HAVE YOU BEEN SURFING THE WEB LATELY, LOOKING FOR FUTURE
SHOCK? HERE'S A SAMPLING:
"Media Fusion is saying that they're close
-- within one year -- of being able to transmit data at exobits
per second (one exobit/second is one billion gigabits/second!)
over the power grid, bringing a "highly conservative" end-user
data rate of 2.5 gigabits per second to any electric plug
connected to the power grid ..."
"Industry Canada is seriously considering a proposal that would
bring gigabit-speed Internet capabilities and fibre into every
Canadian home by 2005. The access bandwidth could scale from
as little as a few megabits per second to a mind boggling several
terabits per second".
"Silkroad, Inc. has just demonstrated 93
gigabits/second over a single 62-mile fiber, without
the need for amplifiers to regenerate the signal along the
way, and without using Wavelength Division Multiplexing".
"Terabit Optical Internet products from Nortel and Pluris
--Pluris Inc., a start-up based in Cupertino, California,
disclosed plans to build an Internet core router scaling up
to 184 Tbps of aggregate switching capacity".
"Bell Labs demonstrates 10xGigabit Ethernet--
Bell Labs will demonstrate the first 10 Gbps Ethernet
multiplexer at this week's NetWorld+Interop show in
Las Vegas".
"The city of Palo Alto, California will begin a limited trial
of fiber-to-home connectivity. The city already owns and operates
a 29-mile municipal fiber ring".
"Gigabit
Ethernet has replaced ATM as the favored campus backbone infrastructure
due to its simplicity and cost-effectiveness. ASIC
chips for gigabit Ethernet are expected to lower gigabit Ethernet
prices from $1,000 per port to $200 to $300 per port".
"Seiko builds TCP/IP into a chip -- Initial applications
may include adding e-mail functions to a cell phone or enhancing
a wireless modem to let a wireless LAN seamlessly link with
a cellular provider, allowing a PC to access a corporate LAN
from any location".
"Broadcom yesterday demonstrated a new chip
that can send data over existing copper-wire lines at least
10 times faster than is currently possible. The chip can send
data at speeds of up to 1 Gbps per second".
"video-on-demand over the Internet is destined to be the primary
source of video content, not only in homes, but in offices as
well".
"AOL in the next several weeks plans to unveil
a range of devices that can access the Internet without needing
a PC".
And what does all this mean for us Mac Lovers?
It means that in the fairly near future, it’s the Network
that’s going to be King of Computing, and not the box under
your desk (or on your lap.)
And when I say "Network", I mean not just the
LAN or the WAN, but -- and far more importantly -- the granddaddy
of all networks: the Internet.
What happens, for instance, when you can access a file over
the Net actually faster than you can access it from your
own hard drive? As our own Dearly Beloved and Utterly Fearless
Interim Leader for Life, Steve Jobs, says in his now-famous
MacOS X Server Demo QuickTime movie, even 100 Mbps Ethernet
is often faster than accessing your own hard drive. Terabit
Ethernet -- let alone Exobit -- is literally thousands of times
faster.
So what does all this presage? The end of the hard
disk? All software accessed over the Net? A mind-boggling
choice of programs? The OS just a portal to the Network? Everything
else just a Plug-In?
Who knows. But the future, as they say, ain’t what it used to
be: and Apple, if it wants to survive, had better prepare for
it right now.
I for one can easily foresee a time -- and that
too, well before my kids are in college -- when I'll have
just one program on my Mac: the MacOS. Upon booting up it
will immediately put me on the Internet (and since there won't
be any extensions needed, I'd boot up a lot faster than today,
maybe even instant-on -- after all, the entire OS could be
Firmware.) For whatever else I need to do, I'll open software
programs from all over the Net, the connection to which being
thousands of times faster than accessing my present hard drive,
will pop into view the very moment I point and click.
(Heck, even now I can near-instantly use cgi-based loan and
mortgage calculators from all over the Web, without loading
anything at all on my hard disk: and that too, using a mere
snail’s-pace 10-Mbps ADSL connection. A Terabyte Internet connection
will allow me to open and use even Photoshop or InDesign
with equal rapidity and ease, right from Adobe’s own Web site.
Maybe I could buy a lifetime license to use all their programs
from their site for a payment of a few tens of dollars, the
transaction also conducted over the ’Net.)
Or
better still, I'd use just the features I need, not entire
software packages: all directly over the Net, no downloading
needed. (Remember my article entitled Simplicity?)
Yahoo might one day have a category entitled "Software
Features", where I can access any software feature I want,
right from my MacOS desktop: even the most sophisticated (like
3-D modelling or animation) for just pennies. My Mac, capable
of doing anything any computer can do, for much less than
you’d ever have imagined.
Since the box or on my desk (or lap) will have almost nothing
in it but a processor and a network card, it will be very inexpensive
-- and very small and very light. Heck, the CPU and networking
could be built right into the monitor, like the Twentieth
Anniversary Mac, or into the keyboard, like the old Atari
ST. The computer, in fact, could well be reduced to just
monitor, mouse and keyboard, all together weighing less than
a pound.
Yep, the future ain’t what it used to be, even in
Isaac Asimov’s time. Quite the contrary.It’s a
lot more fascinating than it used to be!
... (not his real name -- but you figured that out already,
right?) ... calls himself a "Thinker", especially about the
future. He thinks that's where he'll be spending the rest
of his life (but who's he kidding, eh? Doesn't he realize
it's always going to be now?)
Most people say to him "You can't be serious" -- and they're
right, he can't. (But then, who can be serious about
the future, seeing as how anything can happen in it, and usually
does ... er, will?)
His best book -- indeed his only book -- is entitled The
Seventh Generation, and its shareware version in Adobe
Acrobat format is available for download from his alter-ego's
web site (under construction right now) at http://cpu2308.adsl.bellglobal.com.
It's all about the next 150 years or so, and where technology
might take us in that amount of time. (Just $5.00 -- cheap!
And well worth it, though he says so himself). Check it out.
Copyright 1996-2007 by Cider Press Publishing LLC all rights reserved. MacReviewZone is not authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Computer. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iPod, iBook, iMac, eMac, and PowerBook are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.
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