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Big Bang of Convergence
joNDoty writes "Businessweek is running a story predicting 'This is going to be the most disruptive period in the past 50 years." The period they are talking about is the digital age of convergence, where every software/hardware manufacturer is racing to link cell phones, tvs and computers into universal devices 'that can't be categorized as tech or consumer electronics.' 'The result is a Big Bang of convergence, and it's likely to produce the biggest explosion of innovation since the dawn of the Internet.' Overrated? Perhaps, but +1 insightful nonetheless." Sure, your fridge will tell you you need milk, but convergence is not necessarily a good thing.
I don't know about this "convergence" thing. I have 5 remote controls for 5 different products, and I'll be damned if I can find a way to successfully use just for all!
This sounds about as vague as the dot-com boom. I don't believe it.
Now we'll have a Swiss Army knife of Technology! *I gotta post AC on this one.. heh
When your toaster tells you that you've got 2 potential e-harmony dates, and your fridge won't shut up about your lousy tv dinner diet, it will be time to move to the mountains.
You're nothing; like me.
Linking link cell phones, tvs and computers would be nice... if they could link it with a frickin' flying car already
I fear the 3l33t snax0rz.
Wouldn't this type of convergence help offset the huge wastage caused by production of electronics devices? As it stands it takes too much raw materials to produce common electronics, so logically, by having less electronics, we could save the environment /tree-hugger
Same as any other boom. Huge leaps, then the typical stagnation. We are definitely at the outset of the bread and circuses phase for the wired empire. The shine will wear off the need for the newest of the new when the technology plateaus, and all you have are packaging updates. I can see this coming to a close in far fewer than 50 years. It's a shame that the boom wasn't in connecting people who have no connectivity to anything.
Side talking... man it will not be missed
A psychopath can't tell the difference between right and wrong. A sociopath knows the difference - he just doesn't care.
I think often devices that try to do many things succed in doing many things less well than specialized devices. Not only are we going to see a lot of innovation but we are going to see a lot of failed products in the years to come.
411 Y0UR 8453 4R3 8310NG 70 U5!! -NSA
They been saying this, what, 3 years now? Sure it is.
Be seeing you...
Maybe it's like the metric system, and soccer in America*. It's the wave of the future, and always will be.
* maybe not. US Soccer is #8 in the world now, ahead of Germany!
sulli
RTFJ.
Sorry- I've only got one- SONY's RM-VL900 learns with the best of 'em.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
I'll believe this when I can get broadband speeds all across the US, which they keep telling me is a 1st world nation. (whatever that means)
just have to roll up my sleeves and do it myself, because otherwise my "converged" media will be a DRM'd crippled mess.
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
I still have my ::CueCat.
I want to see the first person selling Anti-Virus for a refridgerator or reciever.
I should go into business selling whole-home anti-virus licenses. Good for 10 communicating devices per license. Renewable monthly.
-Kelt
My intelligence insults itself.
Picture slackjawed marketers and capitalist techno-theives everywhere with looks of utter bliss drooling and murmuring "convergence..." as they picture the obscene profits yet to come when your toaster is loaded with embedded Longhorn so that you can listen to mp3s on it aquired wirelessly from your refrigerator/render-farm.
Think Infinite Jest.
Anti-social? My code is just platform-specific.
What are those you say? Well those are the latest and greatest thing. What is that thing? Well anything you want it to be. It slices, it dices, it makes julien fries while showing you the matrix reloaded and sorting your CRM database. /runs and hides.
Doesn't anyone remember what happened last time when the Cylons attacked, and all of our computer systems were linked together?
That's funny, because like, just 2 days ago I could've sworn that there was an article about the death of PDA's.
I can't wait for my refrigerator to have a toaster, speakerphone, tv, and real doll embedded in the doors.
Who pays these people to make blanket statements like this. What do I have to do to get a job like that? I can get a Harvard Diploma online for $10, kk?
schild
editor, f13.net
If I want a phone, I just want a phone that is reliable and easy to use. Not loaded with so many gadgets that I have trouble using it for the intended main function.
We just put a replacement radio in my wife's car, a '93, and instead of knobs and a few large buttons there are these tiny little buttons that I can't read the labels for without a magnifying glass. WTF is that? Certainly, it's far from user friendly. So instead of just reaching over to change the station, or even to turn the danged thing off, by simply turning a reasonable size knob, I have to keep punching tiny buttons until it does what I want. Yeah, I eventually am learning which is which, but that's not my point. And you think talking on a cell phone is distracting... HA!
IMHO too much convergence is likely to be too much of a possible good thing.
Make a product that does its intended main function and does it well.
If I want the best knife or the best scissors, I don't get a Swiss Army knife.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Sometimes you people need to unplug.
Life in Orange County
this won't go corporate, because enough people at major companies will realize the whole single point of failure thing, and that they'll lose a lot of money waiting for workers' supermegagadget to come back from the shop, but i definitely think there's a market for small devices that do everything.
-ninjaneer
I need to buy a new cell phone to switch providers.
Even though basic cable boxes are similar around the country, I can't buy one are the Best Buy down the road.
I have 4 remotes sitting on my table at home. All of them "universal" that came with separate components. Unfortunately, the only universal part is turning off/switching the station. I can't run my DVD with my TV remote. Oh, and I bought a third party universal remote. Didn't work.
Start with those 3 simple things.
my computer doesn't blow up. Hey, does this mean the pr0n on my TV and my computer will converge? Okay, I guess I'm okay with my computer blowing up...
I imagine that this "big bang" will conclude with the controlling company(ies) charging money for practically every type of content, since they'll have a service and device for everything.
stuff |
Everybody wants the Dick Tracy wristwatch that does everything. And as we know, the technology to link all these wonderful services exists now. The problem is licensing. No company wants to give up their piece of the pie, or surrender their turf to another company when there's money to be made. Stockholders wouldn't stand for it. Unles one firm can muscle the others into giving up their license, or reducing their fee, it won't happen.....Microsoft?....Anyone?
It's already been created! Just go download the source code from skullbocks.com!
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
My VCR watches TV for me when I'm not there, my oven can cook dinner for me when I'm not there, and my checking account can pay bills automatically if I'm not there. With all this convergence, will my possessions need me anymore?
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Sure, your fridge will tell you you need milk
This is way too low-tech.
What your fridge should tell you is:
'Hey dude, I know you're thinking of buying milk today, but I just read an article online about a bad shipment of milk to stores in this area, so I'd hold off a day or two until there's more details. I'll tell you when it's safe again, OK?
'Oh - and of course I tested the milk you still have inside me, and that's OK to drink. Just don't buy any more until I say so.'
THAT is hi-tech. That is convergence.
... lead to evil developments like the "distributed denial of breakfast" attack. Be afraid ... be very afraid.
Let's take a smaller scale example: in Unixy atmospheres everything is modular and develops independently. With Windows, it seems to me at least, that there is a much bigger emphasis on having all the componenets of the OS work together. You tell me which one is better... I guess it would be nice to have this "convergance," but, I think that there are risks and also there is plenty of work to be done on the individual parts we are "converging" before we start trying to mesh them together.
I'm against picketing but I don't know how to show it.
For example, I prefer using a desktop for real work like long sessions of typing or video editing. The larger screen real estate, better price and more power mean that I'm better off with a desktop; and I think most people feel that way. Likewise, I don't want to use that monitor as a TV because it's too small; the hard drive in that computer is too small to store uncompressed DVDs, which are better left on desk to be played in the large-screen TV upstairs. I want a portable device to play music, and the key factor for that device is size, followed closely by battery life and ease-of-use -- and such a device, so useful for music, would be worthless for movies.
My point is that convergence isn't here today, and I doubt it will be in the near future. The hurdles may eventually be overcome, but I suspect convergence might be like flying cars or cheap, easy nuclear power: perpetually five or ten years down the line.
"Your Bagle is ready. Would you like to see an add about Philly Cream Cheese?"
Given such a generalized processor, we do away with the need to manufacture dedicated electronic hardware - and provide the functionality in specialized software which instructs the general-purpose microprocessor to perform a specific task. This is cheaper since software is easily reproduced/copied at a minimal cost.
A capable generic microprocessor can perform the functions of most electronic devices (calculations, DSP, gaming device, prototyping etc) as long as software/peripherals is available for it. No wonder then that we're seeing electronic companies jumping on the idea of writing firm/software for generic microprocessors in an effort to expand their range of products at reduce costs.
I predict that in a few years, we will have a single cheap generic microprocessor which will be found in most (or all) consumer electronic devices. Electronic companies will be largely reduced to software companies dedicated to writing software instead.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
...most users still can't program a digital clock without help and most techs can't develop an interface that my grandmother can use. Until these two factors converge, high tech toys are going to remain the Playthings of Geekdom.
Thanks but no thanks.
That which does not kill her only prolongs my agony.
Having one home sound reproduction device makes sense.
It saves complication and cost. It's just good engineering to simplify the system by reducing redundency to the optimum (not necessarily the minimum).
Having your toaster call up a website to find out how far up it should turn the rheostat, phone your mom to let her know you're actually eating a good breakfast, tell you the next chess move in that game with your buddy and then starting your car does not reduce complication and cost.
It is a poor solution.
There's nothing wrong with convergence, so long as the convergence makes inherent sense.
KFG
You turn on the TV to watch a movie...
"Problems down there? TRY CIALIS!"
Or you go to the kitchen to get something to drink...
"We've got the largest selection of dolls!"
Like I'd want any of my appliances trying to sell me penis enlargement pills.
I don't believe this convergence. What's the point of making a device that works as a tv and a cellular phone? I wouldn't like to carry a 50 inch large mobile everywhere, and I can't imagine a family sitting around a cellular phone and watching soap operas on the 3 inch display of it. This is nonsense. Having a mobile capable of playing films can be nice, but don't tell me that these universal devices will rule the world and render every one function device useless. Swiss knives are lame.
Yawn. These convergence hype stories were more fun back in the 1990s when people were talking about the convergence of tech and sex. Teledildonics stories were always good for a laugh. This stuff is just plain dull.
The most successful convergence device in recent history remains the clock-radio.
Da Blog
Then we can all be individuals in the same way!
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
Apple really did a great job with their new Airport Express. It isn't what you would normally think of as 'convergence', but it accomplishes exactly what users want. Existing computer and stereo working together without a big hassle.
A Multiplayer Strategy Game for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
When the shipments become safe, it should make an order for some more and have it delivered when I get home. Oh.. and it should also make sure to order more milk as it checks against the sell before date.
Hmmm.
Remember the one where he gets fed up with technology, and murders his house?
Let my fridge run out and get the milk after it determines I need it.
It's true in the sense that every possible angle of convergence is going to be covered. Watch for a feeding frenzy of new technology. Then watch again as the truly useless technologies are abandoned by users and go the way of the dodo.
I'm worried that the entire Internet will collapse into a black hole and destroy us all.
The biggest problem to come of convergence is the inability to get just what you need and want. I may only want a cell phone that can make phone calls - not a mini PDA / game machine. With the current rush, some manufacturers and developers are forgetting to leave the basic product available.
Another problem is that a converged product may make you sacrifice performance in one area for performance in another. For example (made up, of course) a monitor/television/CD/DVD player combination might have the best visual clarity, but be so-so at reading DVDs and skip a lot -- while a competing product might play DVDs flawlessly, but max out at 800x680 resolution. The more converged products become, the less choice we consumers have to maximize the quality and/or minimize our cost.
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
Get them to read this
Who knows. Maybe someday we'll need anti-virus software for our cell-phones. Oh wait...
Soccer Goal Plans
Give me clocks that set themselves to the correct time. That would be useful. Then I wouldn't mind that my toaster also includes a clock.
Give me a dishwasher that clears the table, actually washes the dishes, and then puts them away in the cabinets. That would really be useful.
Soon my toilet will be able to tell me when I am done with my dump and if I wiped my ass good enough.
http://jayceecorder.blogspot.com
How about converging the warm air coming from the back of the fridge into something useful, like keeping the coffee pot warm? Or how about converging some sunlight into hot water?
How converging something useful?
I don't need a pinhole camera that makes crappy sounding phone calls and plays mp3's.
... then shouldn't it be a "Big Crunch" instead of a "Big Bang"?
I'm about as enthusiastic about merging my cellphone and refrigerator with my PDA and electric blanket as I am about living through the Big Crunch, so maybe it's an appropriate name, too...
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
...and it's called the human brain.
I open the fridge, I see I'm low on milk(high tech translucent bottle). I walk over to the grocery list, put on "milk". If I have Peapod (I don't- shocking, I know, but I still drive to the store) I trundle over to the computer and order some milk.
Now, why is this such a stunning, critical problem that companies seem to be obsessed with solving for me?
Please help metamoderate.
This is supposed to be News for Nerds, not News for Suckers.
Oh, I'm so surprised to hear that McGraw Hill's rag (yeah, that's the McGraw Hill that owned Standard and Poor's as in the S&P 500) is cheerleading the roaring tech market.
Certainly, this must be based on hard technical facts and has nothing to do with being pure spin to pump up that bubble just a tad more.
Before the editors take any more submissions from business rags, I'd suggest they go take a look at the ten year chart on the Dow, Nas or S&P. These fuckers have nothing to do buy blow hot air. It's all that is left.
Just because every dumb ass wage slave in the States has put their bucks into 401Ks doesn't mean it aint gonna blow up.
It seems that many things that we consider to be appliances began their lives as highly technical and esoteric devices. The early computers, the early radios, etc.
:)
By the time things hit the median market for consumers, they've been simplified and tweaked into point and shoot devices.
Computer makers tried this but they kept being reverse engineered and hacked by slashdotters
---------
after thought....
OK--not to troll, but WTF was that page linked "not a good thing?" Definitely not a good thing. yikes...some serious engrish.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
convergence is just a solution in search of a problem.....
And it all runs under SSH.
When I finished the GUI for our Robot on
Linux, I told my boss not to run it
through an SSH shell from accross the room
because I thought that would be dangerous.
It worked the first time he tried it two
minutes later. Bless his heart.
Microsoft can't compete with Xwindows and
a secure shell environment
The so-called software experts are
hacks who worry about money and lawyers.
It is the hard working programmers who
didn't get rich that make the robots work.
Bill Gates and his money mongering friends
do every thing so that our stuff WILL NOT WORK.
Convergence is here. It is called ssh, php,
std, C.
Anything from a mainline company is suspect
at this point.
I am probably a criminal to them for even mentioning
that dot net is a dud.
Keep on blogging
You name it, various kinds of convergence is happening today, all over the place. Who knows what's gonna happen next.
...the sound of everyone's head exploding when they can no longer buy a phone they can actually use for something as radical as making phone calls. But the good news is, we'll finally be able to get WebTV at a reasonable price.
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
Consider a couple of the pioneers. With the iPod music player, Apple Computer added a tiny hard drive to a music-playing computer and -- voilá! -- vast music collections suddenly fit into a pocket.
The quantity of historical revisionism in what passes for business journalism never ceases to amaze me. Goebbels would be proud!
Archos was first company to market with a hard drive-based mp3 player in late 2000, although Compaq had a prototype device in early 2000 that they failed to market. There was even an open-source project to build a "High Capacity MP3 Player" in 2000 that quickly advanced to using hard drives.
Da Blog
wikipedia is fun
I don't read or respond to AC posts
Q: What do you call the device that is a convergence of a 100 watt heater, a computer made of meat, a sex toy, baby assembler, milk factory, resource acquirer, resource spender, knick-knack collector, maid, appointment manager, tyrannical supervisor, conscience, that contains a perfect memory for all the little things that you would have forgotten otherwise?
A: a wife
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
All of your technology, cellphone, PDA, computer, TV, microwave, alarm-clock, stero, printer, fridge, and firelace being lumped together having one huge orgasm and turning in to a device that's going to inevitably become intelligent and kill you, that's something I've always wanted to come home to.
Give me a dishwasher that clears the table, actually washes the dishes, and then puts them away in the cabinets. That would really be useful.
Yeah, that's usually called "a wife". They are most often women of the female sex. You might want to look into that.
Human interface. I know I don't want to watch movies on a 2" cell phone screen, nor do I want to write email on a touch-tone keypad (I don't care HOW smart your prediction software is). What the industry needs before this so-called "convergence" can occur is a new method of getting information to and from the humans using it. I've seen a lot of things that look like they could be promising, but they're all still being researched or are much too expensive to mass-produce. Until someone solves the issue of deciding between making users cramp their fingers by typing on tiny keypads or making them cart around massive pieces of equipment, convergence is going nowhere. $0.02
Sorry, my karma just ran over your dogma.
For milk, yes. They want a guaranteed locked in revenue stream. They can't be subject to the arbitrary whims of a consumer ordering milk only when he thinks he needs it.
With the advent of RFID tags, corporations will be able to view and montior exact when we use their product. Do you really want your fridge telling people what you eat and when?
Let me be more precise, how about your fridge telling your insurance company that you eat too much ice cream/iced tea/coke whatever. Your medical insurance goes up because you are being a risk for diabetes.
Of course now you are saying, no problem, I just won't volunteer to get one. Fine, but over time you will have no choice but to buy one with that "feature".
It is around the corner, it will make life in the former Soviet Union look like a utopia of privacy. (Thank that is a dumb statement? with the DMCA: Dmetri Skylov became a criminal for talking about faulty encryption, aka exercising free speech and was arrested, if this can happen why not something further on?)
It seems your refridgerator is out of date. I had the same situation occur last weekend and my fridge not only told me to avoid the milk, but it also recommended I buy cottage cheese.
Now, that is a sweet fridge.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
The result is a Big Bang of convergence...
Does anyone else find this statement just a wee bit contradictory? Isn't the "Big Bang" metaphor traditionally reserved for describing phenomena of divergence? Maybe it would be more appropriate to call it a "Big Crunch of convergence".
Just a thought...
...Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
Churchill
People don't buy cell phones, etc., per se -- they buy services, then take whatever hardware is provided to accomplish that. There may be minor choices to be made in terms of hardware, but hardware is never the driving factor. It's always the service, or the function. And if people do not continue to demand these services, the supporting hardware will die.
Of all the services offered by cell phone companies, etc., how many have proven truly popular? Except for text messaging, hardly anything that phones didn't do already. What makes this author think people want their phone to ring when their clothes are finished drying? And especially, that they'll pay extra for that?
I don't want convergence on that scale. I look at what happens when you build too many things together into one device, and you generally will get something that does it all, but is mediocre at best. Take a look at combo VCR/DVD players. They don't do either task exceedingly well, and the only real benefit is saving a miniscule amount of space. I'll believe in convergence when their predecessors stop sucking so bad.
There is a difference between "insightful" and "inciteful" other than spelling.
There is already a device that does quite possibly everything, and rather efficiently - it's called the Universe
It's amusing how bad controls on radios are. They're designed to be easy to implement, not easy to use.
The right way to do it would be to have two big knobs - volume and channel. But "channel" should be smart. If the channel isn't in use, it doesn't get a position on the knob. Turning the knob should instantly switch to the next channel, within 50ms or so. No wait for AGC, AFC, or DRM cryptosync. No fading out during channel switching.
That's actually hard to do. Right now, you have a basic radio front-ended by a simple microprocessor tied to some buttons and a display. Doing it right requires at least two radio front ends. You need one for the channel you're listening to, and one to maintain the inventory of incoming stations. Systems that receive digital radio may need more, so they can have the adjacent stations synched up in advance.
Or you could use a whole-band digital radio, like Gnu Radio.
There is no excuse for an entertainment device in a car requiring "head-down time".
One round knob with a red dash and some numbers. One tempurature reading. The house was always comfortable.
Now my manual _says_ I can program my new thermostat to kick the AC on only every third Sunday at 4:02 AM GMT, skipping years containing a solar eclipse, unless it's Mother's Day, Flag Day, while constantly adjusting for barometric pressure, the stock market and the dew point.
I just want it to be 69 degrees in the den.
Now.
Thanks.
... even though it was just declared *DEAD* just the other day around here.
-G
www.pixelstatic.com
I thought a Big Bang involved things going out, but Convergence involved things going in? Ergo, shouldn't this article be entitled the Big Crunch...
an assimilation coming on?
'nuff said.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I've made several FPs in the last days which didn't contain these words. No one saluted me.
"Sure, your fridge will tell you you need milk..."
I'm going to be pissed if I can't program in vegan options. I don't need my fridge trying to puch animal products on me.
FRIDGE: "Your soy milk is past due Dave. It is time to buy milk."
ME: "Shut the hell up and open the damn pod bay door!"
Damn you got some nice off topic points, but that company does just what everyone is talking about. I think people are little too score happy around here
You don't use the fridge to cool the CPU.
You use the CPU to drive an ammonia cycle fridge - thus keeping the fridge cool.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Yes, I'm completely for technology. But, whenever big business says that there is a giant shift about to happen it means that they are about to change the way that they do things in order to take MORE money from their customers for the same service.
Plus they are assuming that all this 'convergence' stuff actually works. Well, yes, the demo for senior management worked. And with a lot of work, the new system of 'digital convergence' will be functional about 98% of the time. The other two percent will eventually crash the whole new system. Which means higher rates for consumers to 'fix' it; which means getting things to work almost as well as they do now.
Face it, the only thing that has made the computer revolution of the past twenty years happen has been Moore's Law. And the willingness of individuals to learn how to work with new machines for their novelity and coolness value while tolerating the stupidities of bad interfaces and shoddy programming. People accept this because computers make many things much easier than they used to be (ever hear of a sticky white paint called 'WhiteOut' to fix mistyped characters when using typewriters? remember typewriters? What a fucking nightmare they were!).
When computer systems stop making life easier and the novelity factor wears thin, the acceptance and tolerance level of new computerized systems will be much less than it has been in the past twenty years. If 'digital convergence' is just another buzzword for DRM, then it won't be as welcome as the latest new PC that runs 100 times faster than the one of ten years ago.
Basically I don't trust anything that Business Week says is going to good for business in the future. Not until it has proven to be good for me and all the other customers who have to pay for and deal with all this new stuff. Look at the new Yahoo! mail interface: three times slower and half as reliable when not using MS Internet Explorer. Who needs this?
yoey, on the topic of remote controls, to help "converge" your entire home theater:
I tried many universal remote controls and couldn't make my 9-device home theater behave as one unit. Pronto macros and Marantz macros took too long, and while I became good at ProntoEdit, things kept breaking apart especially when I upgraded devices.
I finally found family-friendly heaven in a Harmony SST-659. It is a macroless remote that remembers which of your devices are on and which are off, and correctly powers up everything. It has wife-friendly buttons such as "Watch TV", "Watch Movies", and even a "Help" button. The Help button automatically fixes your home theater if your remote control ever goes out of sync, with user friendly step-by-step menus on its LCD that is easier to follow than cellphone menus. And it's a drop-in replacement for a common digital cable/satellite/PVR remote. It is an Internet-programmed remote, with Harmony's database so I didn't even need to teach any IR codes and Harmony automatically "created" the macros. It controlled a major my entire 9-device home theater just 15-30 minutes of configuration (shocking...I'm a Pronto fan). Even things like "OFF" happens instantly turning everything off almost simultaneously, because there is virtually no inter-device delay when transmitting IR codes that belongs to different devices. (and it's automatically programmed by your Harmony)
As a result, it is a universal remote heaven for family. This remote actually saved a few marriages, according to some posts on AVSFORUM.com (do a search)
Although it's an expensive remote, I'm the type of guy who gets $300 remotes. (So this $130 rapidly-programmable universal remote on eBay is a literal bargain, considering it takes hours to program a $300 remote) There are tradeoffs, but I was able to do in 15 minutes what took me 6 hours with a Philips Pronto (TSU-300), and 4 hours with a Marantz RC2000 MKII! For me, it is the interim solution to "convergence" of my 9 devices into 1 device! And very easy to change whenever my configuration changes.
One disadvantage: Don't get this remote if you do not have an Internet connection! (But you ARE reading this, aren't ya...)
Shouldn't it be termed a 'Big Crunch'? If it were a Big Bang, then we'd be seeing a lot more separate devices rather than a smaller number of converging devices.
This will only happen in two scenarios:
1) A single manufacturer will put out a whole suite of appliances that interact with each other in a well-thought-out way, but using proprietary protocols.
2) Standards and protocols will be developed to enable arbitrary communication among devices.
The first scenario won't fly because most people don't like to get all their stuff at one time, from the same manufacturer. This scenario is also likely to be expensive for the consumer.
The second takes a long time to develop due to the large number of players involved. Case in point: look at how long it has taken to get real B2B integration via web services. Many would argue it's *still* not off the ground; and IMO it's a simpler case.
I predict "convergence" won't happen in a meaningful way for another 5-10 years at least.
Read my keyboard review.
...is everyone loses
Highbred devices are the best example of this. Just as a swiss army knife is almost passable for everything (except, the knife) a cellphone pda with a camera allows you to take sub par pictures on a sub par cellphone on your barely functional pda while listening to mp3s on your 1 hour of battery life
And, while technology will improve in this area and allow for better hybredisation (everything is going to have an mp3 player built in. even toothbrushes, i'm sure of it) certain devices can only be so small and still be considered useable. The fact is, i have yet to see a PDA/cellphone that wasn't the smallest PDA/blukiest cellphone one could never quite use.
Hybredisation is just a natural symptom of companies lacking true inovation and trying to pretend other wise (hmmm... we have a toaster... we also have staplers... nobody has thought of making TOASTER STAPLERS BEFORE!!!)
Far more likely is the idea of several deviceses intercommunicating and specialising. Design devices like software! Lets call your cellcameraDA Mozilla. Now lets call your cellphone firefox and your camera thunderbird. Avoid the hardware bloat! no good can come of it.
All that aside, I still want a swiss army knife with a usb drive. Now that is the future!!!
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
This idea of convergence is one that surfaces every couple of years. I remember first hearing about it in college, when it was believed that in just a few years, our TVs, computers, and phones would all be replaced in just a few years with a single "Information Appliance". What killed it then is that all of these technologies have very different upgrade curves. A computer may have a useful lifespan of three years, while a TV has one of closer to 10. Never mind that a phone is still basically a phone.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
they are second in the world for hockey and do you think any of them care
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
I just want some of my existing stuff to work together. Wirelessly. My iPod, my phone, and my computer should be doing that already, but they don't. I would like to control my TV with my laptop but I can't. How about the damn lights, or turn on the stove? I don't think we really need to be afraid of your fridge freaking out and kicking your ass when the milk spoils, I think security needs to be kicked up a few notches and you should have constant, easy access to your stuff. That's it. I'm coming home, turn up the heat, or turn on the air conditioning. Have my lights shut off when i leave the room. How about having an automatic inventory of your cupboards, and a grocery list that builds itself based on what you're out of? It's really not to hard to think of useful stuff - I can't believe how much /. complains about this stuff.
http://www.rustyrazorblade.com
I would gladly attend one at San Jose or Stanford. I'm definitely a soccer fan (Go Quakes! Beat Mexico!) but we don't have enough qualifiers and friendlies out here.
sulli
RTFJ.
Sure, my fridge might tell me I need more milk, but it's wrong. I know I'm not out of milk, because I've had the same carton sitting there for a good 5 months, now.
Strangely enough, I've stopped recieving email telling me I'm out of cheese.
I live my life with a cell phone stuck to my waist. It's a way of life - I'll be outside, lounging in the backyard with a good Sagan book, and I need to ask one of the kids to change out the laundry.
I reach for my hip, call the house (50 feet away) and tell one of the kids to change out the laundry.
However, there are a few itches that, if scratched, would make my phone ohhh so much more utilitarian.
I could care less about downloadable ring tones, and the crappy resolution in most picture-phones leaves alot to be desired.
I'm picturing the ultimate in day-to-day utility.
I call it: the "Urban Commando Phone"
OK, picture this:
Your ordinary, average-looking cell phone, containing:
1) A cell phone - very stock, very ordinary. Clips to your belt like any decent cell phone should.
2) A flashlight - using a single, blue-white LED bulb on one of the top corners, you have an instant, usable, but not particularly bright flashlight. Help you find your keys, whatever. Why hasn't anybody thought of this no-brainer?
3) A universal remote control. You have all those buttons on your cell phone, you have plenty of battery life, why not a trainable universal remote control? Best part - if you lose it, you can just call it with another phone!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
"Your Bagle is ready. Would you like to add 3-6 inches to your penis?"
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
on the behalf of a stock investment minded publication that wants to see a reason for everyone to go out and buy stuff.
But convergence will certainly come. For stock broker types though, the development that will bring it is not a welcome guest. That is, home "printed" appliances.
Rapid prototyping, as the technology for printing three dimensional objects is typically called, is a reality today. Most of the costs are related to intellectual property rights in the form of patents and patents in this field have limited durations. So, it's just a matter of time before the economics make it such that you could buy a box to "print" out all your whitegoods from generic "open source" 3-D models cheaper than you could buy them. When you factor in the savings in transportation and associated service costs, such a device could create enormous savings. The basic materials can be recyled as well so there would be no reason not to redesign your home interior as the seasons changed if you so desired.
I think is all quite reasonable and likely and with it will naturally come convergence of the data layer. When the rest of the design and assembly is open, then naturally the communications protocols will also be open and devices will seamlessly communicate with one another.
But Business Week isn't interested in this particular vision of the future, I'm sure. Far too radical for the business classes.
Then, as previously mentioned, there are security problems. If someone is war-driving and finds my heating system open, do I want them to be able to turn it up to the highest setting? Do I want my toaster, oven and TV to turn on because of a merry wireless prankster? These are not trivial problems, particularly considering the number of unsecured wireless access points around today. There is something to be said for local control.
Finally, in order for such an idea to become reality, I think the networked solution would have to offer and order of magnitude improvement over current interfaces (like turning the coffee machine on with a switch) to see such a setup widely adopted. And while you, and maybe even I, would be willing to ssh home and customize, no one else would.
In short, I think the idea of convergence is a good one, and that's probably why we see so many articles trumpeting it as the Next Big Thing. But I think the reasons above are valid, and those mammoth issues come to mind just off the top of my head; I'm sure someone else could add another five, or elaborate on those I listed.
There's virtually no mention about the remaining big player in this convergence game: the content providers. And overlooking this obstacle is foolhardy. Don't believe me? Lets see... convergence of CD player with computer with network gives Kazaa. Ooops, there goes the RIAA. Convergence with DVD player instead sends in the MPAA. Heck, I can't even hook my DVD player up to my TV through my VCR-- these folks have been holding up convergence since at least 1996, if not well before.
All content can be expressed as binary 1's and 0's. As all this converges, those bits all just slip slide around... and that has people antsy.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I am not sure about your problems. I too have this remote and my wife knows to use the macro buttons (the 1, 2, and 3) for various stuff.
Want to turn on the TV, Cable box and Amp (set to cable input)? Press Macro button 1.
Want to turn on the TV, DVD and Amp (set to DVD input), and eject the DVD tray? Press Macro button 2.
Want to turn on the Cable box (set to a music channel) and the amp set with speakers turned on outside? Press Macro button 3.
Even with all this macro goodness, I agree that we are a long way from true convergence.
My next cell phone will be a phone, period, not some toy that's everything but a Veg-O-Matic. You can keep the rest of that...convergence.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
I know a lot of us are thinking about convenience convergence. I'm more leaning towards the security and safety implementation of something like this. Figure you're alarm system is already 'wired' to your house, why can't your water heater tell you when it is failing, or better yet, have it contact a pre-defined company and have it schedule a pick up. I can see this as a failure protection type thing. If appliances are failing or are left on (oven perhaps?) etc, you can visit a web site or set up preferences that would then control this type of thing?
Didn't Big Brother Bill try this at his house and it not work? With my luck, they'll use M$ IIS, and thanks to a security hole my water heater just beat up my furnace.
Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing. -- Albert Einstein
Businesses seem to be trying to bind their customers by coercion rather than to trust customers to choose their products willingly. Music, movie, and software businesses seem to rely more on dictating customer desires than on fulfilling them.
Convergence could be a buzzword for businesses coordinating with each other on products; the coordination allows them to get what they want from their customers (money, information) while at the same time using the power that their cooperation gives them to ignore what their customers want (as often as possible). Convergence is a way for vendors to ignore price and flexibility and instead go for a comprehensive and interrelated set of products. It might negate the need for businesses to compete on price because they don't have competition anymore (the web of interconnections between products would make price choices difficult, and flexibility irrelevant) and because by linking items together, choices between competing products become more difficult because the constraints (their effects on other purchases) become overwhelming.
For the most part, convergence may not be about products much more convenient; it seems to be less about improving the lives of customers and more about making them irrelevant. By making choices difficult (if not impossible), convergence might allow businesses to even more blatantly ignore their customers while guaranteeing themselves their business. In this scenario, customers' wills would be an obstacle to businesses getting money from them. Ideally, your possessions would spend your money as their manufacturers see fit, and would not have to worry about that pesky free will...
I'd rather all the different devices work together instead of building all my devices into one. Let me put my phone call into my car speakers....let me take the picture on my PC and put it up on my TV....let me share a photo from my camera on the screen of the the guy next to me with a laptop...
I know you can do all these things now, but not without a bunch of proprietary, unpredictable fiddling even if the right devices are involved. I want the ability to be common, not a rare combination. If converagnce means all my gadgets have the computing power to speak the same language, then Let's do it!
AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
'The result is a Big Bang of convergence, and it's likely to produce the biggest explosion of innovation since the dawn of the Internet.'
Convergence may lead to some useful, multipurpose tools. But innovation?
Innovation is not bundling a series of devices in one big package. Innovation is coming up with something that no one's ever thought of and everyone needs. An iPod clone that plays movies, surfs the web, dances, and barks is not innovative.
Unless, of course, in the process of combining these separate elements, someone comes up with a unique, creative way to do so. If my disk-shaped, touchscreen PDA can be put into a CD drive and play music from a custom playlist, that's innovative.
That website just has a bunch of pictures of idiots holding stuff up to their ears.
Convergence can and will, and already has happened for items where it makes sense to combine the features. It is simply a matter of defining an item in the broadest possible terms.
Cell Phone: A device that can make noise, store small amounts of info, has a display, and can take input. The above featurs overlap with various PDA functions, MP3 players, and alarm clocks.
Game Console: A device that can take complex inputs, read CD / DVD based media, and can output to a display and to speakers. This overlaps with Cd player, DVD player. With an X-Box like HD, you also have a digital VCR.
But most consumers, I think, will buy something based on the primary need, and buy something specific for that need. But the item they buy can be influenced by the secondary features, and the secondary features can allow for other impulse features. (Hmm, I have a PS2, and I want to buy that DVD. I can watch it on my PS2. Sure, why not).
The problem this causes is you end up with 2 or more potential solutions to a single problem, and inputting / configuring both is a pain in the ass, especially if you want to get full use of both. For convergence to really catch on, you will need to be able to have objects that provide similar features communicate with each other to swap settings / media.
Want to download a movie and watch it on your TV? Sure, just upload the file from your PC to your movie player, OR, steam the movie directly from your PC, OR specify the movie player as the destination for your download. You need a reminder for an appointment? Set the reminder on your PC, and receive it on your PC, OR your cell phone, OR your TV, OR your wristwatch...
That is what I hope happens. I just hope one of our beloved Super Corp Overlords(TM) finds a reasonable way to make such a model profitiable without totally reaming us in the process.
END COMMUNICATION
* Content companies America Online Inc., The Disney Co. and OD2
* Service providers CinemaNow Inc., Movielink LLC, MusicNow LLC, Napster LLC, VirginMega France and Yacast
* Consumer electronic device manufacturers Archos SA, Creative, Dell Inc., Digital 5 Inc., iRiver International, PRISMIQ Inc., PURE Digital, Rio, Samsung Electronics Company Ltd., SimpleDevices Inc. and 2Wire Inc.
* Chip makers BridgeCo AG, Equator Technologies Inc., Imagination Technologies, Micronas, Motorola Inc., Sigma Designs Inc. and SigmaTel Inc.
* HP
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
"Japanese to take control of software industry similar to their automotive dominance."... circa 1992. Never read the magazine since.
If you think of it, only a minority of jobs are so complex that they cannot (eventually) be done by computers and robotics. You can't force a business to employ an employee they don't need. It's the reward promised by IT. Increased productivity. Lower costs. Higher profits.
Also, birth rates are falling so much that unless we start treating families much better, perhaps even paying people to have children, all sorts of things will soon start happening. A society needs children. There's no way around that.
At the very least, consumption will drop, schools will close and real estate values will fall..
[Quoting from the article]
In the coming markets of moving bits, who owns what? Will people buy their programming and machines? Or will they rent and subscribe?
This convergence of computers, communications and consumer electronics is going to bring some startling expectations to companies that aren't ready for continually and drastically dropping prices.
In the computer hardware arena we're accustomed to rapid obsolescence and geometric increases in power and capability over time (Moore's Law).
Likewise, with data network connectivity, we're accustomed to geometric increases in performance or comparable reductions in cost over time (Metcalf's Law).
As devices become more connected and people subscribe to services, they're going to expect similar economies in some fashion or another (say in terms of number of digital TV channels they have access to, increases in resolution and audio quality, etc) or decreasing prices for some particular piece of content.
Artificial barriers will be broken down. If, at some point in time, it really only costs a company US$0.15 to deliver a live football game to my cell phone video display while I'm in the middle of nowhere, then it's going to be hard for them to charge people $20 for this service for any great length of time.
In an era when value of content quickly drops to zero because it can be copied and retransmitted for next to nothing, it will be hard to sustain the current model of blockbuster movies and audio content.
It will be more like selling perishable groceries than classic durable goods like washing machines.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Convergence is one half of the cycle of inventing many new trivial gadgets and then consolidating them, ensuring there's something we all just must buy every year. The result is an endless cash supply and burgeoning landfill...
Finest word processor ever.
Convergences don't bang, unless you are Ricky Martin and She Bangs. Anyway, it should be the Big Crunch of Convergence. Whatever the fuck that means.
very very cool.
someday when i have a house, and a little extra money, i will attempt this.
If you're talking about the CPU (which you never mention), then I'll agree with your point, but if you're talking about the entire PC (which you do mention) then that's bullshit. Think of how many individual hardware and software components make up your PC.
It's only through the modularity and interoperability of these *many* components that your computer becomes so "general use." Maybe companies working on convergence could learn a thing or two by making devices that work together instead of trying to make more all-in-one products.
Apple was the first to develop a successful hard drive based MP3 player, so they're historically significant. Archos is a footnote to history.
This article purports to be a history of convergence innovation. Stating that the iPod came out of Apple fully formed, as if like Athena springing forth fully formed from the head of Zeus, does a disservice to the dozens of innovative companies that were beavering away on hard disk/mp3 player hybrids. But it does fit in well with the Messiah Complex discourse around Steve Jobs.
The earlier HD-based mp3 players were successful and enjoyed rapid adoption within the early adopter market. Apple's late entry was targetted towards the mass market and so their seemingly rapid adoption rode on the coattails of the early players that had primed the market.
Graphing the adoption curve of the iPod as a single device makes little sense and looks skewed when you compare it with, say, the adoption curve for DVD players. This is because those graphs of DVD players aggregate all the brands and not just a single brand. If we took out all the early DVD players and simply graphed the success of, say, Apex from 2001 onwards then we would see an iPod-like rapidity of adoption.
Da Blog
Skynet anyone?
Don't let your appliances run Windows 9x. Pic 1 Pic 2
It doesn't claim to be the first one.
/. and other early adopter sites. I think what you're really saying is that you didn't care, or know about the benefits of HD portables until Apple told you. What do you know, marketing works!
I think if you analyze Apple's advertising you will find they frequently claimn to be "first" or "fastest" with their products. It's part of their marketing DNA. It's to make the mass market consumers who buy their products feel warm and fuzzy about paying a premium to be on the "cutting edge" and feel a sense of belonging to a "digerati".
Before apple did it no one cared.
I think if you look back you'll find a lot of people cared, especially here on
Then again, many uninformed consumers ass-ume AOL invented email and the Internet...
Da Blog
I bought one of these (Wave) several years ago and love it. Great functionality in an inspired form.
I give them as gifts to people I really like.
What are the other tools that you carry around most places you go? I'm interested (since you appreciate the Wave).
Compaq licensed their technology out and it was appeared on the market in mid 00 (around May) via the PJB100 from the company HanGo.
I did mention the Compaq, I'm sorry I didn't mention it enough for your tastes.
It does seem comical to me that HP today ("Invent") is paying to licence the iPod from Apple (who in turn licence most of it from PortalPlayer). SO HP is in effect paying extra for a third-hand technology trickle-down. When they've had the crown jewels (PATENTS!) sitting in their corporate vaults for years.
Da Blog
The Archos Jukebox didn't fit into a pocket.
You're wrong. What kind of weak arse tiny pockets do you have?
I think all the HD portables from 2000/2001 fit easily within pockets, except possibly the Compaq. I've never seen one up close, but from the marketing copy photos it looks kind of bulky, a bit like an old Apple Newton.
Da Blog
Many of the ppl quoted here are re-hashing ideas from THE MEDIUM IS THE MASSAGE. One of the best statements in that book is about how media interacts with our senses. "the printed word is an extension of the eye, clothing an extension of the skin, the integrated circuit (yes this was written in halcyon days when chips were called ic's) an extension of the central nervous system." Moving on to the idea of convergence, it is not possible in the way the article puts forth, as different types of media are generally hostile to one another. The alphabet destroyed the Homeridae, and the tradition of reciting epic poetry. A few thousand years later, television destroyed the printed word in a few short decades. Tapes destroyed the radio, while cd's destroyed tapes, and are being destroyed by mp3's etc.The internet may destroy television, or they may become one and the same. Jakob Nielsen's idea about chanels and networks dissappearing is quaint at best. Groups that have tons of money, create and control content, lobby governments, etc, will not be killed off easily. Is the implication that piracy, along with open source, and a free voice for everyone will somehow threaten large media and telcom players? I think that this struggle will continue, and is for the most part a healthy and neccessary one. Especially the idea about free open source software. It is not a spectre haunting software giants, as the article states, but holds the potential to spark a concept that has never really manifested itself in human history before. People working on a large scale, across political, and physical boudaries, for free, to help other people on a large scale, also for free. The focus of the article is on media content delivery vs hardware. But it is not realistic. The very competative hardware market has been known for many years now, and saying just wait until the greater asian co-prosperity sphere musters another assembly line is not really journalism--it is talking out of a different hole. What I found funny was the mindset of Macromedia Inc. 24 months from subsidised televsions? IN SOVIET RUSSIA THE TELEVISIONS WERE REALLY SUBSIDISED, or did they subsidize you, with a talking head platform? Does this mean all new tv's will now be free and have flash or real player on them? If so then Juha Christensen will become the true Shogun of the Dark. When ever someone writes about home convergence it is always about some sort of castle in the sky. The Japanese have their home robots, the western world has Pee-Wee Herman's automatic house. This is exactly the same kind of buzz generated when online sales became popular. The attitude was one of dire concern. What ever shall those "brick and mortar" establishments do now? They might as well close shop right away, since online sales will do them in. It is the same buzz when the first advertisements appeared on the internet. Many people automatically assumed that it was the end and that it would become like television. But things like google cannot exist without money. It is very simple how things worked out actually. Before anybody could own a dial up isp. But as more elaborate media began to find its way into the net, broadband became the only way to fly. Strange how those big, brick and mortar establishments ended up completely dominating the broadband isp market. When you look back at the development of tech, and digital hardware it really is not as fast as it could be. Intel goes on about "putting all their resources into ...", but their processors havent got that much faster in the past few years. Meanwhile the folks at amd have a new 64 bit chip out, but it also has no significant increase in speed.
Isp's put caps on speed, amount of data one can download/upload, have "lite" versions of their service, and many other revenue generating schemes.
Looking at things in this way, it seems that it is in the interest of the big players to stifle rapid development of technology, and focus on ways to get more out of existing technology.
This new digital age will not show up with a big bang; it will be a drawn out, muffled whimper from consumers as they have to sit through wave after wave of useless crap before any real technological development actually happens.
Can we, as a people, stop using nazi's as analagous to things we don't like? You compared some clueless reporter to the propaganda minister for the nazi party. A little extreme.
My mailman was 30 minutes late, the bum! Stalin would be proud!
...the 51st state is because then we couldn't continue importing cheap marijuana from British Columbia... US drug laws are a bitch.
Also, I think we'd be hard pressed to allow a Socialist party on the ballot.
Three parties? That'd just confuse people.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
>> (Meta-point: HowTF do you put an RFID tag in a vegetable?)
Simple: just put the RFID tag under the frickin sticky label that is always a PITA to remove on yer fruits & veggies.
In this case you're spreading out the technology with new devices. All your sensors and coffee makers and whatnot still do only one thing (which is good, you have a clear division of responsibility... reduces complexity).
The computer controlling everything is still doing exactly what it is designed to do, be a generic computing platform that occaisionally interfaces with those annoying humans.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
-- Blackadder series 3, episode "Amy and Amiability"
But it's certainly not ironing.
Pretend that something especially witty is here. Thanks.
A pool full of sharks with FRICKEN LAZERS ON THEIR HEADS .........Throw mw a bone already
WTF - Speak in acronyms already, i can't figure out what you mean otherwise boss
If I want a phone, I just want a phone that is reliable and easy to use. Not loaded with so many gadgets that I have trouble using it for the intended main function.
Well, I need a mobile phone, a calendar that can easily be backed up and synchronized and something to take notes that can be saved electronically. I also prefer being able to receive and send e-mails when I'm not near a computer with Internet access.
These are several basic functions, and I used to have both a palmtop and a mobile phone, but I found it rather unconvenient to have to take two gadgets with me (and to point them towards each other for accessing the Internet on the Palm). Now, I have a "converged" Treo 600, and I find that much more convenient. Before, I often didn't take the Palm with me, and then I used the very inconvenient calendar and e-mail functions on the phone (in that sense, already that old Ericsson phone was a "converged" device).
Furthermore, I used to have a MiniDisc player. I don't need it any more, I have an SD card with lots of my songs in OGG format in the Treo, so it also replaces a walkman. It's quite a difference whether you have to carry around a mobile phone, a palmtop, a walkman and (for those who need it) a camera or if it's all in one device.
I doubt that there are so many people who only need gadgets for very few things or that they all have so large pockets that they can put in dozens of devices.
Also, what's bad about having functions you don't really need? I don't really need the camera of the Treo, but maybe I'll be in a situation, in which I'm glad that I can take a picture (picture quality is not too impressive, but it's enough for many purposes).
More function doesn't mean that the other ("main") ones work less reliably. Maybe, it doesn't make sense to include functions hardly anyone uses, but then I think it is still a question of which set of functions to offer with one device. It would be extremely cumbersome to have to carry around a separate device for every "main" function - one for telephoning, one for sending and receiving SMSs, one for reading and writing e-mails, one for taking notes, an electronic calendar, an electronic camera, a walkman, one for logging in to servers with SSH (OK, maybe that's perhaps not necessary, but I appreciate having auch an application on my Treo), one for looking up train schedules etc.. - a nightmare!
this article was the first I read for a long time to have the dot com boom's `zingy' feel to it again.
I guess it's time to start going back to reading Red Herring and buying stocks in useless companies...
I, for one, can't wait.
...but for DRM. Sharing copyrighted content is barely tolerable when you're a EULA-savvy geek who doesn't mind downloading a freewware tool to crack the CSS on his DVD for archiving to his hard drive. But I sincerely doubt that granny (or Mom and Dad) are going to give a damn.
Mix in cell phones, consumer-electronics devices, appliances, etc., and it gets even worse.
For the past few years, at each MacWorld, Steve Jobs has been talking about the digital hub.
First it was iTunes (bear with me, this is from memory, so the order might not quite be right), integrating your music with your computer. Albiet it was somewhat lacking from the hub persective in that it didn't conenct to anythign else, but it played your music on your computer, and did it well. There were other music players before, and have been more since, but none as integrated into the system as iTunes has become. Then the iPod got thrown in. Never before was it so easy to get your music on the go. Plug it in. When it says OK, unplug it. All your new music, put onto it automagically every time you conenct (if you so choose). Playlists updated on the iPod, etc.
Then there was iPhoto, iTunes for your photos. Here we had the digital hub now including your camera. And you can make slideshows that incorporate your iTunes playlists.
Then we had a whole slew of other apps in the time since, from iMovie that can make movies as well as slide shows from iPhoto Albums and use music from iTunes and iTunes soundtracks to iCal that is a great little canendar app that also integrates with iTunes for its alarms, to iSync, that keeps your iCal up to date with your mobile phone or PDA (or both), it even puts your calender events and Address Book entries on your iPod too, and also to your dot mac if you have it.
Sure, it the time may be nigh for Digital Convergance, but my Digital Hub has been doing just that and doing a great job for the last few years now.
e to the pi i plus one equals zero
Why in the same way? I think convergency will gather pace rapidly, but I don't think it will lead to people having only one single device at home (and one single mobile one), there probably will still be about two to four. Partial convergience could lead to enormous diversity.
Some people will have
- combined fax machine, toilet, gaming console and refrigerator
- combined telephone, TV, refrigerator, dishwasher
- combined dry cleaner, toaster, radio, mailbox
- ...
Buth that's just one of many possibilities. Others will have other converged devices a) fax, telephone, dry cleaner and toilet b) TV, toaster, game box, radio and toaster c) refrigerator, computer, music player, air conditionerThe enormous amount of possibilities of combining some functions in one device and others in another can lead to such an amount of diversity that would not be possible if there was a separate device for every function.
I had a similar problem shopping for a car radio. The problem is that since everyone is on this "convergence" bandwagon, it may well be impossible to find a radio that meets desired ergonomic needs - since they all seem to share the same poor ergonomics to start with.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
People think of a PC a very general purpose device - but actually if you think about it it's not really true at all, for what people use a PC for.
For instance, while you could possibly watch TV or a movie on a computer that use has just not had any traction at all. At home people are specializing TV's to be more like theaters - even on the go a lot of people are buying potable DVD players even if they already have a laptop!! I would personally have never guessed a few years ago that anyone would buy one, but people do like speciailized devices that handle one thing really well.
Or take phone calls. Sure you can use VIOP to do calls from a computer. But when VOIP really arrives in the home, you can be sure it's a specialized device interfacing to the phone you know and love that will take care of things for 99% of the populace.
A PC can't make toast, it's not very good for GPS in a car or hiking (dedicated devices are much nicer), and so on and so forth.
The PC is really good at one thing - managing and sorting data. In the end it's a very speciailized device with a very specific purpose. It just happens that people have a lot of data to sort and manage, and the data has forms that appear very different, and people spend a lot of time on them, which is why it appears like the PC is a general purpose device. But the actual work you get done is not really that different weither you are editing a document, a picture, or video.
How you interact with that data will fall more and more to specialized devices as you wish to keep that data close at hand. Pictures head to digital frames, video heads to TIVO like boxes, documents head to blackberries or PDA's. But PC's will remain the specialized devices that they are.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
My son could beat up your son.
Smoke and Mirrors - the option for those who want to think they have everything, until the special effects start to age.
This option takes up one of the slots, leaving you with only 2 real ones.
For the love of all that is holy, mod parent up!
I think you're being a bit willful about disbelieveing that Apple PR people would *ever* dare to mis-reprepresent or exaggerate...
Anyway, I note from the initial Mossberg promo piece in the WSJ: "As for battery life, Apple claims 10 hours, but in my tests the iPod repeatedly got nearly 12 hours."
Ah how times change. There was an iPod once upon a time that got 12 hours on a charge!
Da Blog
Excerpt:There was a hack to get the phone to talk through a speaker on the rear ("backtalkin'") rather than the one on the side.
It appears that the feature has been removed from the new model, which is what the linked site is lamenting.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Harmony Remotes, the only activity oriented remote that I know of.
Harmony Remote
... and I haven't read every message to see if it's been said already. So here I go...
Holy shit! Who cares about all this crap? What ever happened to real life? How did we survive without convergence of shitty media crap, which is utterly worthless, and always has been?
The majority opinion here seems to be that this matters in some way or another. What a completely useless distraction.
Sorry to fart in your church, but man, who fucking cares?
they're the same size as a portable CD player.
No, they're not. CD players are constrained by the dimensions of the 120mm diameter spinning disk and it was perhaps the popularity of this form factor that influenced Creative to go with a 127x127mm form factor for their first HD nomad in 2000.
However, the earlier Compaq (150x80mm) and Archos (115x83mm) recognized that a longer, thinner form factor would suit many people better.
Inclosing I'd like to note that I generally wear combats ("cargo pants") so perhaps my available pocket storage is higher than many people's...
Da Blog
you specifically said someone else came to market first with an HD based mp3 player. That was incorrect
Maybe we are dealing with different definitions of what "brought to market" means. I recall that the HanGo was sold for the first couple of years as a mail-order only product, whereas Archos managed to get their product into Best Buy and other retailers, around the same time as the Nomad became available retail.
Where and when was the HanGo sold at retail?
Da Blog
Next thing you know, some '1337 h4x0rz will compromise your oven while you're baking something at 350 degrees with the timer set on 20 minutes, and they'll make it 475 degrees for 40 minutes. And even then, your typical housewife won't understand why it's important to have an up-to-date OS and an up-to-date firewall protecting her network.
especially with regard to handheld devices: programmable calculators, telephones, PDAs (they didn't exist at the time), and so on. Check it out. In it, he describes the Handy Dandy Pocket Daemon (HDPD) and its functionality. As are many of his musings, it was simultaneously brilliantly insightful and far out. Visionary is the only way I can describe it.
He also wrote a followup article, That Would Be Cool, in 1995.
Whether or not you're an HP handheld enthusiast like Jeremy and me, the articles are well worth reading, perhaps again and again.
2nd law of thermodynamics. Entropy. Like the remote thing meantioned at the beginning of this post. More remotes; not less. Plus, more money in divergence anyway. (Hope I didn't repeat too much). We'll have digital cellphones for awhile. And then we won't. We'll have PDA phones for awhile. And then we won't. Give 'em time. The universe plugs on, onward. not backwards.
Just reading the article (yes I actually did this time) it becomes painfully clear that their view of convergence is completely out of touch with what's really happening. So perhaps I should explain something.....
... are you listening BusinessWeek? .... and all the industries that rely on a copyright model are dead with them. Maybe you hate them like I do, or maybe you love them. Maybe you want them to be dead, maybe you couldn't stand it and are deeply morally offended. But on no uncertain terms, they are dead. It's just the way things are. I'm sorry if you don't want to hear that, but don't blame me, I am just the messenger.
COPYRIGHTS ARE DEAD!!!!
I renember a time from my history books where alot of highly educated people thought that the entire purpose and meaning of the industrial revolution was to leverage inventions like the cotton gin to expand their plantations for unlimited growth and profit. Today we have people who think that the entire meaning and purpose of the information age is leverage their copyrights over the internet to the four corners of the earth for eternal controll and profit. Then as now, these people are idiots, begging for disaster, stay away from them and if you can't - then fight them. They just don't or won't get it!!!!!
currently reading "the inmates running the asylum" [0-672-32614-0] by alan cooper (creator of MSVB) and how this will result in pretty crappy results. The book cites many examples of products that forget that computers require software (that is hard to write) resulting in unusable products.
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
You are using the equivilent of the "boat car". Would you say cars make good boats? Yet that's exactly what some people used to make, cars you could also use as a boat. Over time the novelty of the combination wore thin and people went for cars that drove hella fast on land, and boats that went hella faster on water.
Similarily although you can use your computer like a TIVO, as a phone, etc - you can tell this is not the way things are headed. TIVO like devices really are keyboardless systems that sit in a living room and are only sort of a computer. Vonage does not sell a ton of VOIP service by having you sit in front of your PC like a telemarketer, they let you use the cordless phone you've always used.
I'm talking about direction. The PC can do a number of things but over time, for most people. the primary use is a very focused one (some would say browsing and email might be about it, but I would add media manipulation like movies and music and pictures).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Why not use put an X10 appliance module (Or several of them, if you like) on the line to your system, then buy an IR-to-X10 interface, and tell your ultraspiffy IR remote to cycle the power (Module A1 off, Module A1 on) to your AV system and force all of it into a power-off mode before giving out commands to the devices themselves? (X10 DOES have discrete commands for 'On' and 'off')
It'd be nice in paving the way to little perks like having the system dim the room lights when you press 'Play', too....
Nevertheless, the capabilities are there, and many people learn to use them to a greater and greater degree.
Particularly consider the children that grow up with computers, and computer literate parents.
Whether things are headed towards or away from this "convergence" thing, I don't know. I do know that devices are getting smarter, and people have a long history of doing clever things with tools.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Let me see here...
If expansion = Big Bang
Then wouldn't convergence = Big Crunch?
Sorry, these sorts of things just bug me. I can't stop de-bugging the things that bug me.
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
Frequently, convergence for the sake of convergence, without considering the context, is the wrong thing to do.
I was talking to someone lately who thought it was cool that devices like this were "obsolete" because of converged devices, like his Pocket PC Phone Edition PDA.
All I knew was, I'd much prefer him to be glancing at his dashboard to see the single-purpose display of a Velcroed-down TrafficGauge, than taking out his PocketPC Phone and fiddling with it while driving, trying to load the appropriate website to get the same information.
[And yes, I know he could use various interface hacks to make it simpler to load that webpage on his PocketPC. But that's not the point. The device only NEEDS one function, and no other interface. Trying to hang it like a bag off the side of something else in the name of convergence, in willful ignorance of the context in which it would be used, is a real waste of time and brainpower - and dangerous to boot!]
Every company out there is trying to move over to a per use/subscription model, and guess what, people don't WANT it.
They're stuck with it though because that's all there is.
Unfortunately for the companies, people don't have that kind of money to continously spend on things. I mean, they add up...and suddenly you're paying several hundred a month for products you should only have to pay a one time fee for.
Their greed will get them in the end.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
...when we got no powersurge
...my converged device gets stolen???
peviously, i would lose only one device at a time. but now it'll be all devices at a time.
it will be really disappointing
tell application "iKitchen" /bin/breakfast
display dialog "Make breakfast."
if the_result is "OK"
doshellscript
end tell