What’s To Come

An enjoyable list from techradar.com in an article 21 of the most stupid tech predictions

Phones

1. “Well informed people know it is impossible to transmit the voice over wires and that were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value.” — The Boston Post, 1865

2. “This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.” — Western Union memo, 1876

3. “The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.” — Sir William Preece, chief engineer at the Post Office, 1878

4. “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It’s a $500 subsidised item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I’d prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get.” — Steve Ballmer, USA Today, 2007

Audio and video

5. “Radio has no future.” — Lord Kelvin, inventor of the Kelvin scale, 1897

6. “The cinema is little more than a fad. It’s canned drama. What audiences really want to see is flesh and blood on the stage.” — Charlie Chaplin, 1916

7. “While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially it is an impossibility, a development of which we need waste little time dreaming.” – Lee DeForest, inventor of the vacuum tube, 1926.

8. “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” — Harry Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927

9. “[Television] won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.” — Darryl Zanuck, movie producer at 20th Century Fox, 1946

10. “Television won’t last. It’s a flash in the pan.” — Mary Somerville, educational broadcast pioneer, speaking in 1948

Computing

11. “Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh only 1.5 tons.” — Popular Mechanics, March 1949

12. “I went to see Professor Douglas Hartree [in 1951], who had built the first differential analysers in England and had more experience in using these very specialised computers than anyone else. He told me that, in his opinion, all the calculations that would ever be needed in this country could be done on the three digital computers which were then being built - one in Cambridge, one in Teddington, and one in Manchester. No one else, he said, would ever need machines of their own, or would be able to afford to buy them.” — Lord Bowden, American Scientist, 1970

13. “I have travelled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won’t last out the year.” — Business books editor, Prentice Hall, 1957

14. “The world potential market for copying machines is 5,000 at most.” — IBM to the founders of Xerox, 1959

15. “In the mid-70s, someone came to me with an idea for what was basically the PC. The idea was that we would outfit an 8080 processor with a keyboard and a monitor and sell it in the home market. I asked: ‘What’s it good for?’ And the only answer was that a housewife could keep her recipes on it. I personally didn’t see anything useful in it, so we never gave it another thought.” — Gordon Moore, Intel

16.  ”We will never make a 32-bit operating system.” — Bill Gates, speaking at the launch of MSX in 1983

17. “I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most important operating system, and possibly program, of all time.” — Bill Gates, foreword to the OS/2 Programmer’s Guide, 1987

18. “Two years from now, spam will be solved.” — Bill Gates, World Economic Forum 2004

The Internet

19. “Almost all of the many predictions now being made about 1996 hinge on the Internet’s continuing exponential growth. But I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.” — Robert Metcalfe, 3Com founder and inventor of Ethernet, 1995

What the?

20. “Nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality in 10 years.” — Sir Alex Lewyt, president and founder of vacuum cleaner maker Lewyt Corporation, 1955

21. “Next Christmas the iPod’ll be dead, finished, gone, kaput.” — Sir Alan Sugar, CEO of Amstrad, Daily Telegraph, February 2005

Most Comcast Web service to top 100 Mbps by 2010 - in an article found on sfgate.com. That’s going the right direction! Someone has to lead the charge and it looks as if Comcast has taken the challenge.

Wired.com had an article today titled “Broadband 2.0 Poised to Reshape Web, TV” talking about Verizon and Comcast driving to speeds of 50 - 100 Mbps and how having those speeds will not only enable, but change the ways people use the media. A much richer experience is in store with audio and video.

It’s about time for this to occur. The speeds will beget the applications. Will it be available and affordable for everyone?

-Andy

CNet has an article today titled “AT&T: Internet to hit full capacity by 2010” with some very interesting claims by the VP of Governmental Affairs for AT&T, Jim Cicconi:

” Speaking at a Westminster eForum on Web 2.0 this week in London, Jim Cicconi, vice president of legislative affairs for AT&T, warned that the current systems that constitute the Internet will not be able to cope with the increasing amounts of video and user-generated content being uploaded.”

Claims:

• at least $55 billion worth of investment was needed in new infrastructure in the next three years in the U.S. alone, with the figure rising to $130 billion to improve the network worldwide
• unprecedented new wave of broadband traffic” would increase 50-fold by 2015
• Eight hours of video is loaded onto YouTube every minute. Everything will become HD very soon, and HD is 7 to 10 times more bandwidth-hungry than typical video today. Video will be 80 percent of all traffic by 2010, up from 30 percent today
• In three years’ time, 20 typical households will generate more traffic than the entire Internet today

Wow! Is this really correct? The one that may be the kicker is the one about video being 80% of all traffic by 2010. I see this coming.

Let me know your thoughts.

-Andy

In an article from CNET titled Senators still sweating digital TV switch, the politicians are now voicing their concerns about how to get the message out about the February 17, 2009 conversion from analog to digital TV. For those who don’t follow this discussion, for some time television stations around the country have been running digital and analog broadcasts in parallel and next February 17, the analog signals will be discontinued. What does this mean? If you have an analog television and you either use an antenna or you don’t have it connected to a cable box or satellite box, then you will not be able to get a picture starting February 17, 2009. The cable boxes and satellite boxes do the conversion for you and your old tv should still work.

Even with the best implementation of this, it is very difficult to get the word out to everyone and even more difficult to help people know what to do. Most people don’t have any idea if they have a digital tv or an analog tv. Many don’t have a clue about the difference between digital and analog. How many have a 2nd and 3rd tv set in their bedrooms that are either using rabbit ears or connected directly to the cable without a converter box? The problem as it can currently be understood will affect over 20 million households.

Our Congressmen and Senators in Washington and in reality, all of the elected officials around the country need to understand this challenge and use whatever means they have to insure the smoothest transition. At a local level, we’re planning to use our website, newsletter and other communication means, well in advance to help our citizens prepare for the change.

In the U.S., people have their televisions turned on an average of 7.1 hours per day. TVs going blank would be similar to turning electricity off to nearly 1/5th of the homes in our country. Yes, the Senators should be concerned and the challenge of this transition is huge!

Several blog posts and articles were out today announcing that AT&T is putting Surface Computing tables in their stores. This came out of an announcement by AT&T at the CTIA conference. There are some pretty nice videos of what this technology can do: Good video on Surface Computing

This is kind of a gimmick by AT&T, but could drive interest and people into their stores. More importantly this may be a leading edge of getting these multi-touch, surface computing platforms out where people can use them.

So, what’s next? I can envision surface computing used by architects, engineers, city planners, in restaurants and bars, in any environment where interactivity is key.

BIGresearch did a “Simultaneous Media Survey” looking at the breakdown of how people with different political affiliations used media.

“According to the analysis, the top three used most among Democrats, Republicans and Independents include cell phones, video gaming and instant messaging.”

This research is cited in an article from The Center for Media Research entitled “New Media Offers Cost Effective Alternative to Political Media Budgets” Posted March 25th, 2008 by Jack Loechner.

Pay attention to where the money is spent in this election cycle and how the media consultants for the campaigns are using the data above to better reach their intended audience.

-Andy

768Kbps?? fast? Surely you jest!

In an article entitled FCC approves new method for tracking broadband’s reach from CNet, and cited by Engadget, there is some movement in realizing all of the data and FCC reports to-date are really bogus and a new way to count who has broadband and what is broadband is a-foot.  See the quotes from a couple of the FCC Commissioners below:

“When companies and investors put money into e-commerce or voice over Internet Protocol or Internet video…they need to know what kind of broadband infrastructure America actually has,” Copps said.

Democratic Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein said, “This is really the first step toward the national broadband strategy that we so desperately need.”

The major components are:

1. definition of broadband
2. reporting of upload and download speeds
3. How upload and download speeds are determined
4. Reporting of broadband subscribers at a census block level instead of Zip Code
5. ISPs will not have to report what they charge for broadband….Yet

All but #5 are a good step forward, but they’re not looking at reality if they think broadband is 768Kbps. Sure it’s faster than dial-up and the old standard of 200Kbps, but it doesn’t accommodate one of the fasting growing segments on the internet and that’s streaming video. I’d hate to try to watch a video at 768Kbps maximum.

Reporting at a census block level is a very good improvement and takes a realistic look at much smaller segments.

Keep going FCC! Again, it’s time for that “Man on the Moon” vision for broadband in America! A vision that will push the limits of the technology into even greater spheres.

-Andy

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Last Mile Online had an article today worth considering and to an extent, consistent with my earlier posts on Broadband Policy in the U.S.

From my archives: Call for a National Broadband Policy

See this article: Broadband Legislation Could Boost Economy by $134 Billion Annually