Date: Thu, 16 May 2002 00:49:09 +0200 From: Nils Holland <nils@daemon.tisys.org> To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: The road ahead? Message-ID: <20020516004909.A9808@daemon.tisys.org>
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(DANGER: This is long and has not much to do with FreeBSD (that's why I posted it to -chat). If you're busy, skip this message now. If not, get yourself a cup of coffee and read on ;-) Hi folks, it's midnight here in Germany - time for me to try to start another not-directly-FreeBSD-related, but still not totally inappropriate thread on this list. What I'm going to talk about below may not be new to you, but I recently talked about this with quite some people, so I thought I'd bring it up here. So let's begin: If you have been watching the computer industry during the last few years, you will have noted an interesting event: Beginning in the middle of the 90's, (computer) technology was seen as *the one great* thing of the future. The Internet became popular for normal people back then, and what followed made me want to puke more than once: Everywhere you looked, no matter if into newspapers, magazines, TV news or whatever, folks were talking about the Internet - despite the fact that they probably didn't even really understand what it was. Even more interesting: Everyone seemed to want to "ride the wave", and many investores piped a whole lot of money into "e-companies", even if they were built on the most brain-dead business plan. These were also the days of the "funky words", when an I or E was appended to normal words in order to make them sound cool, just like "e-commerce", "e-business", "e-book" and so on. Hell, this made me sick - I always thought any sane business man would actually have brains - back in the mid-90s, however, this didn't seem to be the case, as even a product called "e-shit" would probably have been successful back then. (Note that nobody would have asked what kind of product that actually is - as look as it starts with e- it must be good). Now, as you will also have noticed, in the years 2000 and 2001 this mood suddenly started th change. Many dot.com's (another one of these funky words) turned into dot.bomb's. Finally, intelligence was brought back into the e-world - seems that people noticed that you can't really turn a word into money by prepending it with an e-. So far about what has happened. The question, however, is what we can learn from it. Basically, I believe that the computer industry is in serious danger - Moore's Law seems to be self-destructing. What I mean by this? Well, seriously, if I go to a computer shop these days, then I will find a whole lot of hyper-fast machines, but for an ordinary user, these probably wouldn't make much sense. If a 500 Mhz machine sits 90% idle while someone writes a letter of surfs the web, then why should he upgrade to a 2000 Mhz one? It seems to me that during the last decades, the industry made constant progress. Taking into account only the view of the ordinary user and not the view of the more advanced hacker, much has changed: At first there was only DOS with its cryptic commands - and since that was "too much" for normal users, they didn't really like that. Then, suddenly (more or less), Bill Gates released Windows, and - hell - now every idiot could point-and-click! Early Windows, up to and including 3.1 was not very nice (I could also use swear words at this point), so a *new* version of Windows followed, called Windows 95. Of course, people had to buy this stuff, and they also had to upgrade their computers or buy new ones every time. Windows 95 finally brought computing even to the people with the lowest IQ, but it was not perfect yet: A new version, Windows 98 (judged by the date of its release, Gates could also have called it "iWindows" or "e-Windows") was released. Now people could do everything: Surf the web, listen to music, burn CDs, watch DVDs, etc. And suddenly - BANG! Seems that the computer industry has nothing to offer beyond that. And that's why it's stuck, having financial problems. Of course, one could say that new technological inventations are made at a faster pace than ever before - but I guess this is only half of the truth: For the ordinary Joe, DOS turning into Windows 3.1, Windows 3.1 turning into Windows 95, and so on, was a real revolution. What seems to be invented these days seems to be only toys, no more revolutions! Does the new Fisher Price look in Windows XP make computers easier to use or people more productive, just like the switch from DOS to graphical Windows did for ordinary users? I guess not. And then - what else is "new" these days? Some folks would see the ability to talk to your computer as the next big revolution (which is partly already possible), but I fear that I have to say that talking would actually slow folks down, compared to having them enter commands or use the mouse within a GUI. So, another toy, but nothing new! While the performance of silicon technology may be increasing by whatever insane factor every year, I don't see too many occasions where such performance is actually needed - at least not enough occassions in order to enable computer companies to earn as much money as they did in the past. To come back to the point of most new inventations being "toys", let me give you another example: There are currently (at least) two companies out there working on "electronic paper". One of them is E-Ink, and the other one is something that has recently been spun off from XEROX (I don't remember the company's new name, so I'll just call it XEROX). A few years ago, these companies wanted to make us believe that in the future all newspapers, magazines and books would use their electronic paper - which must be imagines in a way that you probably have one single "sheet" of that stuff, and you don't turn the page, but hit some button or so, and the next page will then be "painted" onto this electronic stuff automatically (or something like that). Interestingly, it seems to me that E-Ink has now stopped working on this stuff, using their discoveries more or less for normal, especially flat and energy-saving displays on mobile devices. XEROX, instead of revolutionizing our newspapers, as they initially claimed, seem to sell "signs" to retailers to put in shops (or wherever). These sings then "update themselves automatically" and always display the latest information / prices / etc. Personally, when I first heard about the stuff E-Ink and XEROX were working on, I already predicted that they would have no success - at least not as far-reaching as their marketting insanity said. The reason for this is simple: I don't see a need for electronic, re-writable paper. After all, we have real paper, which is inexpensive, "easy to use" and convenient to use for somewhat static information. On the other hand, we have well-known computer display technology for "dynamic" information, like web sites. As such, I didn't (and still don't) see a board market for this e-paper toy stuff. It somehow reminds me of the prediction made in the 70's, which basically said that before the next century, offices would work without any paper. Obviously, this didn't happen. Most predictions like this don't happen, and if they do, then mostly a whole lot different that originally imagined. Bottom line (and at this point I really want to stop wasting your bandwidth and precious time): I guess that looking at the computer and electronics company, "all the good ones are taken" or "everything that can (sanely) be done has been done". Of course, the future may bring the one or the other new interesting development, but I don't see many real revolutions anymore, as we seem to have reached a point where going any further does no longer provide any increased benefit. Comments to this - well - rather free-style "essay" are welcome ;-) Greetings Nils -- Nils Holland <nils@daemon.tisys.org> Ti Systems - http://www.tisys.org Addicted to computing since 1987 High on FreeBSD since 1996 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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