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Future of the PC on NPR's Science Friday

Posted by Hemos on from the prognostication-from-the-leaders dept.

EMS writes "NPR's Science Friday news radio program today has a discussion on the Future of the PC at 3-4pm EST. Guest speakers Tim O'Reilly, Steven Levy, and Scott Bradner discuss how PC's are evolving in a "decentralized, network driven world". Contributing forces to be discussed include Linux and network appliances. " It's worth checking out NPR site later on-they typciall put these up in archives.

1 of 41 comments (clear)

  1. "death" of PC by ChrisRijk · · Score: 3
    Whenever I see people discussing the "end of the PC", they seem to be getting misquoted a bit, or people are just latching onto the headline. What I mean is, that they're really predicting "the end of the era where a user's Personal Computer dominates where they do their work."

    Putting it another way, a particular bit of hardware becomes less important, and instead the data and services become more important. So, say within a business, you can log onto any (or most, at least) computers around, and you get the same data, same functions, same customised desktop at each and every place. Or, instead of taking a laptop or handheld, you login remotely (at the hotel, airport, general kiosk, whatever) and access your stuff like that. Or you just borrow a handheld/laptop from anywhere, and providing it has the required client stuff, then it takes little effort to 'customise' it, because your particular settings and files are exportable.

    An example of this sort of thing is Sun's recently released i-Planet software. All you need is a bit of hardware, with Java and internet access, and (without taking any software with you at all, just as password) you can remotely, and securely, get access to your mail, files, etc from it. (of course, you do need the required server stuff setup first.)

    Windows is very badly suited to doing this sort of thing (in general, not just the i-Planet example), though Microsoft have been cludging in some hacks around this.

    To workers/members of the public, it probably won't make that big a difference for a while, unless they do lots of 'remote' work. It will make a much bigger difference to the IT departments, and sys-admin though...