Wetware
Evans: Throw out your touchscreens, your Kinects: thought-controlled computing is the new new thing; http://eicker.at/Wetware
Welcome to the Universe of HyperText: the first Web site and Web server, 20 years ago at CERN on a NeXT; http://eicker.at/20
Graham: If Apple grows the iPod into a cell phone with web browser, Microsoft would be in big trouble; http://j.mp/cjU4kD
Pew: Technology experts and stakeholders say they expect they will live mostly in the cloud in 2020; http://j.mp/aP4FaB
Pew: “Technology experts and stakeholders say they expect they will ‘live mostly in the cloud’ in 2020 and not on the desktop, working mostly through cyberspace-based applications accessed through networked devices. This will substantially advance mobile connectivity through smartphones and other internet appliances. Many say there will be a cloud-desktop hybrid. Still, cloud computing has many difficult hurdles to overcome, including concerns tied to the availability of broadband spectrum, the ability of diverse systems to work together, security, privacy, and quality of service.”
Weinberger: “As for me, I don’t have predictions because the future is too furious. For example, the speed and availability of broadband access in this country is unpredictable and is by itself determinative, not to mention the Internet-seeking asteroid this is currently streaking toward the Earth. It’s safe to say, however, (= here comes something that in 5 years I’ll feel foolish for having said) that we’re going to move more and more into the cloud. The only thing I’d add to The Experts is that this will have network effects like crazy – effects due to the scale of data and social connections being managed under one roofless roof (with, we hope, lots of openness as well as security).“
Scientists say juggling incoming information can change how people think and behave; http://j.mp/cxB30P
Thanks for the hint at @pfandtasse!
Oddhead: “Back in 2004, who could have imagined Apple’s astonishing rise to overtake Microsoft as the most valuable tech company in the world? – At least one person. – Paul Graham wins the award for the most prescient parenthetical statement inside a footnote ever.”
Graham‘s footnote (14) in Hackers and Painters, 2004: “If the Mac was so great, why did it lose? Cost, again. Microsoft concentrated on the software business and unleashed a swarm of cheap component suppliers on Apple hardware. It did not help, either, that suits took over during a critical period. (And it hasn’t lost yet. If Apple were to grow the iPod into a cell phone with a web browser, Microsoft would be in big trouble.)”