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Getting set for the wireless revolution
From Time to Time: Nando's in-depth look at the 20th century
By CARLENE HEMPEL
(September 13, 1999 10:40 a.m. EDT nandotimes.com) - Some day, when scribes try to explain how the wireless world came to be, the story will go something like this.
In the new millennium, desktop computers were so common that manufacturers were giving them away. Cell phones, once the proud domain of hot-shot movers and shakers, were a standard tool of schoolteachers, bus drivers, the clergy. And the very notion of a house without a constant connection to the Internet made about as much sense as a horse and buggy did to 20th-century man.
As the tale unfolds, we will learn how refrigerators came to order food from supermarkets, how bathrooms included a dialup to the Web, and how mechanics could diagnose something wrong with a car even before the driver noticed a funny noise.
Today, of course, the story is still being drafted, its chapters unfolding in research labs and boardrooms, by billion-dollar corporations and seat-of-their-pants start-ups. What binds the men and women who will usher in our version of the industrial revolution is their vision of a world in which information moves freely, across the air, not dependent on even a power cord or a plug.
They see the wireless world.
You might think it's already here. For years, we've been flipping channels and opening garage doors with remote controls.
But this is different, because it will be powered by radio frequencies, not the infrared bands that require a remote to be aimed at the target box. That means whether downloading a document from the Internet or asking the refrigerator what's available for dinner, wireless users equipped with an antenna can operate from anywhere without worrying about a chair blocking the remote beam.
And for those who think we're a long way from such an age, guess again.
Apple's new and ballyhooed iBook, for example, available in stores this month, is a laptop that surfs the Internet, sends e-mail and prints -- all without requiring a wire connection, even to a phone jack. Earlier this year, California-based Proxim released a cordless, networked computer system called Symphony. Right here in Research Triangle Park, IBM is helping to develop a new set of technologies designed for short-range wireless communication, code-named Bluetooth. And in October, the new $599 Palm VII will hit the mass market. It's a handheld, wireless, personal digital assistant, or PDA, with a built-in modem that uses radio frequency to connect with 260 BellSouth base stations across the nation. Users can download a limited amount of data, such as e-mail and Web pages.
But the wireless landscape that's emerging isn't simply about the nifty toys coming to market. This is about a new generation of data and voice communications, as Wired magazine puts it, a metamorphosis in technology that will "shape how we work, shop, pay bills, flirt, keep appointments, conduct wars, keep up with our children, and write poetry into the next century."
"It's a completely new way of living," says Anders Hult, who works for the Sweden-based Electrolux.
His company, which owns the world's largest appliance manufacturer, Frigidaire, has worked up a prototype for the "Screenfridge," a radio frequency-powered, full-functioning icebox equipped with a hookup to surf the Internet as well as the ability to log -- via scanners -- the food going inside. It could warn homeowners when the milk has gone bad, and then order a fresh carton from a store.
And the fridge is just the beginning.
"The technology is there," Hult says. "The infrastructure is there. It's just a question of how fast we can implement it, because it's a matter of behavior." By that, of course, he means how easily the company can convince consumers they need a refrigerator that surfs the Net.
So far, the most popular consumer-friendly wireless devices have been cellular phones.
"I think cell phones are the current major drivers for wireless products. They're the largest-selling consumer product in the world," says Dean Priddy, chief financial officer of RF Micro Devices Inc., a Greensboro company that manufactures the radio devices that make equipment talk.
In other words, it's the consumers, enamored with their cell phones, who have convinced manufacturers that people do want to be connected to one another, to the Web, to their home -- at all times.
The technology is not new. It's evolutionary rather than revolutionary, says Michael Penwarden, editor of Macworld magazine. But these first introductions, the iBook, for example, signal the beginnings of a new standard.
How it works is relatively simple to understand. The 6-pound, two-tone iBook laptop, available in stores this month for $1,599, cannot function as a wireless device without what's called an AirPort Base Station, sold separately for $299, and which will serve as the radio transmitter.
The AirPort will still have to be plugged into a phone line for access to the Internet. With that on -- and the assumption is that eventually, the base will be connected to a line dedicated for Internet use -- up to 10 laptop users anywhere within 150 feet of the station can access one another, or the Internet, or use the printer and fax machine hooked up to one of the units.
"When you issue the print command, the radio in one seeks out the other radio," explains Aaron Dun, communications coordinator for the San Francisco-based Home Radio Frequency Working Group, a consortium of companies collaborating to bring wireless home networks to the market. "They handshake and say 'I know who you are, what have you got for me?' And then the sender starts sending data through the radio frequency spectrum." In effect, it's a local area network, powered through air.
And once the network is in place, anything could be added to it. That's where an Internet refrigerator could come in. Or a toilet with a screen handily attached, to surf the Net or even check e-mail. Or a car, which could then also be connected to the local mechanic. All any appliance would need is an antenna that could talk through a base.
"Before, if you wanted to Internet wire your toaster, that toaster would cost you a grand," says Dun. "But now, those technologies have become believable, and possible."
Dun's working group is making sure of that. Its 100 or so members, which include IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Apple, Compaq and Hewlett-Packard, are developing a common protocol so when radio frequency-enabled devices start to hit the market in the next couple months, they can talk to one another to create a fully networked home.
"Today, you buy a VCR and you buy a TV, and they work together," says Dun. "A user doesn't have to be concerned whether they're buying a Sony VCR and a Panasonic TV." So, in the wireless world, that means a consumer using an IBM wireless device in the car could dial up via radio frequency a Maytag refrigerator to check what it's got for dinner, and then send a missive to a Kenmore stove about what temperature to preheat the oven.
But every wireless plan is developed under the shadow of the designers' greatest question: Will people buy it? After all, automating the employee payroll system is one thing; convincing the public that a bathroom visit is the right time to check e-mail is another.
"We're really at the point that we very much understand we could be overloading people with technology," says Dennis Moeller, an engineer with IBM's Personal Systems Group Technology and Strategy, a division that researches what products consumers will want in the next five years. "The basic technologies are important, but people do have a limit on the amount of computing they want to do."
The development process is, in many ways, no different than with any major product. Market research is conducted, focus groups are brought in. But that's where the similarities end. Because the wireless developers want to know things we've never asked before. What do consumers want technology to do for them in the next five years? Do they even care to compute in their cars, in the garage, in the garden, as radio frequency technologies will enable them to do? Is there a limit on the technology people will embrace?
A group founded by IBM, the Open Services Gateway Initiative, contemplates all those questions. OSGI, as it's referred to, has joined with companies like Alcatel, Ericsson, Lucent Technologies, Motorola, Nortel Networks and Sun Microsystems to create a standard for connecting the coming generation of smart appliances with commercial Internet services.
The idea is that if home networking gets as complicated as it looks, we'll need our own, personal system administrators. Don't worry, the computer guy isn't going to move into the room over the garage. But he, or she, will be available around the clock to deal with every network complication.
Haym Hirsh, an assistant professor of computer science at Rutgers University who studies how technologies are integrated into people's lives, says there's no reason to think consumers have a technological limit.
"We've gotten past the stage where the only users of technology are the computer super-literate," he says. "People seem incredibly comfortable starting to use things they're not in control of. Here I am with a Ph.D. in computer science, and I don't know how to use my own computer some of the time. But I also don't know how to use my own car. I know how to drive it, but I don't know how to fix it."
The folks at Intel, which provides the brains to 50 percent of the world's computers, feel the same way. That's why they have a staff of heavy thinkers -- "ethnographers" -- to study where the culture is heading and propose the products that will take it there. Even the place where they do their work sounds brainy: the Architecture Lab.
"We don't go out and design the chips or the products that use the chips," says William Jiles, public relations manager for the Oregon-based labs. "We try to look at, what are the things computing can do for people? What that entails is kind of understanding users," he says. "What is it they do? What are the problems they want to solve?"
Their latest project started with the desktop computer.
Jiles says that developers at Intel call the way we use our boxes "two-footing:" sitting in front of a computer, two feet planted firmly on the floor. Even laptop owners need at least a thigh or two to do any work.
"Within the home, the computing experience is very limited," Jiles says. "It's all in the office or the den, and if you want to use it, you've got to go there, turn it on, wait for it to boot up. That requires this mythical free time that no one really has."
A portable, wireless, handheld computer would change that. People could take advantage of their bits of free time, he says. Five minutes before they leave for work. Fifteen between when they get home from work and dinnertime. It's during those moments that consumers might want to check the traffic, or what the schools are serving for lunch, or sports scores from last night, Jiles says. "But are you going to walk up to the bedroom to the PC for that? No."
So the thinkers at Intel came up with their best answer.
The "Web tablet" is still a prototype, Jiles says, so please pardon the name. It is a portable, wireless screen not even encumbered by a keyboard. Available within the year, it would be always on, and light enough to be passed from one family member to another, easier than a phone book. It would be equipped with a radio frequency device that uses a broadband spectrum rather than a telephone wire to connect to the Internet.
It would be the future. |
