The New World of Ubiquitous Computing
I have a habit of paying attention to the technology of personal computing. This is primarily because I think it’s interesting, but also because I believe it is generally prudent to try and keep up with the latest technology in my field.
As someone who laps up every scrap of technology news I can get my hands on, I feel like I have a decent vision of the direction things are heading in the next five or ten years. Recently, a few pieces of technology have arrived on the scene that have helped to bring that vision into focus. With a little imagination, one can easily see the writing on the wall.
So, so lame.
First, let’s talk about these so-called “Rich Client Frameworks.” This includes, among others, Microsoft Silverlight, Adobe Flex/Apollo, Sun JavaFX, plus whatever Mozilla has up their sleeve for Firefox 3.0. These frameworks will make web applications look and feel like traditional “fat” applications while maintaining the benefits of web applications, such as location and device independent access to your documents and sessions.
Google’s suite of online applications is impressive enough using HTML, Javascript, and Flash. Think about what Gmail, Calendar, Docs and Spreadsheets (with Presentations on the horizon), Finance, Maps, Picasa Web Albums, and YouTube/Google Video will be like once they abandon these Web 2.0 technologies in favor of the rich client of Web 3.0!
It is inevitable: these rich clients will replace today’s fat clients. Think about every application you regularly use today. A few years from now, all of the logic and persistence of your applications will be executed on a remote server, while your workstation will only be responsible for display (user interface, video and audio) and peripherals (keyboard, mouse, touch screen, game controller, camera, printer, et cetera). These remote servers can be hosted anywhere. Many of them will be subscription-based, many will be advertising-supported, and many will be running on a server in your house. Unless you’re paying attention to the URL, however, you won’t know the difference. All the average user will care about is that when he sits down at a workstation anywhere in the world, he can log in to his desktop and have access to the same environment he is used to using at home. The web desktops such as YouOS will continue to improve and eventually replace your start menu and taskbar.
You might be thinking, “No way. I can see that being the case for simple things like email, IM, web browsing, but not for video games and Photoshop!”
Oh yeah? What insurmountable technological boundaries are in place that would prevent this vision from coming true? In just a few years, processing power and bandwidth will put today’s computers to shame. Display resolution will continue to increase until people just don’t care anymore. When workstations are capable of keeping up with a remote framebuffer at a ridiculous resolution and framerate, do they need to be any faster? Latency isn’t an issue; part of the application will just download and execute locally. But, for the most part, applications will live on the server, and be accessible anywhere, and from virtually any device. Your cellphone (yes, we’ll probably still call them cell phones) will be more capable than the fastest desktops available today, and you’ll have the same access to your desktop when you’re on the road as when you’re sitting at your desk at home.
Doesn’t seem like much of a stretch, does it? Well, it gets better. Check this out:
These Surface workstations will be installed everywhere. It could be the Microsoft Surface platform, it could be the Apple iSurface, it could be Google GSurface or Surfubuntu; that’s not the point. The point is this style of user interface will catch on and will eventually be available everywhere. Your kitchen table will be a Surface, your TV will just be a display fed by the Surface control on your coffee table, you’ll have a Surface in the office, one in the break room at work, they’ll be on all the tables at Starbucks, and so on. This idea of “ubiquitous computing” was not invented by Microsoft, researchers have been talking about this for years.
Now, consider how this fits in to our scenario. You’ll be able to access your “desktop” from any of these workstations, perhaps authenticated by your cellphone or some sort of biometrics. The real innovation here isn’t the multi-touch screen. The thing that sets this device apart is that it enables multiple people to do disparate things on a single device. It’s not unreasonable to expect that there will be a Surface capable of supporting multiple sets of peripherals simultaneously. Just so we’re clear: that means two or more people could log on to their desktop from the same client machine at the same time, and will frequently log on to their desktop from different machines. This will serve to detach people’s idea of “my computer” from the actual piece of hardware, and instead associate it, rightly, to the network.
If the client machine is just a gateway to your online desktop, what difference does it make what OS your client machine is running anymore? The day the specific brand of client operating system becomes irrelevant is the day that the Microsoft we know today is gone for good. I’m not suggesting they’ll just disappear or go bankrupt, but I am saying that they won’t be as relevant as they are today. In this new world of ubiquitous computing, the new battleground will be the applications we use, not the OS on which we use them. Users of web applications are a fickle bunch, and Microsoft will have a hard time convincing us to stick around if a better and/or cheaper alternative requires zero effort to install, it’ll be as simple as visiting a different website.
Oh, well. This is all idle speculation, of course. However, it seems to me that there are a finite number of possible directions to go from here, and the industry appears to be charging forward in this direction. Will it work? I have no idea. All I can hope for is to make a living finding out, and having fun speculating in the meantime.
