- The NEW IDEA does not immediately come together with the best realization or application. Sometimes it even needs the advancements in related technologies. In other words, there is always some space to IMPROVE it.
- IMPROVEMENT itself will eventually halt and the time will come when you just cannot make it any better, and you need NEW IDEA: new algorithm, new technology or method, sometimes even new people :-).
Now back to those advancements: here you have the series of the latest news and I will leave it up to you to decide which of them are borrowed and which are really new (some were still predictions - it was written in 1998):
- IBM is working on highest disk density: 3 terabytes (3 millions of megabytes) per square inch of the disk surface. Where is the limit?
- Your cellular phone will eventually collect your e-mail, paychecks, navigate you through streets and also have a speech recognition (I guess we would not need to listen to it anymore, just get the excerpt of it :-)
- While some computers have already 64 bit CPU, we may go up to 256 bits
- Electronic toilet: heated seat, washing jets, digital timer, pre-recorded flushing sounds to mask those embarrassing sounds, all that sold for measly $4000
- With war in Kosovo, the hostilities spread also into cyber-world, mainly WEB and communications. Could it be that our over-computerized world has one weakest point since we have - at best - only semi-intelligent computers (?)
- Internet connection will be wireless
- The medical science will eliminate most of diseases
- Human engineering will achieve incredible feats
- Computers will tap info directly from our brains
- Major world problems will be solved
Now for freebees:
- some companies now offer free Internet access but the customers will have to carry some advertising
- in Alaska, you get free Internet access from one telephone company, if you subscribe to their long distance call program
- You probably already heard about 10,000 free PCs, given away to those customers who will fit certain advertising profile
- Free advertising, free merchandise, free e-mail, free love, you name it. But still no free lunches :-). How about getting some free time; I haven't got too much of it lately . . .
Again, I was shocked with recent statistics: half of homes in United States have at least one PC! That means from now on, WEB netizens are the majority of population and don't you ever forget it!
Another interesting bit: in 1998, an average browser (yes - the person, I do not mean Internet Explorer or Netscape!) was browsing Net at work three times a week while home users only twice a week. And if in 1996 he/she spent only 14 minutes per session, today it is 55 minutes! Now I did some extrapolation (only linear - the conservative one) and calculated that in the year 2020 he/she will spend 8 hours per session and will access the net every day. And of course everybody will have two computers - one at work and one at home!
Now that's the interesting food for thought, but it would hardly fill your dinner plate: I do not think the employers will be paying you just for browsing (if you are not government employee, that is :-). Now you may object that the access speed will be also much quicker, but so will be our hunger for more information. We are already spending more time with our e-mail than we used to spend with our snail-mail, and that's mainly because it is so fast and handy . . .