liability for bad software products. Increasing "offshoring" of software development projects won't help keeping the gap between systems-as-intended and systems-as-developed issues from arising.
Organizations will lean on, and people will continue to accept descriptions of software quality where software testing is emphasized, before software development methodology or rigor.
Many more large and complex systems will be developed. Their sizes (and complexity of interactions) will outpace the ability of the implementation of their development models to support final code products that meet the required security needs of the public, or of customers. Security problems will get worse before they get better.
And in the small...
The good news? Consumer appliances.
You will be able to carry on a thumbnail chip (or, probably, through a more convenient mechanism, access to your personal material of interest. Wifi-type-access back through VPNs to your data should be readily available. This isn't too far from available now...within some limits...) all the music, photos, and items of personal interest that you would collect and store. I would like to have some confidence that this won't be ruined by digital rights management implementation and supporting legislation, but time will tell. I suspect workarounds will exist to circumvent most DRM systems that will come along. Oh yea, store any of that on a server owned by someone else, and you may end up giving up copyrights and more...Privacy rights and related issues over information you store on anyone else's system will get worse before it gets better.
Anyway, some thoughts...
Sam Nitzberg
http://www.iamsam.com
Speaking as an Engineer,
....
Change and the development of a future technology of any given product is also subject to the market forces. What I mean is that it is hard enough now to get "mom and dad" to be able to use the simple things on the computer without becoming scared at the first warning sign. The learning curve for the older generation is much tougher. It leads to more of the same, just better. You go to what you know ( one of the reasons why Microsoft would rather have you steal their software than use linux )
Ipso facto there is no real reason for any of the big companies to innovate too much beyond the realm of familiar products. Imagine what computer could have been like if we haven't been subdued in the PC world to the same doses of Microsoft brand new operating systems, which in reality aren't that much different from the end user point of view as the first setting of windows 95. It has almost been 10 years and what do we have to show for it? (Even Linux as much as I do love it, is also fighting to become like windows in the desktop arena. Yes there are some real nice distinguishing features from all the camps but it is very windows like you can't deny that, not faulting the developers )
I don't pretend to have the answer but I think as long as you have a Wintel grip on things, (maybe the Wi-fi hand held computers will help shake things up), dont' be surprised if the next windows super duper XP 2.0 looks a lot like the previous versions
my $.02
I also remember getting a machine about 10 years ago, and I remember that "the future" was all about voice recognition, automation, crazy multimedia at home, etc. It all seemed very exciting to me back then, and for the most part feels kinda "blah" now that we're here.
/. readers fit here). There are more possibilities in software, hardware, networking, and overall usability then there were 10 years ago, but it's pretty much only the power users who really a) understand them, and b) make direct use of them. For the mainstream users, the computing experience is largely unchanged: email, websites, IM, store your digital photos (this last one may be stretching it for the average user).
/. readers. It took my dad about 10 years to figure out that he didn't have to double-click everything with the mouse (including web pages) in order to open it. And what about our grandparents?
So where's "here"? My summary of where we are today consists of a several things. First, I think there's a bigger divergence between the computing experience of a mainstream user vs. the computing experience of a power user (probably most of
While I always enjoy reading about Microsoft's latest fumble, I think they've been *trying* to make computers more specialized so that the user doesn't have to be. All of their Auto Correct features, assistant paper clip thingies, fully retarded (and grossly insecure) scriptability of every goddam product, and various other "features" that end up annoying the hell out of most of us are in fact a solid attempt to make the experience of using a computer more enjoyable for somebody like my mother. In fact, most of our mothers (and fathers) could probably do well to have a helluva lot of assistance using a computer, while most of us probably disable all of that in favor of more direct control. Keep in mind the population spread - there are way more baby boomers using computers than there are
So for the future, while I would *like* to see all kinds of cool things that would appeal to our geekiness, I'm predicting a slow, plodding future of more of the same - increased divergence between the computing experiences of regular and power users, and way more AutoBullshit and assistance features for the average home user.
Innovation is a funny thing. There's only so much of it that can happen at any one time. That's because there are two finite resources required for it to happen: attention and money. In other words, someone needs to care enough about something to spend time thinking about ways to do it better, and then someone needs to care enough about those new ideas to pay to turn them into realities.
The reason there has been practically no innovation on the desktop in the last ten years has been because that span of time -- ten years -- coincides precisely with the span of time the Internet has been in the public consciousness. Ever since Mosaic hit in '93 the vast majority of money and attention that's available in the world has been focused on the Net -- making it better, faster, more reliable and able to support more complex applications. That hasn't left a lot of those resources to support innovations on the desktop -- and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
The first computer I ever connected to the Net, I connected in 1993. It was a 486SX/25 with 8MB of RAM and a whopping 200MB (yes, MB) hard drive. It ran Windows (version 3.1), Office, and some games.
Today I have a Duron 1200 with 512MB of RAM and an 80GB hard drive. It runs Windows (2000), Office, and some games... and a whole boatload of applications (Web browser, graphical IMAP mail client, IM programs, P2P, etc.) that I could not even have imagined in 1992. And, generally speaking, I'm happy with that -- those things are more useful to me than all the things we thought were going to be huge back in 1993 (immersive VR, CD-ROM encyclopedias, etc.) would have been.
So, in short, there's been plenty of innovation -- it's just been in a different direction than you (or I) were expecting.
Read my blog.
...is that computers still aren't the same as televisions: You hit the power button and it's just "there". Sure, we've got suspend and standby and XP boots faster, but it's still a few tens of seconds before the desktop is up and running. Even BeOS wasn't up instantly. Until this happens, PCs will not be where *I* expect them to be by now. The PC should be an appliance by now, and it really isn't.
Un-news
It's 2003. So where is he? AI has not seemed to improve much despite ambitious software projects and even games that would seem to require neural networks. Perhaps the most disappointing is the lack of much improvement in VR, with disappointing progress in input devices and 3D and other monitor technology. Voice synthesis has made some improvements though. Not bad, although it's still not HAL quality. Voice recognition seems to have matured quite a bit as well. IMO, the most significant progress has been in graphics cards with processors nearly as impressive as the main CPU. The impact this has had on games cannot be underestimated.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
10 years ago I expected some truly breath-taking an immersive 3D games with excellent gameplay for the present. However, I often times find that today's games are simply breath-taking in a graphical sense but really lack in the gameplay. Am I just spoiled or does anyone else feel this way? Maybe it's just that I'm remembering my childhood playing those side scroller games for hours.
Amen. I'm also disappointed that as computers get faster, software finds a way to require more cpu cycles to do the same work. I was burning cd's with a 486, why is my xp box sluggish as all hell when i burn one now at just 12x? (2.5ghz, 512ram) I ran a 2 line bbs on a 386SX with 4mb of ram, and qemm, 2400 and the new 14.4... it just seems like you could do relatively more then because the software was simpler and more optimized.
Game wize, I still play TFC and run several servers. Decent graphics, killer gameplay, from 1998. I used to have a lot of really good shareware games too (remember those?) but most don't like running in DOS emulation on xp. Very simple games that required imagination and strategy. Now games are more about entertainment than fluidity of gameplay. Then again, they want you to get bored eventually and go buy another game.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
It's already got to the stage where you don't need anything faster than an ('obsolete') high end pentium 2 with an affordable amount of RAM to do everything an average user will need to do on their machine. Desktop applications, decent games, all run fine in such an environment. Even new releases of desktop applications and games run on five year old systems. That was never the case ten years ago.
.net offers to, and with enough momentum it's possible Novel could embrace and extend it to be a competitor if Microsoft changes focus).
I think over the next ten years we'll see that spread into development, and the demand for cutting edge hardware will be less than it is now, and far less than it was ten years ago, when even the fastest computers didn't feel fast enough.
Further, I think we'll see an evolving commoditisation of the software platform. The open source community has already reached critical mass. Within ten yeas, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBeOS and Macintosh will be pretty much interchangable, and compatibility layers will exist to bring Windows into that group as well (java, qt, gtk+ and cygwin are already breaking down barriers here.
I also think that the world of functional programming is a sleeping giant, and it will only take a perl-analogue funcional langauge (eg: hacker friendly, not as quirky as common lisp, good libraries, great community) to jump start it now that cycles and software components are cheap.
We just need to make sure we come down like a ton of bricks on techologies like hailstorm and shocking IP law while we're getting there, because both of them threaten offer the ruin the promise of a bright future.
Believe with me, my saplings.
How strange, I was cleaning out my own computer closet and had a similar thought back to my own 1993-vintage 486 -- and 20 years ago, when I was using Apple II, C-64, and PC XT machines.
My thought was this:
If a computer user from 1993 was transported to 2003, they could sit down at a modern PC and find it pretty familiar -- just a lot faster and slicker! Word and Excel today would look pretty familiar to a user from 1993.
In fact, even the OS was very similar in appearance in 1993 my case. I ran OS/2, and the Workplace Shell was very much like the Win NT/2000 GUIs that MS later developed -- much closer than a Mac or X-Windows, let alone that glorified program launcher known as Windows 3.1
Now imagine a user from 1983 being transported to 1993. Someone familiar with Wordstar on a PC XT running DOS would be utterly lost when confronted with a GUI and WordPerfect or Word.
Would it even ocurr to that refugee from 1983 that the funny looking thing next to the keyboard would move the arrow on the screen? OK, I suppose mice had appeared by 1983 (yes, and I know they were invented much earlier), but mice were still rare.
From 1983 to 1993, I used seriously six different operating systems, six different word processors and three or four different spreadsheets. In the last ten I personally have used a variety of systems due to preference and technical jobs, but could easly have gotten by with nothing but Windows, Word, and Excel.
I was using virtually all the same categories of applications in 1993 as in 2003. I guess web browsing and audio/video are the main new uses for me in the last 10 years (and technically I was using web browsers by late 1993). Half of the applicatoins of 1993 didn't even exist yet in 1983.
While some innovation is as fast as ever -- CPU speed and RAM density -- on the software side the industry became much more "mature" in character in the 1990s. That's one reason I suspect why we didn't see huge productivity gains in business from microcomputers until the 1990s -- they were too much a moving target. Word processors and spreadsheets weren't going to be a net plus until you didn't have to retrain your admins and accountants every year or two.
In a decade computers won't exist. They will have vanished into backgroud. You'll buy a computer like you buy pens, printer paper, bookbag, etc.
In a decade, 99% of computers will be bought based on price, $179 or $229, color, purple, yellow, green, and style, delicate or BMX. A key issue will be whether you can get matching pants or shoes.