{"id":55,"date":"2008-08-01T21:06:32","date_gmt":"2008-08-02T02:06:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theboobiehatch.com\/tbh\/blaarg\/?p=55"},"modified":"2022-02-04T07:32:23","modified_gmt":"2022-02-04T12:32:23","slug":"where-is-all-the-tech-going","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.briandeyo.us\/index.php\/2008\/08\/01\/where-is-all-the-tech-going\/","title":{"rendered":"Where is all the tech going?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few months ago while living in Tucson, I read a book aptly named “Being Digital”\u00a0by Nicholas Negroponte.\u00a0\u00a0This book has over the last year or so given me great pause when considering the future of our technology.\u00a0 We have cell phones, PDA’s, computers in our kitchen, cars, bathroom sinks, and we even have our digital music players.<\/p>\n

To most people Nicholas Negroponte is a very unfamiliar name.\u00a0\u00a0 He was an instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is one of the most respected icons of technology.\u00a0 His brainchild is the\u00a0One Laptop Per Child <\/strong>www.laptop.org<\/strong><\/a> program that is now distributing hundreds of thousands of low-cost incredibly well-designed and unfathomably “awesome” laptops to ever exist!\u00a0 The laptop is humbly described on their website:<\/p>\n

\n

“The laptop has rounded edges. The integrated handle is kid-sized, as is the sealed, rubber-membrane keyboard. The novel, dual-mode, extra-wide touchpad supports pointing, as well as drawing and writing.”<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This device is so incredibly well thought-out and engineered it can be recharged from a car-battery if nothing else can be available.\u00a0 How does someone come up with ideas this great?\u00a0 The XO<\/strong> as it is called is such a perfect example of where our technology can go.<\/p>\n

Is there a reason the computer industry still produces laptops that don’t ALL have touch-screens?\u00a0 Why don’t we all have laptop batteries that are so\u00a0tolerant they don’t catch fire in our laps?\u00a0 The integration and culmination of our daily and mundane; yet increasingly, complex computer systems is going to be the next frontier.<\/p>\n

How come when most people plug in their iPod it doesn’t automatically sync, and play on their new computer?\u00a0 Where is the integration with your mp3’s?\u00a0 Speaking of MP3’s what computer did you leave that song on?\u00a0 “Was that on my desktop at work… or my desktop at home?\u00a0 Do I even own that CD anymore?”<\/p>\n

These complex and reoccurring conversations going on in everyone’s heads need to be addressed and massaged away by the silky-smooth future of tech that will be essential to integrated systems of the future.\u00a0 For example say I have a stereo playing in my living room, and I need to go to the kitchen, but I don’t want to miss this song and I can’t hear anything from my kitchen?\u00a0 Why can’t the stereo I have in the kitchen recognize that the signal is closer to those speakers, and the music should switch off from the living room, but start in the kitchen?\u00a0 These items are coming… I remember when Java was first mentioned when I was going to college.\u00a0 Java was touted as the computer programming language that would evolve into our refrigerators talking to our toaster, and the toaster talking to the microwave.\u00a0 it was being hailed in textbooks from 1996 as the gateway language that would run on any kind of computer you could imagine.<\/p>\n

Whether or is Java or not; and I’m not sure since I no longer spend time programming, the mechanisms that enable our computer to talk to our other computer, and the iPod to talk to the Blackberry are here.\u00a0 Devices are being produced now with better capabilities than my wildest dreams as a kid.\u00a0 The field of computer science is being moved into a world of converging technologies that are present in everyone’s life.<\/p>\n

Microsoft recently extended to me an opportunity to joy in a “tech preview” of one of their upcoming products.\u00a0 It is called Windows Live Mesh or <\/strong>Mesh<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>for short.\u00a0 What using Mesh has allowed me to do, was simply unheard of to me when I first started using it.\u00a0 I’ve read that other products existed before Mesh,\u00a0 so Microsoft is not the only company working on this, but for the ease of use that a Beta product has offered me is attestable to a company\u00a0trying to get something\u00a0done\u00a0well.<\/p>\n

I have a desktop at work, a laptop at home, a laptop for work, an old ActiveSync device, and my blackberry (and a pager that work gave me, but lets not talk about that).\u00a0\u00a0 Unless I’m spending half of my day remembering what computer I have my pictures and MP3’s on, I lose track.\u00a0 Then I find myself with 5 copies of the same thing.\u00a0 Then I have to spend hours trying to figure it out, and either keeping 5 copies of every file that’s important, or simply having one device, which as anyone with a crashed drive will tell you is… a bad idea.\u00a0 Since I have to keep 5 copies of everything, and *need* those devices so much, I spend multiple hours of my life every week trying to keep my copies up to date.\u00a0 Do I have all the files in all the right places?<\/p>\n

I don’t have to worry about that kind of garbage with Mesh.\u00a0 Mesh runs quietly in the background and syncs all my data with my 3 computers.\u00a0 (Since its still in development, the plugins are not out yet for the Windows Mobile device, or the blackberry, but they are coming.)\u00a0 So any folder I click and “add to my mesh” automatically syncs with my other PC’s whenever they turn on.\u00a0 That’s fantastic to me.\u00a0 Less time wasted since I always have a copy of everything I might need.<\/p>\n

Ubiquity amongst our devices are coming.\u00a0 My Bluetooth headset works with my phone, my computers, and if I had one, a new Ford equipped with Bluetooth.\u00a0\u00a0 Where is all this tech going?\u00a0 It’s going to be ubiquitous in our lives.\u00a0 Computer technology will for the rest of time (unless madmen have their way) be a part, and at times an integral portion of generations of people to come.\u00a0 They have started and someday will become so partnered with living your daily life, that our gadgets have become just another household appliance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few months ago while living in Tucson, I read a book aptly named “Being Digital”\u00a0by Nicholas Negroponte.\u00a0\u00a0This book has over the last year or so given me great pause when considering the future of our technology.\u00a0 We have cell phones, PDA’s, computers in our kitchen, cars, bathroom sinks, and we even have our digital …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[103,342,341,147,343,10,318,62],"tags":[105],"class_list":["post-55","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-free-beer","category-life","category-non-fiction","category-or-free-horse","category-tech","category-the-future","category-xo-and-olpc","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.briandeyo.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.briandeyo.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.briandeyo.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.briandeyo.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.briandeyo.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.briandeyo.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1532,"href":"https:\/\/www.briandeyo.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions\/1532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.briandeyo.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.briandeyo.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.briandeyo.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}