Our rampantly consumerist world has many facets, pros and cons to it, but one thing has so far been perceived as a universal constant – the quest for the ‘next big thing’. That one product, or class of product, that every man, woman and small furry creature from Alpha Centauri wants to get their hands on. In the technology world, analysts have long since been riding the gravy train of purporting to be able to peer sagely into this murky future in order to extract those world-changing gems that everyone would be invested in.
I don’t think this is the case anymore, at least not to the extent that one product or product category can be seen as ‘the future’. In much the same way as in days of yore there were only a small handful of TV channels that everyone watched, compared to now where everyone has a million channels plus the Internet to cater for their media absorption needs, I think the technology needs of the general public can no longer be stuffed into one universal pigeon-hole as has happened in the past.
Up until recently, everyone felt they needed a PC of some sort, and most of them also felt they needed to use Windows because that’s what they used at work and also what most PC vendors pre-loaded their machines with. Cue a huge homogenous mass of people on the same technology – exactly the sort of ‘next big thing’ that has been common over the last 20 years.
But, as computing resources get smaller and more connected, people are realising that they don’t necessarily need all the things a PC can do, all the time. Things we would traditionally consider to be ‘computing devices’ are fragmenting along functional lines in much the same way as household devices have always been this way – your toaster, your microwave, your TV. The idea that there needs to be a single device that has the ability to do everything is something that increasingly only technophiles will hold on to, because specialism almost always means an improvement in the user experience for the given functional subset. Think about it – sure, you could build a device for the home that let you wash dishes, watch TV and toast bread all in one package – but why would you? The toaster works well doing what it does, taking up only the space it needs to, while the dishwasher and TV are specialised for their tasks too. Plus, you can use them simultaneously for different things. Sure, household devices have a common medium – plumbing, electricity etc – but they’re inherently separate, and all the better for it.
Computing devices are really no different. Over the last 20 years we’ve been conditioned to expect that we all need a common beige box that does everything anyone could possibly need, but in fact our lifestyles don’t agree with that at all. The common medium of the Internet is ubiquitous, but apart from that we all want to do different things with technology, and even within our own lives we need different things in different circumstances. When I want to do intensive tasks like writing code or editing video, I want a full keyboard, a hi-res screen and a lot of processing power. But when I’m just checking my email on the go, I want something small, portable with a good battery life, and I’m willing to sacrifice powerful CPUs, large screens, and full keyboards for that. If I’m on the sofa and want to check a website or read an article, a pad-style device would work best for that – bigger than a phone, but more casual and form-friendly than a laptop. Even in the context of a single user, our lives are not geared to single devices that do everything, and in fact there are hard limits that prevent any one device, even the best smartphone in the world, from fulfilling this – even if you could shoehorn the power into a smartphone, you’ll never replicate the full keyboard or screen short of things seen only in Inspector Gadget. So it’s not at all surprising that now that technology is allowing these devices to morph into more functionally specific roles, people are snapping them up – much to the horror of people that have a vested interest in the PC being the future of everything of course.
Cloud computing may be the only fashionable technology that cuts across all of this (hence why everyone is so scared of Google), but even then, people (particularly businesses) are just not ready to give away control of all their data just yet, and roaming data charges – since you’re not always near a free Wifi spot – are still nowhere near the place they need to be at for people to be able to rely on non-local storage entirely. So again, cloud computing is going to co-exist in the overall technology soup with everything else.
I think the next few years are going to be more interesting in technology than the last 20 have been by quite a long way, simply because of the way it’s going to blend into our lives better. Standard office bureaucracies may well be locked into the standard Microsoft PC / Server model for quite a while yet, and power users (me included) are still going to be buying PCs and laptops in addition to specific devices, but outside of that, things are set for major change in multiple directions. I like that – technology, like fashion, should be a personal choice, tailored to your lifestyle, varied and multidimensional depending on your frequently changing environment and needs. The one-size-fits-all model is dead, and I don’t think many outside of Redmond will mourn its passing.
May 1st, 2010 at 2:11 pm
I agree, I hope the “next big thing” however, is proper, open interoperability between all these devices. Because not only do I want my pretty little device to do its work, I want my pretty little device to talk to whatever other little pretty devices I choose to use. As opposed to whatever pretty devices the manufacturer also sells.
May 2nd, 2010 at 2:46 pm
That’s inherent in the trajectory we’re on – to paraphrase Clinton, “It’s the data, stupid”. The fight has already started over who will be the most likely to hold your data for you, and unfortunately openness will most likely be paid lip service to, because it makes no sense for these companies to be truly open in everything. Expect to see interoperability and data exchange between devices, but for data exchange and portability between hosting services to be ‘lossy’ in the sense of value-added elements – things like losing your existing connections to friends / colleagues, losing metadata, breaking up search continuity, etc – all things that will make you more likely to stick with a given provider, all the while your client device base becomes more heterogenous. The device and OS won’t matter in the next couple of decades, the place you keep your data certainly will though.
Personally so far I only use external service providers for transient or backup data storage – ie I don’t mind being dependent on Twitter because I keep no important data there (it all expires fast), my Facebook account has nothing I would care about losing, and I use GMail only as an intermediate route and email backup storage, I still have all my email routed eventually to my own servers. I also use S3 for media hosting. Eventually I’ll probably have to start using cloud services for something more serious, and at that stage there will be some major decisions to be made. I’m putting them off as long as I can to see how the landscape develops.
May 3rd, 2010 at 11:50 am
I’m interested in the attempts to make secure decentralised networks for personal information in ‘the cloud’. I don’t know how they’re going to make it feasible both technically, and socially against networks already set up but as a ideal world that’s where I’d like to see things go.
May 11th, 2010 at 7:36 pm
I think the biggest problem with the cloud (oh god I hate that term) is the problem with privacy. I would never put anything on the cloud because I can never be sure no one else has access to it. Perhaps if the storage was mounted with encryption enabled and I was the only one who knew the key.
This interoperability thing is also a pain in the buttocks. They are trying to eliviate this by having web interfaces to practically everything these days. The only problem is that the web is a piece of shit technology. The biggest problem is that it doesnt seperate data and layout in two distinct parts so for example I can not use data from another site and incorporate it into my own except if by chance the site utilizes a web service. From the beginning the web had a simple and well-defined purpose. Instead of fixing the shortcomings in a reasonable way they just kept adding layer of layers of different technology like Flash, CSS, Java et.c. No, there needs to be a better way to do interoperability. Start by seperating data from layout, then the browser/client can choose to utilize the layout if it wants to or just ignore it and apply its own.
May 11th, 2010 at 11:54 pm
You make it sound like the PC is such a con, but in reality the PC is the platform allowing people to pick and choose their motherboard, CPU, Graphics Card, Audio Card, etc. Maybe you should replace ‘PC’ with ‘Mac’, and then your arguments will hold, since they enforce strict requirements on their hardware and have little to no flexibility. (They make all the decisions for you)
So much hate for the big giant..
May 12th, 2010 at 9:13 am
@jfu: I use the cloud as backup data storage and scalable media hosting environment, for which it’s useful to me. I encrypt all my backup data myself before uploading it to the cloud, meaning I feel fairly happy with the security of it – hosting apps in the cloud where data has to be unencrypted on the server would be another thing entirely and I concur with your concerns there. As regards interoperability, again it depends what you use it for. As a back-end provider cloud services work quite well – media hosting, downloads, streaming etc. Because these are quite generic it’s easy to keep separate from the rest of your environment and potentially switch providers relatively simply.
@KungFooMasta: Way to completely miss the point. I’m not talking about PC vs Mac or that PCs don’t have a role. I’m saying PCs aren’t the way most ordinary people will want to use computing power in their everyday lives – and yes, MS currently has the most to lose from that. How exactly is that hate? I think the fact you think this was a dig at MS says more about your thought processes than mine. If MS come out with a device (or OS on a device) which fits into a consumer’s life better, they’ll be fine too – so far they’re losing that battle to Apple and Google though and have the most vested interest in the status quo – that’s just fact. PCs AND Macs (as in, the full computers) will decline on the consumer end and be more for developers, power users and businesses only, and all companies will need to adjust to that. I also personally think that desktop Linux has run out of time to make a major difference as consumers move to dedicated devices, and that derivatives like Android and MeeGo will quickly eclipse it. Does that appease your MS defensive stance?
May 12th, 2010 at 6:03 pm
I smell UNIX philosophy…
May 13th, 2010 at 12:19 am
I just saw a lot of references to PC, when trying to illustrate the idea of fragmentation.
Also I believe there is a point where fragmentation will become inconvenient to the user. I’ve been using laptops for years, and I cannot forsee the day when I would view my laptop as an inconvenience. And yet its representative of a PC, with an OS that tries to help you do a lot of things. (all in one package)
“I’m saying PCs aren’t the way most ordinary people will want to use computing power in their everyday lives”
I disagree, I take my laptop everywhere and find it highly convenient, I’m sure many others do as well.
May 13th, 2010 at 2:59 am
Yes but simply by the fact that you read this blog, you are a technical ‘power’ user. Most people are not you.
I like to treat PC as a term meaning ‘a small digital computer based on a microprocessor and designed to be used by one person at a time’, mac is just ordinary PC hardware with a nice build, a pretty badge and their own OS.
May 13th, 2010 at 9:14 am
@KungFooMasta: blankthemuffin is on the money. PC != Windows. I know it’s the current fashion to think that, but PC = Personal Computer ie a full generalised computing device with screen, keyboard, mouse, etc. It’s the device & its physical characteristics, not the OS, that I’m talking about here. MS just has the most to lose since they’re the ones with the most exposure to mainstream users’ attachment to full PCs – Apple has always hit the high-end power users with their PCs, and Linux is an enthusiast’s OS – both those markets are ‘sticky’ for full PCs in a way the mainstream consumer is not.
You may find full computers useful, and so do I, and all the techs we talk to. We forget that ordinary people don’t love technology for technology’s sake, and there’s way more of them than there are of us. Talk to any non-tech enthusiast family member and they almost always only have a PC at home because they want email, Facebook, photo processing & web browsing, as a rule. The hoops a full PC makes them jump through for that functionality IS daunting sometimes – the updates, the virus checkers, the software licensing, the form factors – it’s why people like us get called out to help them with their PCs. Give them something that does the core things well, looks stylish, doesn’t require much looking after, and they’ll take it over a PC any day. Netbooks were the first wave in this, but people realised they weren’t that good – they still required updates, the form factor wasn’t great – small but because it’s based on the same interaction as PC it felt cramped and unnatural. Netbooks are a square peg in a round hole – trying to be a full PC without the screen/keyboard space or power. Touch based smartphones were the next wave, and really took off once apps started to be designed specifically for them (iPhone) instead of just trying to shoehorn PC style approaches into a smaller area – and pads will be the one after that. In the end, I think the eventual conclusion for general consumers (not developers / power users) is dedicated devices for the kind of environment they’re in – smartphones on the go, pads in the home / leisure, PCs in the office only. I say multitouch dedicated devices like the iPad and the Android / MeeGo equivalents are going to be huge, despite what blinkered techs like us think about what they *don’t* do. Just because what they *do* do is enough for most ordinary folks, and they’re more fun to use. The techs said the same thing about WIMP interfaces vs command lines, derided the Wii as a sure failure, and the iPhone. Techs don’t know what they’re talking about when it comes to mainstream adoption because we live in a very specialised world with very niche needs. We’ll still have our PCs (windows, mac, linux, whatever), and I expect offices will run on them for a long time yet, but I say that we’ll be in a minority eventually when it comes to recreational use. If you don’t believe me – explain why games consoles sell better than PC gaming rigs. It’s the same reason – a device that’s specialised for the purpose and is plug-in-and-go appeals to the masses.