"Tech industry sees
world of access ahead" (Oct 7, 1998)
Computer uses in the future
austin360.com:80/biz/features/hightech/stories/future.htm
...
And if Mark Weiser, of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, is right,
the common desktop PC that receives e-mail, calculates your taxes,
browses the Web and plays 3-D games has peaked.
Weiser sees a future in which a single machine that tries to be everything
will give way to tiny computers, basically just microprocessors, that
perform specialized tasks. Handheld devices such as the Palm Pilot,
which act as notepads and calendars, are a step in that direction, Weiser
said.
...
Computers in the walls at home will use voice recognition to send e-mail
or adjust the temperature.
Embedded in our cupboards and our pantries, they'll note when we're
low on tuna, penne pasta or peanut butter, and pass that information on
to chip-carrying cards in our wallets, Weiser said. When we go
shopping, the chip in our pocket will share the information with invisible
sensors throughout the grocery store, where the products we have
consumed will remind us to buy more.
Weiser thinks such everyday irritations as driving around the block to
find a parking place will be thing of the past because cheap chips buried
in streets and parking lots will tell computers in our cars where to park.
...
"No broadcast medium we have right now is comparable to the
communications media we will have once the Internet evolves to the
point at which it has the broadband capacity necessary to carry
high-quality video," wrote Bill Gates in "The Road Ahead."
By 2003, predicts Dell founder Michael Dell, digital wireless technology
will give notebook computers the same speed and quality of video and
audio as desktops operating on a broadband network. That will free
countless workers of the requirement to be tethered to those networks.
"This could change the way people do work, how they do work and
where they do work," Dell said.
... |
