How small can we make personal computers? There are two major barriers to shrinking them beyond the hand-held and palm-top computers emerging right now: your fingers and your eyes. A keyboard that is much smaller than your fingers would be unusable, as would a smaller monitor. So in order to shrink computers much more, we will need a new input device that has much the same functionality as a keyboard, and a new output device that is not as cumbersome or as big as today's monitors. Both are in development right now.
In place of a keyboard you will use your voice as an input device, speaking to your computer, giving it commands, and dictating documents. To be sure, this would be a cumbersome way to produce a spreadsheet, or create a graphic design, but I'm not suggesting that you will only use verbal commands, merely that you will do so when you are using a portable PC. And verbal programming is already possible on PCs, and getting better all the time. To fit speech recognition into a powerful PC that is smaller than a palm-top requires refinements in micro-electronics and computer speed and size - more of the same, in other words. It will probably also take refinements in wireless communication so you don't have to be wired up to your microphone, but that, too, is on the way, courtesy of wireless telephony and wireless data communications.
Shrinking computer monitors will require more than mere refinements; it will require new art. I believe the way we are headed will not only allow us to make computer monitors smaller, but simultaneously make the images projected thereon larger and more functional. By projecting the images either on a pair of what look like sunglasses, or projecting the images directly into the eye itself, you can make the physical image smaller, yet make the apparent image much larger because it is so much closer to the eye. Moreover, the fact that you are projecting images into both eyes means you can produce three-dimensional images, as well as superimposing computer images on top of real images your eye would otherwise take in.
These things are all being worked on by a variety of groups, including research groups in IBM and at Cambridge University in England.
I'm going to assume that these problems will be solved. What this will produce is a wearable computer and that will change the way we use computers. A computer that is small enough, light enough, and functional enough will, over time, become our companions and assistants; Robin to our Batman, Kayto to our Green Hornet, Tonto to our Lone Ranger. You get the picture.
What happens next? After all, a wearable computer is still pretty much what we have now, but in different form. What are the other implications? Well, wireless communications is the fasted growing sector of the communications field, both in voice and data, so linking your wearable computer to your office and home computers, and linking it to the Web, will increase the functionality of all of these components. Suddenly, you'll be able to access all of your personal data, and everything on the Internet from wherever you happen to be. You'll be able to view data while you're in a meeting, for instance, or get an overlay of traffic conditions in your vicinity as you drive through town.
But the next step is, I think, the crucial one, and it is to give your wearable computer additional abilities in order to convert it from a dumb computer to a seemingly intelligent assistant, as described earlier. This will require software that remembers what you've asked for in the past, uses this experience to interpret what you're asking for now, and can take instruction in a simplified form of English (or any other natural language). This is not in immediate view, from where I'm sitting, but will not be as hard as it might seem.
For instance, for several years I've talked about the desirability of a computer butler. The biggest problems with telephones is that you don't get the calls you do want, and you do get the calls you don't want. The way a computer butler would work would be to pick off the incoming phone number from the line as the phone is ringing, compare the number to a list of previous calls, and deal with each call according to how it's been categorized. Calls from top priority people would be flagged, and you would be notified immediately. Calls from people you would normally speak to will get through if you're not busy, or re-routed to voice mail if you are. Unidentified or unknown callers would be asked to state their names, and then the names would be passed on to you so that you could decide whether to take the call. Low priority calls would be routed to voice mail immediately. And calls from people you know you don't want to speak with would be denied access.
None of this is difficult. I could design the flowchart for this kind of telephone butler in an afternoon. Taking it to a more ambitious, all-purpose butler or genie would be more difficult, but would not, I believe, require any new art. It would take a reasonable amount of hard disk space, and a reasonably fast processor, but both of those will be here by and by. The net result will be a wearable computer that acts as our faithful assistant the VPC, or Very Personal Computer, in short.
I know of at least three groups working on wearable computers right now in Toronto, Chicago, and Virginia. I suspect that the early ones will be available by 2005, and that they will become widespread for business applications by 2010. Whether they will be accepted by consumers is a greater mystery, as the behaviour of consumers is far most complex than extrapolating the potential of technology. And, of course, consumers of different ages will have differing rates of acceptance of new technologies, with the young diving in much more rapidly than the old.
But the VPC is not all that far away, and I believe it will be as revolutionary as television or the automobile, the two inventions that did the most to shape the 20th century.
© Copyright, Incremax Financial Research Corporation, December 1999.
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