for many of us, the small computer revolution began in 1975, and 2005 marks its 30th anniversary. none of the early promises of this revolution came to pass, but a lot did changeit's just that it was all different from what was predicted. the microcomputer, for example, was going to crush ibm and mean the end of big business. today, ibm and big business have never been bigger. that said, what can we expect from the next 30 years? some of what was promised in the first 30 years, i hope.
in this, i'm including voice recognition and the ability to have some sort of conversation with a computer. the genuinely interactive computer that communicates like a star trek computer seems more distant today than it did in 1980. year after year, someone tries to do something about it. ibm even had a major initiative a decade ago to enable computers to interact with us as people do. even more embarrassing is that computerized voices have hardly improved for 20 years. they still sound nothing like the computer on star trek, and more like a joke robot voice.
i have mixed feelings about this situation. on the one hand, i wonder who needs a computer that we converse with. being on the computer is often quiet time. you can be alone. you'd never be alone with a computer that talks and interacts. it would be like having a person in the room.
on the other hand, the silent computer might end up like the silent movie. given a choice, you'd pick the "talkie."
modern motion-picture technology was invented in 1895 by louis and auguste lumiere, and thomas edison turned his 1891 kinetoscope into a projection system in 1896. it was in 1927 that talkies emerged on the scene in such a way that all movies would soon become talkies. that was 32 years after the movie was invented. if the same cycle holds, in 2007 we might have a similar breakthrough with computers. it seems like a nice time frame for progress.
whatever changes take place between now and then, one thing is certain: something has to change. things have stagnated to an extreme. unfortunately, i see no evidence that the interactive, chatty computer has any prayer of appearing unless a number of geniuses suddenly emerge. voice recognition has gone nowhere in nearly a decade. handwriting recognition is still a toy technology. and even ocr has never gotten to 100 percent; there are common situations where humans can figure out words but the computer still can't.
back to the movie analogy: there were experiments with talkies in 1925, and the first recognized "talkie" feature is generally considered to be the jazz singer with al jolson (1927). that means that the future direction of computing might already be herejust not yet recognized as such.
one possibility is notepad computing, as bill gates has predicted. the idea of a pad computer appeals to many. but one of the problems with those devices is input. there is no keyboard, so it's not easy to type in a url, and for most people you can expect web surfing to be its primary use. if voice recognition were improved, you could just tell it, "go to pc mag dot-com!" unfortunately, voice recognition seems to be at a standstill.
so the big question is if there will be some indicators in 2005 telling us what the next great breakthrough will be. to spot this thing, you need some self-imposed rules to keep from getting suckered into a myriad of dead ends. i would suggest the following, again using the talkies as the analogy. what can we look for?
first, we can look for something that is a logical improvement, but that changes the original platform enough so that the original (think "silent") platform dies completely. in other words, the change makes something become instantly obsolete.
second, the improvement is also an upgrade and a modification in the pure sense of the term. digital projectors in our era seem to have this quality.
third, there has to be an element of surprise and an element of denial. when talkies appeared, they were seen as a gimmick. years later, 3d movies were met with a more positive reception, yet they were in fact a mere fad. this tells me that such changes are not properly analyzed or understood by the powers that be.
fourth, there is the displacement effect. people involved in silent films often could not do talkies; for instance, actors with thin voices or actresses who could not enunciate.
if the cycle is right, the future will reveal itself this year. we just have to be on the lookout.
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