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?

Re:Life Recorder

[DoraLives]

But who would want their life recorded?

Everybody except those interesting people that anybody else would actually give a shit about.

Re:Life Recorder

[jbfaninmo]

A Slashdotter with a girlfriend. We are going to need the video evidence to prove that!

Re:Life Recorder

[Catbeller]

"But who would want their life recorded?"

Think of this:

What if were done against your will?

Supposing the penalty for whatever crime they choose would be to have several permanent cameras and audio pickups mounted on, oh, a hat, or a pair of glasses, transmitting a data feed wirelessly to a court-mandated hard drive array you must wear on you belt? Or maybe the camera and audio pickups could be made flat enough for a "third eye" circuitry tattoo on your forehead, and the recorder could be solid state, embedded surgically in your body, or bonded to your skin? Whereever you go, there they are, watching you, whenever they like. Probably automatically alerting your warden whenever key words are spoken. Hook it up to a GPS, and we're ready for our terror-war future.

The porn industry may adopt tech first, but totalitarianism is always a close second or third.

Storage space

[BabyJaysus]

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, ...

Maybe, but certainly not in MS Word format!

Rambling?

[Blapto]

Is it just me who finds the article to be a tad strange? Perhaps it's the mulled wine but all it does is mumble about how we have technology that stores data, and we can buy things that store lots of data. What would be interesting is an analysis of what computer businesses are actually aiming at. I mean, we can see Apple are going for the digital lifestyle (iPod photo, iTunes, AirTunes etc.) but where are we actually going in terms of technology coming to the average user? I for one think that the bottleneck has to be our internet connections. Roll on household OC 48.

ahem...

[eobanb]

Before we get into a holy war over operating systems, set-top boxes, and other things that most of us probably don't want to argue about tonight, and for those of you who didn't RTFA, it basically looks at the possibilities of decentralising, if you will, certain functions of a PC.

I still believe, however, that the PC itself lacks a certain combination of features that other devices lack. A Tivo or XBox may be simpler to operate, but a PC is expandable and upgradable, simply does much more, and does those things better. A PC is more flexible, and that's what I believe counts. You can word-process or play games, browse the internet, whatever. But if you buy a bunch of 'appliances' to do those things, it really makes life MORE complicated, not less. I yield the floor.

Re:ahem...

[iminplaya]

Present day PC's are too finickey, and networks are too unsreliable. When we can have a machine that will operate for ten years or more, like a TV or microwave, without having to call support or your geeky nephew, or having to upgrade every year or so, then we can say they are ready for prime time. Is there anybody out there with a ten year old computer operating with its original OS and hard drive that was formatted only once...when it was new? Part of the problem is the desired flexibility. Specialized devices do one or two things really well for a long time without any maintenance. A PC is your perverbial(sp) "jack of all trades, master of none", needing constant attention. They also tend to put you into upgrade madness everytime you buy a new camera or music player to plug into it. They are fun to tinker with. That's why I have one. It's the crystal radio of our time. Well your time really. I used to mess with radio before I got a computer. I'm a sucker for high tech, no matter how useless.

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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:Text vs. Audio

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense.

A spoken phrase contains tons more information than the words used.

"hi" can mean anything from "go away" to "good to see you" to "great to see you" to "i love you" to "i want to have sex with you right now" depending on how it's said.

"Yes" can mean "yes with 100% certainty" or "I think so" or "I disagree but I'll go along with your opinion" depending on how it is said.

Sarcasm, enthusiasm, mockery, degrees of understanding and confidence are all components of audio that are missing in text.

You can carry on an entire side of a conversation with the phrase "um hmm" in different tones. In text that would compress very well. In voice, it better not lose the added info.

The PC evolving into a dataserver

[CestusGW]

I think the "PC" as we know it is bound for a destiny as little more than a file server. I mean, let's look at some common uses of Joe six-pack's PC:

Playing songs and movies
Chatting with an IM, checking e-mail
Writing documents (letters, resumes)
Playing games

Let's start with the first one. Songs sound better through a full stereo set, we can all acknowledge that. Stereos right now are very good at playing audio: they aren't that great at holding the songs they play. Clunky 600 CD changers aren't really the answer. A PC can hold, index, categorize and search more songs in a smaller space than a CD changer ever could. With the advent of set-top boxes, playing and storing movies and videos is now almost practical in a non-PC device. However, a PC is still a more extensible platform for storing and retrieving video data. For display of video, a properly sized television is simply larger than my 17" monitor, and better suited for viewing from a distance. So playing your audio through your stereo and your video through your TV are both better options than just using your PC, but using your PC for storage and retrieval is the best way to look after data.

For chatting/e-mail, the PC is still the premiere platform. However, increasing numbers of people want to take their e-mail with them. Also, people may tend to both chat (IM) with a person they also call on their cell phone. Currently, synchronizing the data between your PDA, cell and computer on who can be contacted where is a pain in the butt. The PC is best suited to storing contact information, but a cell phone is better suited for phoning somebody, a Blackberry can check your e-mail anywhere and hopefully someday will be able to use IM as well (if it doesn't already?).

Although it's a long way off yet, e-paper is still being actively pursued as a better way of entering data. The modern PC, with it's QWERTY keyboard (a design meant to hinder speed, not help it) isn't the premiere choice for entering data. The e-paper with a clipboard could go more places than your PC ever could, but probably won't have the storage capacities that modern *cough*MS Office*cough* document formats require. So having a PC act to save and retrieve all the documents for your e-paper is probably the right combination of technologies.

As for game playing, we all know that both the console and PC games market aren't dying (haven't heard a peep out of Netcraft), but costs for a modern gaming PC are continuing to climb (look back at the pricing for a "budget" GeForce 2 card, now look at the price for a "budget" GeForce 6600 card). At the current rate, the "PC" that you play games on will be a completely different beast than the "PC" that is targeted towards the mass consumer market.

In the end, I'm trying to say that just about the only thing a PC does really well is store stuff. Playback and data entry are done much better by devices specialized for that task. So, in the long run, I think the PC will end up acting as a data server/hub for a variety of devices and server to keep them all in sync with one another. Just my $0.02

Re:The PC evolving into a dataserver

[emurphy42]

The modern PC, with it's QWERTY keyboard (a design meant to hinder speed, not help it)

From Wikipedia:

"Frequently-used pairs of letters were separated in an attempt to stop the typebars from intertwining and becoming stuck, thus forcing the typist to manually unstick the typebars and also frequently blotting the document."

Beyond this, there's an awful lot of debate over QWERTY vs. alternatives (particularly Dvorak), which I shan't get into here.

isn't the premiere choice for entering data.

It damn well is for me. I touch-type, and any slight edge I might gain from Dvorak is easily outweighed by (a) QWERTY's ubiquity and - more importantly - (b) the inherent slowdown incurred by thinking and typing simultaneously. And don't bother suggesting voice recognition; my voice would get tired a lot more quickly than my fingers do. (For businessmen who spend lots of time producing correspondence, voice recognition would make a lot more sense.)

Like what happened at turn of the last century?

[Stealth Potato]

If I recall my consumer history correctly, there was once a time when you could buy a general-purpose electric motor with all these doo-dads to hook up to it, like mixers and other household or kitchen tools. As the motors themselves got cheaper, the attachments became small devices with their own motors. I.e., instead of having one larger motor with a lot of attachments, you had an array of smaller motorized tools.

It seems that a similar transformation is occurring (has occurred?) in the computer industry. Instead of having one computer you use for everything, a multitude of small computerized devices now exists for fulfilling specific functions. Of course, a great deal of this is just natural, considering you wouldn't want to lug a desktop PC around with you whenever you wanted some tunes on the go. :-)

Missing the point of PCs

[Comatose51]

People have been predicting the demise or decline of PCs forever. First it was the console, then PDAs, etc. But their argument usually starts out like this:
1. People generally use the PC for A, B, and C.
2. New devices are coming out that can do A, B, and C better.
3. So PC will decline or die out.

But they always forget why PCs became popular in the first place. PCs are GENERAL computing machines. With new software or upgrades they can take virutally any role. Their functions are virtually limitless. As a result they are often the nexus of different devices. They help bridge the conntection between other devices or give rise to new ones. How are you going to use your iPod without a PCs? The PC bridges the connection between Internet and iPod. The trend has been towards a convergence rather than a divergence of information and computing. A general computing device is what's going to make it happen, not individual devices that stay one way and operate apart from everything else.

With 1000 Gmail accounts...

[SimonShine]

..., you can have 1 Terabyte for free!