 New Year's day is a great time to take a look at where we have been and where we are going. Many of us are out of school or off of work during this time, so it makes sense to sit down, relax, and take stock of our situation, both in our personal lives and in broader terms. Sometimes changes seem to be so gradual that we don't even notice how rapidly our world is changing. Do you remember the Encyclopedia? When I was younger there were people selling them door-to-door. There were ads for Enyclopedia Brittanica and World Book Encyclopedia on TV. Even in high school, this was the only source of information I had when it came time to do research on a topic. I either had to drive to my Aunt's house, who had a set, or go to the library. I can't tell you how many times I used the "I have to go to the library" routine with my parents when I had other things in mind. Where are encyclopedias now? Do people still use them? I haven't seen ads for them or people trying to sell them in a long time. I'm sure libraries still buy them, but I can't imagine anyone else investing in such an outdated resource anymore. In my house, the computer has completely replaced the encyclopedia, dictionary, newspaper, even the phonebook. The development of the microwave oven and the computer aren't too much different. I remember when microwaves first came out back in the early 80's. They were very expensive, so many people couldn't understand them. They were new, so noone knew how to use them effectively. Some people were even scared of them and the radiation they contained within. When microwaves first came out, some companies were selling "radiation detectors" so you could test around you microwave to make sure you weren't creating your own personal Chernobyl. Now, everyone has them, they are dirt cheap and we couldn't do without them. The fear of radiation is also gone. Internet development is working in the same fashion. 9 years ago I bought a really bad Packard Bell Pentium 60 MHz. The price tag? 2500 dollars. Ouch.. 90 MHz computers were available, but they were closer to 2800-2900 dollars so I didn't get one. The 60 back then is probably comparable to a 2.0 Gig today, as far as it's place in processor hierarchy. The computer has basically gone from costing 2500 dollars to 600 dollars. You can save for just a few months for a computer now, instead of paying for a computer for 2 years or more. Nothing hurts like making a payment on an obsolete computer. In the next couple of years I think we will also begin to see a whole new set of laws regarding internet activity. Right now the U.S. Justice system is attempting to use pre-internet laws to govern activities on the net. It isn't working. There is a major conflict between privacy on the internet and responsibility of individuals. When people refer to privacy on the net, what they really mean is anonymity in my opinion. From what I've seen, perceived anonymity brings out the worst behavior in a lot of people. In chat rooms and message boards, people say appalling things to each other that they wouldn't dare say to someone face to face. Some people engage in piracy because they think that noone knows who they are. Some send spoof emails, pretending to be an official email from a site such as Ebay, to try and trick you into sending your login information to them. Just about everyone I know receives unsolicited advertisements for Viagra, a variety of pain pills, and porn. I used to believe that the internet should not be regulated at all, but now I'm not so sure. At this point, spam and piracy are severely hurting everyone's experience on the net. The problem is, who will do the policing? What if everyone had to use their real name on the internet? I think you would see everyone clean up their act a lot if their real name and reputation were on the line. On the other hand, I don't agree with agencies like the FBI/Secret Service monitoring internet activity and busting down doors to confiscate hard drives. I would like to see a non-Governmental solution, but I don't know if this is possible. Another thing we need to keep an eye on in the coming year are the internet search engines. According to the US Nielsen/Net Ratings, 85% of all searches are conducted on Google, Yahoo and MSN.com. While I think these search engines do a nice job of finding relevant sites for our searches, they wield a lot of power. Some engines have begun a "pay for position" model, in which the more money you pay them, the higher your results will be. In my opinion, this is contrary to what the internet is all about. Companies on the internet need to make money, but we need to keep our web indexes honest. The objectivity of search engines is paramount in maintaining the integrity of the internet. Pop-up ads have got to stop in the coming year, period. I used to use Internet Explorer exclusively, but have since switched to Mozilla for most surfing. Mozilla has a pop-up blocker built in that works very well. Internet explorer does nothing to stop pop-up ads, which I consider to be a major failing of this software. Pop-up ads are an intrusion just like a virus or a worm, and companies that publish web browsers need to actively eliminate pop-ups. A technology that I think will become very big in the coming year is information-on-demand. I have tried, and like very much, Yahoo Games-on-Demand, in which you pay a monthly fee (currently 15.00) for unlimited play of about 100 games. I look for TV to move in this direction, replacing pay-per-view. I don't know if the current cable/phone plant can sustain the type of bandwidth that on-demand services require, but we need to get there. Instead of having phone, cable, internet services, we need an "information service" that is an information pipe which contains everything. It is still possible that we will end up with dumb terminals in our home, with all storage and programs residing on internet servers. Data centers could back up all data, and software/media piracy could be severely limited in this model. Sun Microsystems had a similar idea with their failed attempt at marketing a "net appliance". In my opinion, the "net appliance" was ahead of its time, as the supporting infrastructure was just not available in the late 90's. In the next few years I think we will also begin to have revolutionary new working machines in our homes. Back in the 50's people were predicting that we would have flying cars, robots, food machines, etc. Where is all this stuff at? Why are we still vacuuming, cutting grass, taking out the trash and dusting our furniture? These are archaic, mundane activities that need to be done by machines. We have the engineering technology and computing power to create robots that can take care of all of these chores, yet development is very slow. There have been a few products come out - check out http://www.robocleaner.de/. We need more of these kinds of products available to us. The technology is here and now, let's do something with it! In the 21st century people should not be doing rows with their lawn mower over and over. There should not be a human-being running the buffer at a 1,000,000 square foot Wal-Mart. There should be no human beings washing windows outside tall office buildings. Happy New Year to all the readers and staff of MeanPC.
|
