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Those incredible roving gadgets
THE hottest smart mobile devices are meant to threaten computers with extermination. Computer is technology’s Mark Twain and most recently, reports of its demise have been greatly overstated.
Experts have been falling out of their skins for years, to predict that handheld computers, set-top boxes, game consoles and, most recently, mobile phones would all send the clunky desktop machine to its crypt.
“The PC business has been finished six times already if you read the press,” said the chief executive officer of Intel.
Yet, in the face of pervasive scorn, the computer refuses to die. It is quick becoming the heart of the digital world - a conductor that orchestrates the activities of all the electronic devices all in all. The computer is now taking charge of keeping the music on your stereo up-to-date. It makes certain that your mobile phone alerts you to important business meetings, to send digital video and photos to your television screens, and to record your favourite programme when your flight runs late after “displacement of available flight personnel” and between them, the telephone and computer will soon deal with a mutual email account over the internet, and surfing the web will be handled by wireless screens throughout the house.
In spite of the computer’s fundamental role in our homes, we will still deal less with it directly, if at all, because it will interconnect with all the other devices in our lives whether through a wireless network or physically connected by a cable. Regularly, gadgets will touch base with the computer, like satellites orbiting the earth — each a clever piece of technology in its own right, but each reliant on the mother planet.
If all this appears like a Jetsons’ vision of the future, well it is not. Most of the know-how is here today. If nothing else then consider the new Windows-powered smart displays from companies such a ViewSonic. These handy, touch-screen monitors talk to the computer within a 150ft radius by means of a wireless connection known as WiFi.
They reveal the option of surfing the web from the sofa, listening to an MP3 music collection while sitting in the pool, in the garden, or reading this morning’s emails from between your bed sheets. Unlike a laptop or tablet PC, the smart displays are no where a system of their own kind - they merely link to the main PC, which could be put away in the storeroom next to that disused exercise bike you bought in 1989.
Still, there are those who are of the thought that the bulky beige box adds as much to interior design as wood-chip wallpaper. Mark Squires, Nokia’s director of corporate communications, treats his computer like a central-heating boiler - it is always on, but out of sight. “The PC is in the loft,” he adds, “It doesn’t have a screen but does have a 70 GB hard disk. I haven’t looked at it for three months.”
Mark gets into the files on his computer using a variety of other gadgets. For instance, he has made to order the games console that is connected to the television in his living room to put on view his family’s camcorder footage, streamed wirelessly from the computer. “When you increase connectivity, the computer becomes the hub,” Squires said.
Soon enough computers will also dominate home entertainment. Sony is among the diverse hi-fi manufacturers that are building hard disks into their stereo systems, so digital music files stored on your computer can be transferred to the hi-fi by plugging in a cable. The logic is that we download music over a computer’s broadband connection, and then transfer it to the hi-fi.
Apple is recently working on a wireless technology termed Rendezvous, which may even make the cable redundant. “I will be able to take my iBook laptop into someone else’s living room and play my MP3 music files through their hi-fi, or climb into my car and do exactly the same,” mentioned David Millar, public relations manager at Apple.
That’s only the half of it. In America, Microsoft recently launched a new version of Windows XP known as Media Centre, which directly takes control of your television viewing, music and DVD playback. As well as having a monitor, a Media Centre computer connects to a regular television, and you can control access to digital home videos, photos, music files and films from an onscreen menu. Even the satellite television is fed through the computer, which can record programmes digitally, much as personal video recorders (PVRs) such as TiVo do.
“With a PVR in a computer, you will be able to dial in from anywhere in the world and record programmes,” said David Weeks, Windows product manager at Microsoft.
The way we interrelate with computers is no doubt changing. “You have a remote control to browse the files on your PC,” Weeks said. “The computer becomes more of an entertainment centre.” Media Centre PCs will be hitting these shores as soon as Microsoft can find someone to provide onscreen television programme guides, probably later this year.
So, where on earth does the all-so-powerful mobile phone fit into this picture? Today’s mature smart phones feature beautiful colour screens displaying full internet browsers, email and documents. They take digital photos, play music and full-motion video. Actually, mobiles can do all this because they bundle the same computing power that a desktop computer did some ten years ago.
This rapid boom in the potential of the mobile phone led to a recent editorial in The Economist foretelling that “the PC’s reign now seems to be coming to an end… The switch to mobile devices is thus a logical long-term step.” Nonsense, remarked the world’s biggest mobile phone manufacturer, Nokia. Mark Squires declared: “The phone is not replacing the PC. It is providing another way to get the information.”
Weeks, too, claimed that there are practical reasons why a phone could never replace a full-blown computer. “Try typing a long document or doing the family accounts on a [hone. Is the phone doing to replace the computer? Absolutely not. The devices will be intrinsically linked.”
With a forever-on broadband connection at home, your mobile phone can be in constant link with the computer, so that the two devices remain permanently synchronised, enabling access to email messages wherever you are. They will even share files, so documents or even music and videos can be downloaded onto the mobile handset from your home. Far from replacing the computer, the mobile phone will grow more dependent upon it.
The thought of a computer - especially a Windows computer - taking over all aspects of our so called digital lives will almost certainly develop fear into the hearts of many individuals. What happens when the beast crashes? Will hackers be able to hijack your television viewing by nastily recording ‘Friends’ instead of ‘Question Time’? And doesn’t this all sound terrifyingly like George Orwell’s all-seeing Big Brother?
If it doesn’t then it will if you listen to Bill Gates, the Microsoft chairman. “Computers, like electricity, will play a role in almost everything you do,” he said recently. “Computing itself will no longer be a discrete experience. They will be all around us, essential to almost every part of our lives, but they will effectively have disappeared.”
Scary stuff isn’t it? There is little or no doubt that these computers are set to play a vital role in our all the time more connected lives. But that is a far cry from the scenarios that put it in total control, automatically top up the fridge over the net or adjusting the central heating. Thus in no time PCs will be transformed into powerful hubs that coordinate all our home electronics.
“That will come,” Millar said. “We just need a way to connect those household systems as simply as possible.” Brace yourself: you have been warned.
The writer is a freelance contributor
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