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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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Doesn't anyone remember what happened last time when the Cylons attacked, and all of our computer systems were linked together?
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 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 |
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.
your refrigerator/render-farm.
Maybe now we can keep those AMD chips cool.
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.
The problem you are referring to is fashion. I have no problem using a 5 year old walkman. I have no problem wearing non-faggy rollerblades from 1997. But most people just buy things based on look. They don't even know how to use them.
*cough* Apple *cough*
go'head kill me.
You'll have that sometimes...
"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.
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
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)
OK, I'll bite...my 12" iBook is tiny, tough and responsive. Apple's integration of the OS and hardware make it feel like I'm using a "tangible device" (ie a stereo, refrigerator, fax machine, copier), rather than using an abstracted operating system doing a balancing act on top of hardware.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
The term was coined by economist Alfred Sauvy in an article in the French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur of August 14, 1952. It was a deliberate reference to the "Third Estate" of the French Revolution. Tiers monde means third world in French. The term gained widespread popularity during the Cold War when many poorer nations adopted the category to describe themselves as neither being aligned with NATO or the USSR, but instead composing a non-aligned "third world."
Leading members of this original "third world" movement were Yugoslavia, Indonesia, and Egypt. Many third world countries believed they could successfully court both the communist and capitalist nations of the world, and develop key economic partnerships without necessarily falling under their direct influence. In practice, this plan did not work out quite so well; many third world nations were exploited or undermined by the two superpowers who feared these supposedly neutral nations were in danger of falling into alignment with the enemy.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
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.
You name it, various kinds of convergence is happening today, all over the place. Who knows what's gonna happen next.
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
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.
*cough* Apple *cough*
go'head kill me
Well... for starters... if your 5 year old walkman constantly skipped tracks, or your rollerblades wheels tended to fall off from time to time, you would probably replace them.
Kinda like my old Windows PC... When OS X came out... I got rid of the broken shit and replaced it with something that worked. The fact that it looks nice to is an added benefit but not the reason for the purchase. (Though I will agree that nobody does pretty plastic better than Apple).
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?)
I am also getting the feeling of Deja Vu, but for a different reason. I seem to remember going to some trade shows about 7-8 years ago and hearing a lot about these dishwashers and refridgerators that will connect to the internet, computers built into your wristwatch that will talk to the computer in your cellphone, and some new technology from Sun called Jini that will become the killer platform for this.
Talking about all this great up-and-coming technology that was supposedly going to be in every home by 2002 is actually making me kind of nostalgic. Somehow I think that the nostalgia would be stronger if we were at the point of remembering the technology, rather then dreaming of it.
Cest la vie.
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
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.
'nuff said.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
"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!"
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.
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)
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
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
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.
Sad news my friend: When you have a houseand a little extra money, you won't have time to attempt this. You'll be mowing the lawn, hanging drapes, throwing away junk in the garage, entertaining your kids, and hanging out with the wife. I tend to believe the guy who built that system was making it all up. Sounds good, but pure fantasy.