IBM: The 'next big thing' no longer exists

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Reminds me of an interview

I got the Collector's Edition of "Tron" a few years ago on DVD. In a segment on plans for a sequel (which are now dead), the original director, Steven Lisberger, was talking about the state of technology up to that point (about 2002), and said we've come a certain distance in technology that's been developed, and now people are sitting back and looking at it, and saying, "Okay. How do we use this?" He said he believed that technology will always move forward, saying something like, "There's *got* to be more to this," and, "I can't believe we created all this technology just to end up with a glorified phone system." I agree. However, I think there's more to be done in the broadband space. The next big step is internet television, commonplace teleconferencing via. the internet, etc. Asian countries are far ahead of us in these areas. We're bogged down by regulated monopolies that have a lot of power (I speak of the telecommunications and cable companies). Asian countries are speeding ahead with a torrent of bandwidth. Meanwhile we're trying to suck as much as we can out of a garden hose.

I think perhaps what the IBM rep. was speaking of was innovation in the PC form factor, both hardware and software, and that the "big things" that produced have already been done. The next computing breakthrough I think will come along will be photonic processors, which could break through the present speed barrier that silicon has run into.

There was a period like this in the 1970s, when mainframes were the computers most organizations used, and the market for that had been established, and it appeared there was nothing new on the horizon. Eventually PCs came along, and shook the whole thing up. I think innovation will continue, but I think the rep. from IBM is right in one respect: that increasingly the innovations with technology will go unseen. In other words, there will be no next "big thing" in technology where people in society will focus so much attention on the technology. Instead, the innovations will be incorporated into products or services that hide it. It will just show up as something that's smaller, lighter, easy to use, that you can pick up at your local Wal-Mart or Target store; or something you can access through the internet.

Posted by: Mark Miller   Posted on: 03/15/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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