Ten years ago, the desktop computer was king of personal computing. Laptops were for the rich, mobile phones were the size of car batteries, and pagers were pointing you towards the nearest pay phone. Our friends at the SETI project were using our home computers to help decode signals to track down traces of intelligent life. This was the first trip into "The Cloud" over our blazingly fast 56Kb dial-up modems. We paralleled our MHz processors together to "shred" through GBs of data. This was the life.
Fast forward to today, where I estimate 60% of society is using a phone with the processing capabilities of 25 of these computers combined and internet connections that make the dial up connections of the past look like they're standing still. The Cloud is the new, old, buzzword for 2011. The ability to access 1% of our total data from anywhere in the world is ever so enticing. Tech giants like Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Motorola and Sony, to name a few, are working harder and harder to jam even more power into even smaller form factors. We're literally living in the science fiction world of decades past that not even the most brilliant minds would have imagined.
But I'm telling you right here and right now that within the next 10 years, we'll be in for another wild change that few would have predicted.
In ten short years, we could very well be looking at a world where physical storage is for the web giants only. All of our various gadgets will be breaking free from the harsh realities of the "plugged in" life for good. Your phone will talk to your tablet which will talk to your TV which will talk to your tiny entertainment hub. This vision is what I'll term "Personal Network Distributed Computing" (PNDC).
PNDC means that at any given time, you'll have a wealth of scalable computing power at your disposal. Your active device will use the available processing power from all of your other devices, whether those devices are on or just sleeping. You could be using hundreds of Gigahertz to power through a stunningly real-looking fictional landscape in the newest virtual world, or be blazing through simulations of tectonic plate movement to predict the next mega-quake.
What this means to the average consumer is less expensive gadgets, because there won't be the need for a huge push in processing power in smaller and smaller packages. You'll see more modular system level designs where if you want to add a new function, you can download a new piece of software or purchase a new add on unit. There will be more of a push toward freely upgradable architectures, meaning you won't have to throw away that new phone in 6 months because it became a relic.
Being a fully scalable and modular solution, you'll only buy what you'll need and you'll only use as much as you need. No more, no less. Writing a paper for school? You'll use less than one module's worth of power. Playing video games? The module in your TV and the module in your Entertainment hub is all the power you need. All your data will live in the cloud, so you can access it from any module anywhere at any time.
My favorite thing about this future? It's that I can't even begin to fathom what new tech might surface in that time. Either way, I'll have to wait and see if I'm right.
Until then always remember
It is the Geeks that will inherit the Earth
Sign up here with your email
Like what you see here? Want to rip me a new one? Unleash your verbage here. EmoticonEmoticon