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If you think where we are is amazing,
…wait till you see where we're going!
J. Michael Applegate
President, ProAccess, Inc.
March 2000
"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year." Editor in charge of business books - Prentice Hall - 1957
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." Ken Olson, founder of Digital Equipment Corp. 1977
If you're like me, you are periodically amazed, and maybe a little bit concerned that technology has expanded so rapidly, like a passing freight train, over the last fifty years. In fact it has evolved so fast that even the
experts are continuously underestimating its progress when they make forecasts. A prime example is the adoption of the Internet by both businesses and individuals. An industry pundit recently described the Internet as "the
world's most successful anarchy." It's short on governing rules and long on capability. For this reason many new business opportunities are introduced on the Internet every day.
And what about computers. They have shrunk in size and grown in power literally every few months. One respected study recently found that, if automobiles had made similar progress over the last fifty years, the price of a
luxury car would be only a few hundred dollars today.
In 1980, when most of us thought of a computer, we thought of a large, multi-million dollar mainframe installation at a major corporation or government office. By 1990, when we pictured a computer, the image of a PC came to our
minds. In the early 90s, large businesses began saying that “the network is the computer”.
The Internet is the Computer Today, most industry experts regard the Internet as the computer. This is because the computing environment in which most businesses now operate consists of a computer, a modem and an
Internet connection. All the data we need to conduct our daily business is not necessarily on our desktop PC anymore – and in many cases, not even within the confines of our company. Our email messages may reside with our
Internet service provider and the information we need for transactions with our clients, suppliers and others in our profession often resides on their computers. Examples include the instructions for Social Security or Veterans
benefits and legal or factual research, all of which are now readily available for us and our clients on computers located far from us geographically, but immediately accessible through our modem, across the Internet. Other examples
include our tax filing, banking and investment transactions. The IRS estimates that in 1998, over one half of all returns filed will be electronic. Our banks are giving us immediate access to our accounts through our personal
computers, over the Internet at greatly reduced fees as compared to traditional, solely paper-based accounts. And buying and selling stocks online is catching on like wildfire with fees as low as $7.00 per transaction
available. As a side benefit, investors who use major services, like EShwab and others, can also obtain an unlimited supply of investment research information delivered right to their desktop, whenever they want it.
New Personal Computer From today's vantage point, we can project the confluence of individual technologies within a very short period of time. Advances in miniaturization, satellite technology, battery life, new
materials and manufacturing techniques will all come together shortly to produce a new type of device which will combine the functions of current PCs, telephones, televisions and libraries into one communication and information
device. This new device will finally be fast and easy for anyone to use. It will operate anywhere on earth with access to anywhere else on earth via wireless connection to the Internet. For the sake of simplicity, let's
call this very portable device a "PC." All the technology necessary to implement this device exists, and is in use today. However there are many advancements on the way to market which will make the PC fast enough and
easy enough for anyone to use, and at the same time, cause the price to fall dramatically. The result will most likely be a proliferation of these new "PCs," comparable in scope with the adoption of the telephone.
Need for Speed Having adequate communication bandwidth has been a major hurdle to fast, easy to use computers. The telephone lines, as they exist today, were never intended to carry the data volume thrust through them by
the millions of Internet users. A typical phone line can easily carry the light volume of many simultaneous telephone conversations, representing only a few thousand bytes of voice data per second. A computer, connected to the
Internet will respond slowly when transmitting the current effective maximum of 28,800 bytes of data per second over a telephone line. As an interim step, modem vendors have been able to push this old envelope to as much as 56,000
bytes per second with various data compression techniques. However, as with any highway at rush hour when the traffic load reaches a level that is greater than the highway was designed to handle, a frustrating traffic jam is the
result. To let a computer transmit freely with no perceptible delay for the user, it needs to send and receive data at an unimpeded 1,500,000 bytes per second. Even at this rate, a 15 Megabyte file, such as the latest version of
your favorite browser, would take ten seconds to download.
Companies are bringing new networking technologies to the market every day. Cable companies began delivering Internet service via TV cable and cable modems within this past year. The phone companies and others will begin
delivering high-speed Internet access over regular phone lines by late 1998 using a new technology called DSL. However each of these solutions has a built in limitation the limitation of data carrying capacity (bandwidth) of the
telephone line. The launch of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) communication satellites, which has already begun, will enable a PC located anywhere in the world to have high-speed, remote access to any other PC across the Internet. The
rapid growth of 3rd World countries will fuel the growth of wireless, satellite communication. Their lack of modern telephone infrastructure makes implementation of wireless communication more cost effective than traditional
wire-based or even fibre optic infrastructures. This initial demand should quickly drive down the price of telecommunications to attractive levels for individual users.
Smaller and Stronger There are a number of other technological advances that, when coupled with unlimited bandwidth, will make the dream of simple, fast computing a reality. New data storage technology will put thousands
of times the amount of data in the same space now occupied by today’s disk drives. Quantum computing and other processor advances will improve processor speeds through incorporating multiple processors into one
computer. Instead of using one processor, as most PC’s do today, the computing function will then be comprised of a large number of individual processors working in parallel to accomplish the computing task. This structure
is much more efficient and more closely replicates the thought process used by the human brain. Advances in miniaturization and new materials have also recently led to smaller, more powerful batteries. In the past year alone,
portable computers have seen battery lives extended from an average of 1.5 hours per charge to over 8 hours on some new models.
A Question of Control A fundamental marketing choice has yet to be made by the customer: “Will we use a barely intelligent PC and pay access fees for processing power, storage space and programs, or will we
continue to own and control our software and data?” A contingent of hardware manufacturers is attempting to promote a new device called a Network Computer (NC) to replace the Personal Computer (PC). In theory, users would
pay less for an NC “appliance” and then pay usage and access fees to use software programs and lease space to store their data, both of which would reside on a central computer, accessed via the Internet and stored at some
remote location in cyberspace. To date the NC concept has been viewed skeptically by all but those who are new to computing. However, many feel a dual-market scenario may evolve in which a vast group of new computer users may be
stimulated to enter the Internet community through purchase of an NC appliance. These same users will subsequently graduate to a more robust PC product once they reach the functional limitation of the NC, want more control over their
programs and data, or become disenchanted with its metered pricing strategy. A current example of an NC device is the Web TV terminal.
If the past is any guide, a year from now technology will have a greater place in both our business and personal lives than any of us can accurately forecast today. Should we hop aboard this fast moving train today, or wait a year
until computers are faster, cheaper and easier to use – and until some of the confusion gets sorted out for us in the mean time? Once again, if the past is any guide, those who enter the computer age and get onboard that train,
will leave the non-computer users far behind. A year from now they will look back and realize that the opportunities are with them on that train and it won’t ever be going back for those left behind, still waiting at the station.
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." Thomas Watson, founder of IBM, 1943
Commenting on the microchip. "... but what is it good for?" Advanced Computing Systems Engineer, IBM, 1968
"640K ought to be enough for anybody." Bill Gates, 1981
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