IBM's Paul Horn on the pc's Future: RE Wearable PC's
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IBM Ready for Next Technology Wave
By Eric Moskowitz
Staff Reporter
1/15/99 7:21 AM ET
For early adopters in computerland, the de rigueur subject for 1999 is information appliances: portable, digital products, which are expected to revolutionize the computer industry. If history is any guide, IBM (IBM:NYSE)'s research division will probably be at the forefront of creating these products for the masses. IBM is the king of patents, and its research division is one of the crown jewels of American business.
Just on Monday, IBM said it had won the most U.S. patents, with a total of 2,682, for the sixth consecutive year. The research unit is behind IBM's much advertised speech-recognition software, as well as its superfast computer chips using revolutionary copper wiring and a multibillion dollar disk drive unit. So who better to talk to about the future of technology -- and which tech companies will dominate -- than Paul Horn, director of IBM's research division?
"First of all, PCs aren't going away anymore than TVs made radio go away," says Horn, who spoke with TSC about the century of computing in the decidedly old-world confines of New York's 21 Club Thursday. However, PCs may no longer be the dominant driver of new technologies, he says. Instead, look for communications technology that will allow various appliances to interact with one another over connected networks to lead to the creation of new companies.
For example, given the popularity of such portable devices as Palm Pilot made by 3Com (COMS:Nasdaq) and its clones, newer products will be able to expand on this technology and allow for a person to not only receive e-mails and pages but send responses as well.
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"It's very important to us for Sun to be successful," says Paul Horn, IBM's head of research.
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IBM, which invented the disk drive, the D-RAM (memory) and relational database technology, all of which helped create the PC industry, now hopes to be active in this communications age as well. One product Horn showed off is IBM's Wearable PC Prototype, which is a headset with a tiny screen that allows users to see a computer screen out of one eye, complete with audio (a ear piece), a detached mouse and a wearable "hard drive." Talk about pervasive computing -- this Cyborg-like device is an extension of a person's body. "It's a walking guide," agrees Russell Budd, senior engineer of IBM Research's optical systems unit.
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