Personal computing plateau

[Analyzer]

As far as technology/information technology as a field I definitely see how its growing and will keep growing.

However in the short term(20-30 years), I feel like personal computing and technology companies like Oracle/Microsoft/Apple will plateau or are reaching it. With cloud computing and it's efficiency, traditional operating systems seem to be something of the past and the internet the new "operating system". Personal use of computers will be done on the internet or be connected with it, so I see a decline in use of technology related to development of traditional operating systems/databases. With this occurring the majority of jobs and growth in personal computing will be related to web technologies and mobile hardware. The whole of idea of a desktop/laptop could become obsolete, as I can just have a mobile device connect it to a monitor and keyboard use a server on the cloud.

The main areas where I see information technology have tremendous growth and opportunities are in intergration with other industries mainly education/medicine/energy. As an isolated industry I feel as it will die.

Any thoughts?

 

[Inappropriate Behavior]

Not sure about energy but hasn't these technologies been intergrating with education and medicine for years now?

 

[scorpiomover]

Plateaued about 2000.

As for the internet, things were moving towards integrated tech. But WAP never really made it. Thing that's really been successful, were the smartphone apps. But they are just widgets.

Plus, as much as moving everything to the internet sounds cool, cloud technology isn't exactly secure. You don't know where the data is stored, or who has access to it. Also, every time you access your data, you expose it to being picked up by nefavious characters on the internet, unless it's passed via https and secure transfer, and so far as I see, that's not automatically the case. Plus, social networking sites are moving towards an entirely different privacy model. More and more of them are changing their rules, and saying that from now on, all your pics and data, are THEIRS to do with as they wish, and they are selling them on, to marketing databases. I was reading about one the other day, and it's pissed all of their users off, big time, and many are now saying they will leave. Far too many people are uncomfortable with their private pictures being used all over the place, for all sorts of reasons, to be happy to keep everything on the web anymore. Then there are all the businesses. They HAVE to have secure data. So they will never put their data on a cloud network, until it's 100% secure, and right now, it seems to be the opposite.

So for the time being, desktop apps are very much in demand. Just not with the iPhone crowd.

 

[Coolydudey]

There will always be use for offline (and more secure) systems, although it's quite possible that one would be able to access large amounts of computing power over the Internet etc. I still see this as being useless for games and so on though, unless you have fiver optics.

 

[Words]

Good stuff. Yes yes. 20-30 years seems about right. personal computing is still being developed but we can clearly see an increase in collective-techno centrism. And its only rational/natural since resource wise, its much more efficient. Technological demand/expectation thresholds shifts, so that'll diminish personal technology even further. Because there's no personal techno alternative if all is focused on connectivity. Security is a small price to pay for this.

 

[Architect]

Plateaued about 2000.

No it didn't. How could you say that? I work in the field and my job has entirely changed - fundamentally - in that time. If you're not paying too close attention to the field you could make this mistake however.

As far as technology/information technology as a field I definitely see how its growing and will keep growing.

However in the short term(20-30 years), I feel like personal computing and technology companies like Oracle/Microsoft/Apple will plateau or are reaching it.

No, extremely unlikely. The opposite is going to happen actually. Kurzweil has plotted out the curve of IT and it's been an exponential trend for any timescale you want to look at. Taking IT in a broad sense and including evolution (a completely accurate assessment in my estimation but which is a different discussion) it tracks perfectly back to the beginning of life.

I understand that from a - excuse me shallow perspective this might seem so, the fact is that things have fundamentally changed due to IT and will continue.

A single example – social networking. I'm not a big social networker, I hate Facebook and I only use Google plus little bit. I mainly use email, and I spend a fair bit of time on this board (probably too much). But over the summer I went to a family reunion. It was boring in a way, not at all like the last time we got together. The reason was because of social networking we are all much more connected now. I feel in contact with them all of the time, which was certainly not the case 15 years ago.

Another example, voice recognition. This post has been entirely dictated by voice at a speed far greater than they were taken for me to type, and with 99% accuracy. Try that in 2000!

In Grad school (late '90's) one of our superservers had a Gigabyte of RAM. An a-fucking gigabyte, it cost $100,000! I wet my pants. A few months ago I got an iPhone with a gig of RAM.

 

[scorpiomover]

No it didn't. How could you say that? I work in the field and my job has entirely changed - fundamentally - in that time. If you're not paying too close attention to the field you could make this mistake however.

Office pretty much plateau'd at 1997. More functions were available afterwards. But nothing that wasn't available before in another form, and in a form that people used.

You are making the mistake of a typical introvert, looking at things only from one's POV.

No, extremely unlikely. The opposite is going to happen actually. Kurzweil has plotted out the curve of IT and it's been an exponential trend for any timescale you want to look at. Taking IT in a broad sense and including evolution (a completely accurate assessment in my estimation but which is a different discussion) it tracks perfectly back to the beginning of life.

I understand that from a - excuse me shallow perspective this might seem so, the fact is that things have fundamentally changed due to IT and will continue.

A single example – social networking. I'm not a big social networker, I hate Facebook and I only use Google plus little bit. I mainly use email, and I spend a fair bit of time on this board (probably too much).

Yeah, social networking changed. But what's surprised me, is HOW it's changed. People go on Facebook to see their friends, not to look up people to hang out with. That's the way they used to use the phone.

People look on Twitter. But Twitter reads like gossip, and gossip's been around forever.

Craigslist is the newest invention, and that's just alt.sex bulletin boards, which have been around since the 80s.

But over the summer I went to a family reunion. It was boring in a way, not at all like the last time we got together. The reason was because of social networking we are all much more connected now. I feel in contact with them all of the time, which was certainly not the case 15 years ago.

You may be interested in this article, from this thread. It's about how Google affects your concentration. Social networking probably affects your appreciation for face-to-face encounters. It's probably not that different to all those young guys who got so hooked on porn, that they stopped findingr real-life girls attractive.

Another example, voice recognition. This post has been entirely dictated by voice at a speed far greater than they were taken for me to type, and with 99% accuracy. Try that in 2000!

The technology was there. It just made a lot of errors.

In Grad school (late '90's) one of our superservers had a Gigabyte of RAM. An a-fucking gigabyte, it cost $100,000! I wet my pants. A few months ago I got an iPhone with a gig of RAM.

Really? Seems quite a lot. In the year 2000, my brother got a new PC. It had a gig of RAM as well.

 

[Architect]

Office pretty much plateau'd at 1997. More functions were available afterwards. But nothing that wasn't available before in another form, and in a form that people used.

You are making the mistake of a typical introvert, looking at things only from one's POV.

But you're looking at a single example, a lone application. Some particular technologies will become essentially perfected, such as office. You're missing the point however, which is from a global perspective the totality of IT has changed/advanced enormously. Taking your example, I used Office daily up until 2003. Now I use it maybe once a year. Why? No need, other/better ways of communicating. Back then I had to print out slides and put them on an overhead to communicate (what a pain that was, when the printer would jam right before a meeting!) Now I'll just do a live video feed to whoever I'm communicating with, or one of many other methods. In the future I'll have a telepresence robot in Asia and Europe when I want to work with them.

Speaking of which, somewhere around 2000 we had a special room and equipment for doing video meetings from Japan. Expensive, needed to schedule it, poor quality, too formal and didn't work well. Now I can do it from my desk. My kid plays video games with his cousin - they Facetime each other while playing so they can communicate on the gameplay. Virtual playdate.

The technology was there. It just made a lot of errors.

My point, precisely. Soon we'll be able to read out your verbalizations directly from the brain, the technology is appearing in the research labs.

Yeah, social networking changed. But what's surprised me, is HOW it's changed. People go on Facebook to see their friends, not to look up people to hang out with. That's the way they used to use the phone.

Right. I'm not looking at it from a introverted POV, but from a Ti/Ne global point of view (where I spend 99% of my time)

Really? Seems quite a lot. In the year 2000, my brother got a new PC. It had a gig of RAM as well.

OK Mid '90's, 1995. So we went from $50k to a few hundred bucks in a five years.

Attention Class!

Ultimately you folks are being good prototypical INTP's. Ti is a discerning type of thinking, better at naysaying, finding fault (even where it doesn't exist), 'why not' rather than 'why', and dissecting than the positive Te which is a constructive type of thinking. I did the same extensively when I was young, until I learned the error of applying it too much. Missed a lot of opportunities that way. C.f. Lenore Thompson

 

[Analyzer]

I understand that from a - excuse me shallow perspective this might seem so, the fact is that things have fundamentally changed due to IT and will continue.

As someone who has been in the field for a good amount of time, what do you foresee as potential things that can change due to IT?

Like I stated in my original post, I can see the whole medical field transforming due to IT. More efficiency due to more "automated" diagnoisis, better communicaiton between patients and doctors, and the use robotics. In education I can see most forms of learning being through software, essentially e-learning. Also, 3D printers can finally be the link between the digital world and physical world, totally changing the way humans view materialism.

 

[Architect]

As someone who has been in the field for a good amount of time, what do you foresee as potential things that can change due to IT?

Nearly everything. It's already happening. Take any field you care to, seemingly unrelated to IT, say ... farming. Years ago I thought about robots that would manage the fields. They could tirelessly individually weed, without the need for any pesticides. Now they exist, it's not a difficult problem at this point. Whether we'll see widespread adoption is an economic question.

Like I stated in my original post, I can see the whole medical field transforming due to IT.

Precisely, medical science is and always has been an information technology, since it's about applying the correct knowledge to the correct problem. It's already happening, as Watson (the IBM computer which won at Jeopardy) is being taught to make medical diagnosis.

For a simpler example, I went in recently for an xray, and got email notification with my results online a few hours later. Logged into my account with all my previous test results, with short notes from the Dr about each one.

Also, 3D printers can finally be the link between the digital world and physical world, totally changing the way humans view materialism.

Yes exactly. For myself however 3D printing isn't that exciting.

 

[Vrecknidj]

Paul Jacobs was on Charlie Rose last night (02 Jan, 2013); the interview was informative.

http://www.charlierose.com/

Dave