The Future of Computing
Today, Apple released its punchline-inducing “iPad” tablet device. Designed to be something between a smartphone and a laptop, the iPad is perhaps the most hyped device of the last couple years. Whether it will be a game changer is yet to be seen, but it is certainly a shift away from traditional computing for sure.
I will not mention the iPod anymore; if you want to do that, read one of the many Apple fan sites for ad nauseum iPad coverage. Instead, I want to describe what I believe is the future of computing.
Just one word: integration.
For years, technology pundits have claimed that the “convergence” is coming: all our technological wants will be fulfilled by a magical, yet-to-be invented device. Look at your cell phone: these days, almost every phone has at least a primitive (i.e., VGA) camera on it. Look at it again; if it does have a low-resolution camera on it, then you see why the convergence will never occur. All our technological wants are advancing at varying paces, meaning an advance in one sector, such as digital imaging, makes a unified device obsolete in its entirety.
Long gone are the days of the computer principally as a hobby device, a curiosity, a footnote to our office. Today, computers are everywhere, and we demand that our computers. If we lose internet access, our lives come to a halt. A widespread outage not only shuts down individuals or individual companies, but can shut down commerce over a wide portion of the globe, especially if a data center is taken offline.
Smartphones and other sophisticated devices feed our messaging needs wherever we are. The Kindle can download novels anywhere wireless connections can be made, which is nearly everywhere. Our lives are spread across any number of computers, devices and information storehouses. We live a fragmented, schizophrenic digital lifestyle. Sure, we can synchronize some of that data, but more often than not we are stuck using proprietary software, and synchronizing between more than a single device and our main computer is a multistep, often unwieldy task.
Instead, the future of is not the convergence of our devices but the our digital personas to our computing devices. We should be able to move seamlessly between all the devices with which we interact. This is more than simply ensuring that our devices all work together, although USB and Firewire technologies have ensured that this occur. Data should be accessible no matter where we are, and that devices should adapt to how we work and to what we are doing at the time.
So-called “cloud computing” is a rudimentary example of this idea, but it is nowhere near complete, nor is it the only solution for addressing the problem. A number of devices are already networked together, and with wireless bandwidth increasing by orders of magnitude, it is certainly practical for devices to simply synchronize across a network, either established or created by the devices themselves, and relay data across our virtual network of devices.
Of course, with that many bits flying about, data security will be an important issue. Here is where technology may not be the answer to all the problems. Security begins with behavior. I’m certain some clever security experts will devise some clever solutions to the problem, but individual attitudes and mindsets will need to change first.
It would be naïve for any company to think that it can fully integrate our devices. Apple does a fantastic job of integrating its products together, but even the great and powerful Jobs cannot do everything. You cannot print using an Apple printer, nor do digital cameras or video all come from Cupertino. Without an open, standardized platform upon which all data integration occurs, we will be stuck with solutions imposed by competing companies.
What would be the point then?
