One possible future
Let me start this out by stating clearly that I am not a technologist, I am a user who is interested in technology. I state this because what I'm about to write seems plausible to me, but I don't have the tech cred to back it up. I leave that to the more savvy members of this forum.
With that said:
It seems to me that the future of media and much of the home computing experience lies in the delivery of content and content manipulation and storage. Given current trends the following thoughts occurred to me:
For example, I come home from the office and I want to see the latest lame brained plan the current idiots in Washington have dreamed up for winning the war (whatever one we're in at the time). I use my remote to access the selection screen and choose a news source. The file is stored in my provider's servers and delivered to me when I want it.
The same situation applies to what we call network programs. CSI: Mars Base would be "released" by its content creator on Thursday and it would remain on my local provider's servers for a specified amount of time before being archived to a pay-per-view database or whatever.
User packages could be based on an a la carte selection (you pay for what you watch), on a volume basis (you pay a discounted rate for x-number of hours of programming per month, with fees for overages of course) or on a package based plan (much like we have today).
With my second point I'm getting at what Google and MS are trying to do now with limited success. Having a program on a user owned set of hardware that is constantly being made obsolete is fine for now, but with a greater penetration of high-speed network access more robust applications could be created that do not depend on user owned hardware other than their networking components (which I think would be leased by the service provider, not owned by the end-user).
What people care about is the ability to do something--send and receive email; catalog, manipulate and send photos to friends and family; etc... If someone, say Apple, builds a network service based application suite that offers users the functionality and ease-of-use without the cost of ownership (think membership fees instead), then when combined with the high-speed network necessary to make this work quickly what would be the point of ownership for the average home-user?
Think of this as .Mac on steroids without the end-user having to own a Mac. iLife for whomever pays the membership fees. It would run on clustered xserves or whatever Apple was making at the time. The interface and hardware would all still be controlled by Apple. The network would be maintained by a partner and subscriptions could be sold directly or through service providers such as Comcast.
Which brings to me the third point: high-speed access is as important as ease-of-use. Without a robust, high-speed network this will never work. No one is going to sit at home waiting for minutes at a time for an application to finish saving a photo. Whether it is wireless, cable or fiber optic, or whatever....it must offer near instantaneous response times and, of course, rock solid stability.
And security, perhaps the biggest flaw in the plan here. I don't know if it is possible (encryption?) to make these transactions secure enough to where we would feel comfortable using Quicken 2010 on a network basis or not.
Well? What about it? Is this our future?
With that said:
It seems to me that the future of media and much of the home computing experience lies in the delivery of content and content manipulation and storage. Given current trends the following thoughts occurred to me:
- The future of content is in database driven storage and delivery server clusters
- Users don't really care where their content manipulation programs reside as long as they work quickly and easily
- High-speed access is as important as ease-of-use
For example, I come home from the office and I want to see the latest lame brained plan the current idiots in Washington have dreamed up for winning the war (whatever one we're in at the time). I use my remote to access the selection screen and choose a news source. The file is stored in my provider's servers and delivered to me when I want it.
The same situation applies to what we call network programs. CSI: Mars Base would be "released" by its content creator on Thursday and it would remain on my local provider's servers for a specified amount of time before being archived to a pay-per-view database or whatever.
User packages could be based on an a la carte selection (you pay for what you watch), on a volume basis (you pay a discounted rate for x-number of hours of programming per month, with fees for overages of course) or on a package based plan (much like we have today).
With my second point I'm getting at what Google and MS are trying to do now with limited success. Having a program on a user owned set of hardware that is constantly being made obsolete is fine for now, but with a greater penetration of high-speed network access more robust applications could be created that do not depend on user owned hardware other than their networking components (which I think would be leased by the service provider, not owned by the end-user).
What people care about is the ability to do something--send and receive email; catalog, manipulate and send photos to friends and family; etc... If someone, say Apple, builds a network service based application suite that offers users the functionality and ease-of-use without the cost of ownership (think membership fees instead), then when combined with the high-speed network necessary to make this work quickly what would be the point of ownership for the average home-user?
Think of this as .Mac on steroids without the end-user having to own a Mac. iLife for whomever pays the membership fees. It would run on clustered xserves or whatever Apple was making at the time. The interface and hardware would all still be controlled by Apple. The network would be maintained by a partner and subscriptions could be sold directly or through service providers such as Comcast.
Which brings to me the third point: high-speed access is as important as ease-of-use. Without a robust, high-speed network this will never work. No one is going to sit at home waiting for minutes at a time for an application to finish saving a photo. Whether it is wireless, cable or fiber optic, or whatever....it must offer near instantaneous response times and, of course, rock solid stability.
And security, perhaps the biggest flaw in the plan here. I don't know if it is possible (encryption?) to make these transactions secure enough to where we would feel comfortable using Quicken 2010 on a network basis or not.
Well? What about it? Is this our future?
Comments
If Google made an OS based around a central server, as some rumors have said they will, that could lead to this happening, or something like it.
Another thing that had occurred to me was that service providers could do something like that and even put it on flash cards for the user.
An Apple/Google alliance to create top-notch network-based applications would have a lot of traction.