Technology Futures

The Kindle (version 2) is getting rave reviews, and Amazon has released a version for the iPhone. It suggests that we may be seeing the beginning of the end of the era of the book. Unlike music, videos, and newspapers, I don't think books will disappear entirely. Think of art and architecture books, how to books with lots of pictures and illustrations, certain kinds of specialty topic books.... but the Kindle hints that printing books on paper is about to become much less common.

The Internet is a transport system that is making many other information transport systems obsolete. First it was music; vinyl records and CDs are not about the music itself, they are simply a transport system to get the music to the buyer. Video stores are on the way out, as Netflix and Blockbuster, by using the Internet, are making the video cassette and DVD transport system obsolete. Newspapers are beginning to collapse, as the news-PAPER is just a transport system for reporting the news itself. The news and journalism business, like the music and movie business, will survive and even prosper, but the underlying business models are collapsing because we don't need four different transport systems: one for music, one for movies, one for news, and one for books. And let's not forget the phone and TV transport systems; we don't need those either. So there is a total of six separate transport systems we no longer need. The 'net handles all of those quite nicely.

And that's why every home and every business needs a high performance broadband connection; without it, you might as well be living in 1400--before books, before newspapers, before any information distribution systems existed.

Now, here's one more question. If every source of information is delivered efficiently over a single network, who should be in charge of that network? Do you want a private corporation, which answers only to its stockholders, do decide what information your community can access, or should the community or region have some control? We're not talking about doing away with private sector providers--we need and want them to continue providing the services they already offer--telephone, video, news, etc. We're talking about managing the underlying transport system differently. What if all the roads in your region were owned by s single out of state firm? Would that firm always be able to act in the best interests of your community? Again, the private sector is critically important to the long term health of communities, but we need to manage the information transport system differently.

A new study of smartphone Web browsing shows the iPhone positively crushing the competition. The Apple iPhone accounts for 33% of all the Web browsing being done by smartphones. The nearest competitor is a Nokia phone, the N70, with a measly 7.1%. After that, it goes downhill even more rapidly, with most of the other phones in the top ten barely breaking 3%. The iPhone has a good, fast Web browser, a large readable screen, and a touch interface; the combination is unbeatable at this time.

Remember the old days? Back when I was part of a corporate team teaching project management, we hauled in our presentations in milk crates--about a dozen of them for a five day class. We needed a van to haul them around.

In the nineties, overhead projectors were gradually replaced by the "modern" LCD projectors that initially cost many thousands of dollars, and required an oversize rolling suitcase and a strong back to lug them around.

They are now as common as dirt. Everyone has one. But after years of promising, the industry appears to be finally delivering the latest round of projector technology: the pocket projector. Which will likely spawn a lot of really bad jokes.

But I predict these will fly off the shelves, even though this one only has 640x480 resolution. These will really take off when someone is able to cram SVGA or XGA resolution into one. One thing I really like is the direct iPod interface. You could load your presentation into iPhoto as a series of PDFs, transfer it to your iPod, and then show it as a slide show. Salespeople will love these gadgets.

I'll be part of a Webinar on broadband stimulus funding, and my portion will address the kind of planning that may be needed for community broadband grant requests. Here is the link for more information; note that registration is required (but the seminar is free).