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Many years ago, I looked at the amount of disk storage on the computer I was using, and the amount of RAM, and the size of the word processing program it was running at the time, and I thought: this is so out of line! How much of that program did I actually use at any given time, and how much was taking up most of my available memory? And then I thought, this program is over five years old; there is a newer version available, but I don’t want to spend the money to upgrade for a few marginally useful enhancements.
And then I thought, one day no one will buy personal productivity software ever again. They will rent it by the session from their ISP for next to nothing. They will always get the latest version; they will never have to worry about the effect of upgrading their operating system. Hell, they won’t even have to worry whether they have the necessary capacity on their computer, because the computer will have no capacity at all! We will return to the dumb terminal of the 1970’s, but with WYSIWYG displays instead of green screens.
I think it’s coming. Really. There is a trend among some specialty software products to provide programs on line as a service. A prominent one is Salesforce.com, which has long provided contact management tools over the world wide web. Once upon a time, Microsoft gave away its contact management software with every copy of Windows.
Earlier this week, Intel showed off a concept laptop that was as thin as the Motorola Razr phone. They did it by replacing the hard drive with flash memory. Look, Ma: no moving parts! What if this were followed through to its logical conclusion: no memory, either! A basic terminal that can connect with the World Wide Web, either wirelessly or through your house electrical system. These things would be dirt cheap, disposable, and potentially ubiquitous.
One drawback: personal storage. ISPs would be more than happy to sell you all the gigabytes of storage you want, but I’m not sure I want all my documents to be kept on a public utility.
Another drawback: offline functionality. You may find yourself in a time or place where you can’t connect with the internet. Or maybe you just don’t want to. We all want to be alone, sometimes. A limited function, no-memory terminal is useless without that connectivity. You’re better off with an old typewriter if you have letters to write.
But the fact remains, such computers would substantially reduce the total cost of computing for the average consumer. An inexpensive, maintenance free gateway to the world would get a lot of people on line who cannot get there now, both in developing nations and in the developed world. Further, the stripped down terminal would be an ecological boon. Where, after all, do old computers go to die? The stuff they are made of today is pretty toxic. Imagine a biodegradable terminal.
Will software developers and hardware makers get on board with this? Does Bill Gates’ vision of the Internet Appliance include the demise of personal copies of Microsoft products? And what about the ISPs? Could they economically upgrade their capacity with enough application servers to obviate the need for any capacity on the client?
The development of personal computing today is about at the level of the automobile by the 1920’s. The complexity of the machines had grown, but manufacturing technology had reached the point where the amount of mechanical knowledge an individual required to keep his car running was greatly reduced. The car was more reliable over all, and there were specialists to fix it when it wasn’t. And the highway infrastructure was growing, though it didn’t get its really big push until the 1950’s.
Computing is evolving as a convergence of many information technologies: radio, TV, the Internet. There are some functions you want to keep separate from your TV. But do you really want or need to spend up to a thousand dollars every couple of years to do word processing or Internet searches?
What do you think?
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