30 years from now?

[tmcd35]

My predictions...

1) Maybe WiMAX, maybe something else. But something soon will replace 3G and WiFi and combine them into 1 fast, reliable networking service that will support VOIP and IPTV. No more broadband, sky, cable, mobile phone or physical networks.

2) WiFi/WiMAX/??? speeds will top 10Gbps doing away with any need for cables.

3) Just about everything will be web based - Word, Excel, Powerpoint, TV, Games, Radio. Only a few specialist applications will still be run on the desktop. Although the Virtual Desktop would probably take care of them as well.

4) Desktop PC and terminals will be gone. Laptops and Netbooks is were it's at. With a few Set Top Box style devices thrown in for good measure. Probably made from recycled cardboard or old tyres?

5) Arcades will make a comeback as console gaming falls into obscurity. Yep VR baby.

6) All the above will sport little white Apple logos on the back

[MattCrick]

Aptly quotes some user's signiture (I hope I have this right...)

Every time someone buy's an apple, god kills a kitten...

Genius!

[tmcd35]

7) for some reason, scientist won't be able to explain, there will be a mass extinction of all feline based mamals - It is rumored that this event will coincide with a sudden surge in uptake of Christianity/Islamism/Judasim/Scientology amongst the scientific community.

[Face-Man]

If you have the time this makes some interesting predictions

Kevin Kelly on the next 5,000 days of the web | Video on TED.com

[phreak]

Originally Posted by MattCrick

Every time someone buy's an apple, god kills a kitten...

Genius!

I have seen something similar in a t-shirt

[SYNACK]

The plastics issue is not a difficult one to solve, as others have said the technology already exists to break down existing plastics - all be it expencively - and there are many other options avalible, bioblastic, silicon, wood , non conductive carbon nanostructures, all of which are avalible in truely vast amounts.

The real resource issues will be with rare earth metals, currently all LCDs and plasmas use an amount of rare earth metal in their contruction. The price of this has been steadily increasing to the point that one of the largest viable supplies is now recycling of older moniters. The total amount is scheduled to be in use by around 2017 at which point an alternative must be in common use or it is back to CRTs.

I think that the common view of 'back to terminals' is short sighted and inaccurate. The terminals that everyone is so fond of these days have (and need) more processing power than the original big iron that ran the big terminal networks to begin with. This will not change until data becomes ubiquidis and accessable within 5ms from anywhere. The upcomming model of computing is more of a hybrid modle of the two before it. There will remain a certain amount of processing ability in the home and devices but larger jobs that are becomming more common will be outsourced to larger systems. Even the fabled web apps have been attempting to be workable offline. This insistance on the browser being king is also a frightning reality, the browser as it stands is not the best solution and a propper framework application that simply provides protocol access and GUI headers would forfill the need more reliably.

The technology for the moment and even in the forseeable future is constrained by the limited resource that is bandwidth. Most of the major developments with content have been made due to compression algorythms that have enabled better use of the limited bandwidth and requireed more and more processing in the home. Unless there is a huge breakthrough and vast investment by all parties (unlikely) then bandwidth and latency will remain an issue that will dictate the need for a good helping of storage (cache) and processing to overcome.

[torledo]

Originally Posted by SYNACK

I think that the common view of 'back to terminals' is short sighted and inaccurate. The terminals that everyone is so fond of these days have (and need) more processing power than the original big iron that ran the big terminal networks to begin with. This will not change until data becomes ubiquidis and accessable within 5ms from anywhere. The upcomming model of computing is more of a hybrid modle of the two before it. There will remain a certain amount of processing ability in the home and devices but larger jobs that are becomming more common will be outsourced to larger systems. Even the fabled web apps have been attempting to be workable offline. This insistance on the browser being king is also a frightning reality, the browser as it stands is not the best solution and a propper framework application that simply provides protocol access and GUI headers would forfill the need more reliably.

.

I agree that we have been looking at a hybrid model with most what i would term thin client models.....they still require a processor, memory, certain amount of flash storage and ofcourse an embedded OS.

Sun Ray/Tarantella technology with it's connection broker architecture is probably as thin as most people want to go........but even with that they have to build in in local multimedia redirection because of the bandwidth and latency issues you mention.

It's impossible to say what we'll see thirty years from now, recycling/reusable components and so-called green computing are issues today. And it's not just power consumption at the client side which is the issue. The big datacenters from the likes of Google are coming under increasing scruiting when it comes to their own massive space, heating and cooling requirements.

In terms of the browser as the portal......are your primary concerns performance and securty, or do you fear usability problems. Microsoft are obviously pushing .net as their framework for web and win32 apps, are you thinking of something .net or J2EE in nature to provide a better thin computing/cloud computing experience for the end user going forward ?

[SYNACK]

Originally Posted by torledo

It's impossible to say what we'll see thirty years from now, recycling/reusable components and so-called green computing are issues today.

In terms of the browser as the portal......are your primary concerns performance and securty, or do you fear usability problems. Microsoft are obviously pushing .net as their framework for web and win32 apps, are you thinking of something .net or J2EE in nature to provide a better thin computing/cloud computing experience for the end user going forward ?

I agree that technology in this area moves so fast that it is impossible to see that far ahead with any certainty. Any major paridigm changing breakthrough could completly change the way things develod.

My concerns with the browser as the portal are incluside of all of the thingd that you meantioned. Primarily the browser is at is heart a document viewer with constraints on its UI features to match. I think that the best match up will be a seamless GUI layer tacked into whatever OS that you are running that just handles the communications and gives the program GUI hooks to play with so that it can render as part of the OS rather than layered on a usually buggy, security hole laden browser.

If it is specialised then seamless apps will be faster more secure and less irritating as they will not have to deal with the issues caused by code present to deal with 50 billion HTML spec revisions.

In my view the closest things to this at the moment is the .net framework/java framework. I think that silverlight/moonlight could actually be a convincing start to this as by using the same design underpinnings the code can be handled by the interpreter as a plugin or directly on the abstraction layer of the OS making it more manageable.

Honestly I think that the main thing holding back browser based apps is the browsers themselves. Yes there are some impressive apps out there but they are limited by their enviromnent. If another, less typecast hosting system could become as entrenched as the browser along with an easy way to aquire the apps, one click link add off the browser - which then transfers responcibility to the OS. With this type of system most users would not even notice the difference, only the benifits. At that point the OS would really begin to matter a whole lot less to the masses as long as the overlay was compatible.

[NikChillin]

Asta la vista baby...........

[CAM]

I think the centralised server idea is coming true already. Look at our gaming habits at home, MMORPGs have rocketed in popularity and they rely on the client sending data back to a central server for processing. Same with other genre's, they often have a multiplayer or reward system that feeds back to a central server to allow the program to function.

However, I think core OS work will happen locally to improve speed. It's the programs that will be centralised with Windows on the Hard Disk and Word on a central server. At first we will have them centralised on our servers, but eventually we will have large companies holding our programs and documents over the Internet.

Unfortunately the malware writers will also move on as we advance.

[duncane]

Printable electronics will have come to the fore. It will be as cheap to produce paper-based electronic devices as it is to produce books. Paper will be interactive, and powered by the warmth of the hands that holds it, or the light that shines on it.

Copyright will have been abolished - bands will make their money from live gigs. Video conferencing will be the order of the day, to reduce the environmental impact of travel. There will be a slower pace of life, with airships replacing aeroplanes. The emphasis will be on leg room, good food, and comfort.

And everyone will speak Welsh.

[dhicks]

Originally Posted by SYNACK

I think that the best match up will be a seamless GUI layer tacked into whatever OS that you are running

X Windows?

If it is specialised then seamless apps will be faster more secure and less irritating as they will not have to deal with the issues caused by code present to deal with 50 billion HTML spec revisions.

Has the HTML specification actually been updated since 4.01?

the code can be handled by the interpreter as a plugin or directly on the abstraction layer of the OS making it more manageable.

I don't see why we need a whole new set of frameworks / languages / etc to handle this. I'd favour an HTML 5 + JavaScript designed for nice client-side user interfaces. Couple that with whatever server-side web-orientated application stack you like, just write your applications so they run on user's machines and synch with the main server when an Internet connection is available. The operating system then becomes simply a web browser (no need even for a desktop, just have a full-screen browser with tabs) and a whole bunch of web frameworks - .NET, Java, LAMP, Python, etc, etc.

an easy way to aquire the apps, one click link add off the browser

This strikes me as being remarkably like most Linux distribution's graphical package manager - click the application you want to install, done.

--
David Hicks

[bizzel]

The dawn of quantum computing - where a PC is at once broken and not broken!

[SYNACK]

Originally Posted by dhicks

X Windows?

Possible, with a bit of work. There is still a lot of inertia that is carried by Windows and its UI that would have to be subverted. That and X still required several degrees and a sacrificial goat to get running on multiple moniters the last time I checked.

Originally Posted by dhicks

Has the HTML specification actually been updated since 4.01?

Not really but I am including all of the iligitimate children of it like XHTML, DHTML and the other layers that have been piled on over the years.

Originally Posted by dhicks

I don't see why we need a whole new set of frameworks / languages / etc to handle this. I'd favour an HTML 5 + JavaScript designed for nice client-side user interfaces. Couple that with whatever server-side web-orientated application stack you like, just write your applications so they run on user's machines and synch with the main server when an Internet connection is available. The operating system then becomes simply a web browser (no need even for a desktop, just have a full-screen browser with tabs) and a whole bunch of web frameworks - .NET, Java, LAMP, Python, etc, etc.

The current frameworks could serve but surely it would be more simple and managable to extend the OS a little to support the frameworks rather than expand the browser a vast amount to make it a whole OS. In general most browsers seem to be nasty unstable stacks of different technologies just waiting to fall over. If browsers actually worked properly in the first place the ACID2 test would be unnessisary.

Surely it makes more sence to put these apps on the more stable and sencible foundation of the OS rather than the patched together framework of the browser.

Originally Posted by dhicks

This strikes me as being remarkably like most Linux distribution's graphical package manager - click the application you want to install, done.

You may have misinterpreted me. My thought was more like adding a favorite or shortcut rather than actually installing something.

Some package managers do house the installable functionallity quite well but you still end up spending the extra half hour downloading the 650 dependencies that whatever package you pick seems to need. The quality of the prepackaged stuff is also inconsistant, some of it you download and then spend several quality hours with the config file to make it work as you want it to.

[dhicks]

Originally Posted by SYNACK

That and X still required several degrees and a sacrificial goat to get running on multiple moniters the last time I checked.

Good point - it seems that I am destined to keep on trying, about once a year, to get a Linux distribution working with multiple monitors / workstations. Not a good experience. Takes ages to get the damn goat hair out of the carpet.

Not really but I am including all of the iligitimate children of it like XHTML, DHTML and the other layers that have been piled on over the years.

I keep on hearing really good things about the latest JavaScript frameworks and runtimes. Admitedly, every time I actually try out a JavaScript framework (Dojo and YUI so far) I haven't been that impressed. Maybe third time lucky with JQuery...

The current frameworks could serve but surely it would be more simple and managable to extend the OS a little to support the frameworks rather than expand the browser a vast amount to make it a whole OS.

I think we're actually at the stage right now where a web browser is perfectly capable of being the whole GUI you need.

Surely it makes more sence to put these apps on the more stable and sencible foundation of the OS rather than the patched together framework of the browser.

I'd use the browser as just a GUI. I don't like the sound of the Google Gears approach, where you wind up with yet another browser addon that stores data away in some random database. I'd aim to keep a separation between the browser (GUI) and the backend (whatever web development technology stack you like).

My thought was more like adding a favorite or shortcut rather than actually installing something.

So instead of going to the package manager to install a piece of software you go to the website? Sounds like an extension that would work a bit like the favourite icon - but instead of downloading a favicon you'd download a package installer. Has the potential to be a bit of a security risk...

--
David Hicks