The Future of the P.C.

scarcrowman writes "This is an interesting article on the projected future of what we call the 'P.C.' It is becoming more 'Personal' than ever."

Comments

Life Recorder

[kryogen1x]

I recently spoke to Microsoft research chief Rick Rashid, who noted, with appropriate awe, that a terabyte of storage now costs about $500. That's enough space to hold every conversation you will ever have from birth to death, or 2000 photographs taken every day of that life, Rashid said. He admitted nobody really knows what such newfound capabilities really mean. Get ready for the life recorder, probably coming soon. It would contain every event from your entire life--probably in video if you want it.

Almost like the Truman Show. But when he says "every conversation," does he mean in audio or in text?

I guess this will be good for biographies. But who would want their life recorded?

Text vs. Audio

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

With ideal compression, they are technically the same. Add some metadata that explains tone of voice, pacing, rhythum, cadence... 100 megs worth of samples of your voice. Why record the actual waveforms when they could be synthesized with a decent level of fidelity to the original?

I guess the only limiting factor at all, would be whether cpu performance increases more than storage in the coming years.

Re:Rambling?

[gad_zuki!]

Its a futurist article, really. The whole "life TV" nonsense. Every technological advance has had its futurists and almost without exception they've been painfully wrong.

The author suggests that computers will be more intrusive, when people seem to want less intrusiveness in their lives. Instead of bigger, uglier boxes with tons of storage you'll probably see smaller quieter devices that don't take up so much desktop real-estate. Instead of an mp3 player here, a phone there, a laptop there, etc we're seeing the emergence of the easy to use PDA smartphone. Instead of people blowing their savings on a $2,000 gaming machine, we're seeing a boom in the console gaming industry. Instead of people demanding bigger brighter and higher resolution screens we're seeing a shift to thinner LCD screens for the sake of aesthetics.

The PC has its place, but I doubt as this "life recorder." Remind me, what percentage of blogs get abandoned after their first week? 90%? more?

Re:PC of the future

[DarkMantle]

Of course you say this assuming a few things.

• We have mapped out the brain and know how we can hook it up without making the victim, I mean subject, I mean Guinie Pig a vegtable.
• We can create this out of material that we know for certain will not have ill side efects. Such as the dye in the PCB on the processor.
• People (besides yourself) actually want their brains hooked into the internet. With what script kiddies do now, I know I sure as hell wouldn't be jacking in.
• You mention "who know, maybe even a TB of chemical memory". I dunno about anyone else but this sounds like you want to re-structure my biological signature and alter my electrical signals for technological advances. Sorry, but I like my brain functioning just fine.
• Lastly, you assume that "jacking in" to the brain stem with an ethernet port would work. There are upteen Million nerve endings connecting to my built in CPU (the biological one, not silicon) that I don't want f#*@ed up.

"But doesn't that make you wonder just how close we really are to a Matrix-like life?"
-We're a long way off buddy. You show me an acurate map of the human brain, and CNS before you try to promote the creation of the borg.