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APRIL 28, 2000 VOL. 26 NO. 16 | SEARCH ASIAWEEK
New technologies will change our notions of what computers look like and where computing takes place -- try everywhere By JIM ERICKSON and STUART WHITMORE Some call them silicon cockroaches because they will infiltrate everything from kitchen cabinets to articles of clothing. More appealingly, they're known as "information appliances" -- devices that in the not-too-distant future are expected to supplant the personal computer as the digital tool of choice for millions of people. Silicon cockroaches will rule the world in the coming post-PC era. Computing will no longer be thought of as an activity that occurs almost exclusively in front of a glowing desktop monitor. Can't dance? Smart sneakers fitted with sensors to detect motion and incline will guide your steps. Can't find your way to your next meeting? Your Internet-enabled, global-positioning-system-equipped car will check a database in Los Angeles and guide you to an office building in Tokyo. No time to shop? No need, since the refrigerator has already noted that you have emptied your last carton of milk and ordered a fresh batch from the Web grocer. Can't entertain yourself? No worries, a black box in the living room knows what movies you like and has automatically downloaded a selection for you to play on wall monitors in any room in the house. This is living, but it is not quite life as we now know it. "We've reached the point of skill with technology where we can build almost anything imaginable," says Andrew Lippman, associate director of MIT's media laboratory and founder of the university's Digital Life Program. "It will bring about fundamental changes in the way we look at the world." Helping to usher in those changes are a brace of new technologies -- some still in the labs, others already beginning to find applications. In the following pages, we look at three that we consider to be key enablers of the post-PC era: high-capacity memory cards, broadband wireless transmission systems and "Bluetooth" short-range communications chips. All three have characteristics in common. They are evolutionary rather than revolutionary, practical and relatively economical. They improve our ability to share and distribute digital data. They extend the edges of the Internet, spreading communications capabilities throughout the home, the office, and the world at large. And they will change our notion of what a computer looks like as well as what it does. How to describe a pocket-sized device that is mobile telephone, personal digital assistant, and music and video player all in one? What do you call a box that links to your favorite Internet radio stations and plays them over your stereo? Is a TV still a TV when it also sends e-mail, handles stock trading and stores the family photo album?
Which
post-PC products will become indispensable and which will be duds is hard
to predict. But researchers for microprocessor giant Intel Corp. are learning
interesting things about consumer behavior in a pervasively interconnected
environment. For example, when given a wireless tablet (a Net-enabled
computer screen that can be carried to the couch) people tend to watch
TV and surf the Web simultaneously. When information is continuously available
on a variety of special-purpose devices throughout the home, people access
the Internet not two or three times a day but 20 or 30 times. "The thing
that truly changes people's lives is when the Internet is always on,"
says Claude Leglise, vice president and general manager of Intel's home
products group. "It becomes an integral part of their existence."
Quick Scroll: More stories from Asiaweek, TIME and CNN |
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