The future of computing looks set to be as fascinating as its past.
In the first of a new series of articles focusing on future
technology developments, Danny Bradbury examines how far we have
come and where we are heading
It is amazing how off-track science fiction can be when
predicting the future. Films made in the early 1960s and set in the
late 1980s showed people whizzing around in flying saucers and
wearing silver jumpsuits, while any 1950s book trying to depict
life in the year 2000 generally described citizens using levitating
cars and living in houses in the sky.
While our feet - and our cars - have remained firmly on the
ground, technological progress has had a huge impact on society in
other ways. However, these changes took a little longer to get
going than people first predicted, according to John White, CEO of
the Association of Computing Machines (ACM), an industry body
promoting scientific and educational computing founded in 1947.
White joined the ACM in 1999 after spending 18 years working at
Xerox Parc, the research group set up by Xerox, now famous for its
technological innovation but infamous for its inability to
commercialise it.
White argues that computing did not have an immediate impact on
daily life until the advent of the microcomputer, a hobbyist market
in the late 1970s, which exploded into the business world with the
advent of the PC in 1981. At this point, computers were finally put
in front of employees, and presented as tools to minimise their
workload and maximise their output.
At least, that was the idea. Paul Ceruzzi, a curator at the
Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum, and author
of several books on the history of computing, says that the PC
revolution went largely unrealised until networking really took
off. "I said in 1991 that computers were wonderful but they still
could not communicate with each other," he says. Since then, adds
Ceruzzi, the revolution in communications has exceeded his
expectations.
What is interesting is the way in which the computing industry
has fallen short of certain expectations, says Ceruzzi. "2001: A
Space Odyssey will come of age this year," he says, recalling the
film of Arthur C Clarke's book, in which an artificially
intelligent computer [HAL] begins to make decisions on behalf of
its masters. "Everyone is thinking of voice recognition but we do
not have the same type of human understanding that HAL had. We are
not very near it, and no-one seems very optimistic." Yet clearly,
it was imagined that this would happen in the real world - replace
each of the letters in HAL with the one immediately following it in
the alphabet, and what do you get?
Indeed, as Ceruzzi says, technology has progressed in an
unpredictable fashion so far. For example, with notable exceptions
(think about the miniature computers that doubled as communicators
in Star Trek, for example), many depictions of future computer
technology in the science fiction of yesteryear involved huge boxes
with flashing lights and whirling tapes. These were replicas of
computers that already existed. In fact, computer formats have
changed dramatically. "You can have tiny things that can be
implanted in people's skin. Each thing will have its own Web
address. That is not science fiction, that is happening now," says
Ceruzzi. Although, to be fair, Kevin Warwick, the UK science
professor who has made a name for himself by embedding chips into
his body so that it can communicate with computers in his office
and house, has attracted as much ridicule as admiration.
While science fiction such as that by William Gibson explores
the possibilities of merging the body with the machine, real world
organisations are trying to move technology forward as fast as they
can. The signs also indicate that development cycles are getting
shorter. Technology generally develops in waves - at the peak of a
wave a new technological innovation is made, although it is still
under-utilised and generally expensive. As the technology becomes a
commodity, everyone concentrates on commercialising it, creating a
trough in which the industry's energy is focused on developing an
existing technology. As the commercial and technical possibilities
of the technology mature, many start looking for new technologies
with higher margins, and a new wave begins.
In recent years, this seems to have been happening more quickly.
Technology developments in the microprocessor industry, for
example, are moving ahead at an amazing pace thanks to Moore's Law,
which said that the number of transistors on a processor would
double every 18 months. When they approached the physical limits of
fabrication technology, companies have considered moving to new
processes such as X-ray-based fabrication, for example. "You can
even anticipate a research breakthrough, which sounds impossible
when you describe it, but in fact computer manufacturers account
for increases in processor speeds," says Ceruzzi.
Part of the reason for this is that researchers have to be more
accountable in the commercial environment. White believes that
traditional pure research is under threat because research
operations these days are under pressure to deliver commercial
goods. "Internet start-ups and others are having to deliver
innovation in reduced time cycles, so what is the role of long-term
research in a competitive environment?" he asks. "Many
organisations that had established research centres are wondering
what to do with them. It really redefines the game."
Nevertheless, some believe that commercial research will be
responsible for the next quantum leaps in computing technology. One
such company is Hewlett-Packard, which has been conducting research
into molecular storage that, HP scientists believe, will deliver
consumer products within the next 10 years. Both commercial and
academic developments are contributing to an unprecedented
acceleration in technology development within a number of key
areas.
Over the coming months, Computer Weekly will examine
different areas of technology in detail to find out what you can
expect in the coming years - and when.
Analysts continue to run riot predicting ridiculously steep
growth curves for new technologies, and in some cases they are
accurate, but such growth curves have become a clich‚ in the IT
industry. The truth is that it is difficult to predict with any
accuracy how accepted a certain technology will become, especially
as new and explosive industry developments can catch vendors off
guard. Nevertheless, it is possible at least to look at what is
going on in the labs now, and to make predictions about if and when
these developments will become commercially viable. It is going to
be an exciting series.
Look out for The Future of IT: Part II in two weeks'
time
Fifty years of ICT - the highlights
According to the ACM's John White, the following are the three
most significant developments in computing technology in the last
50 years:
The introduction of the PC
Prior to the PC, computing was available through time sharing
systems, but it was not available to employees on an ad hoc basis,
and certainly was not universally available in the home.
Consequently, it was used in large-scale data processing, but the
social impact was indirect, resulting in, for example, more
efficient processing of customer records or social security
information. The creation of personal computers and related
software enabled individuals to process information and carry out
tasks more rapidly. The spreadsheet and the word processor are two
of the most important software developments in the history of
computing.
Distributed client-server computing
The problem with personal computers was that they only provided
access to information on the mainframe (if you were lucky). What
was needed was a more localised client that could be used to
distribute information to PCs and also to share the workload with
it. Finally, the PC could be used to process data provided by the
back-end servers. Distributed client-server computing was rapidly
adopted by the industry. But White still does not think the true
productivity potential of the PC client was realised until the next
major landmark:
The widespread adoption of the Internet
The Internet, which has been around since the late 1960s,
finally became commercially significant in the mid-1990s and grew
quickly to be a standard means of communication. The industry-wide
acceptance of the TCP communications stack, which standardised
communications at most levels of the old open systems
interoperability (OSI) stack, facilitated this and was therefore
one of the most important developments in the last 20 years.
Coming next
The Future of IT series will explore the different areas of
technology in which significant progress is being made, outlining
what developments are expected, and when. We will also examine the
impact that they are likely to make on our working lives.
Networks
Networking technology is already undergoing a revolution with
the introduction of quality-of-service technology such as Diffserv
and Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS). But some pundits are
anticipating further developments in the area of self-configuring
networks that create and destroy their own logical subnets based on
traffic patterns. And there are other significant areas of
progress, including the slow development of 2.5G and 3G cellular
networks, and the related issue of pervasive computing, in which
networked services are accessible from a variety of devices over
different communications media.
Processing
Companies have been pushing the envelope in the microprocessor
market by using lithography techniques to create chips with
increasingly smaller die-sizes. As they reach the limits of
physics, companies are exploring techniques such as X-rays and
other special light wavelengths to create even smaller electrical
components on silicon. Moving even further ahead, technologies such
as molecular and quantum computing are appearing on the
horizon.
Displays
Display technology is moving beyond the simple cathode ray tube
as LCD screens become more ubiquitous. But other display
technologies are nearing commercial availability, including
bendable displays on light emitting plastic, digital paper that
acts like conventional paper but can be wiped clean and rewritten
on, and even retinal projection glasses.
Biometrics
With security becoming an increasingly important issue in
corporate networks and on the Internet, vendors are trying to find
different ways to authenticate individuals. Fingerprinting has been
one of the first biometric techniques, but others such as retinal
scans have been making an appearance, even being trialled in bank
cash machines.
User interfaces
Things have come a long way since the early days of DOS. Simple
GUIs gave way to more complex interfaces where you could drag and
drop files onto each other while controlling their properties. Now,
multimedia is finding its way into desktop user interfaces, with 3D
and even virtual reality components appearing. Other advances
include natural language interfaces, while PDAs and telephone
access create the need for handwriting and voice recognition.
Robotics
With robotic dogs now on retailers' shelves, robotics are
capturing the public imagination. Such products are toys, but in
the labs work is being conducted on robots that change their facial
expressions in reaction to people's own smiles and frowns, while
walking robots are also taking their first tottering steps.
Storage
The general trend in the storage industry has been to reduce the
price of storage per Mbyte while increasing the density of tape or
disc. Companies are taking it a step further by working on
innovative new media, including blue laser optical disks for
ultra-dense storage. Further down the line, molecular storage and
holographic media are in the labs. In the short-term, storage
service providers are already providing virtual storage services
across the Internet.