Anybody have an educated prediction what home PC's will be like 10 years from now? What software or hardware will be available? Shouldn't productivity and entertainment be completely different because of more powerful machines?
What will home computers do 10 years from now...
- Thread starter ricleo2
- Start date
No, I am not high. Could you elaborate why you asked that? I take it this is not an easy prediction? Thanks.
Heh, no, I was kidding. I mean that it's pretty much impossible to predict the future. Everyone bandies around the quote from Bill Gates saying you'd never need more than 64MB of RAM (or whatever); no-one knows what is just around the corner. Hell, ten years ago the average person wasn't using the internet and look now everyone's on social networking and emailing the grandkids and so on.
Considering we had Windows 98 10 years ago and now we have Vista, I'd expect any changes will be evolutionary and not revolutionary over the next 10 years. To the non-gamer, advances in GPU and multi-core CPU is not really significant. Any mainstream computer today can surf and word process without any issues until it dies a natural death. Someone needs to make that next leap in user interfaces such as true voice recognition, brain wave reading or some other thing we haven't yet thought about, but it may not happen.
An EMP will be used against us and we'll be reduced to adding with pencil & paper and recording sound on wax disks.
"Oh, the humanity"
RebateMonger
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- Dec 24, 2005
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My favorite quote is Kenneth Olsen's (co-founder of Digital Equipment Corporation in 1967 and pioneer of mini-computers):
(1977) "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home."
Around 1990, Byte Magazine, published a great article on the future of computing. Many of the predictions were for 2000. My favorite:
Jerry Pournelle - "By 2000, anybody will be able to get the answer to any question (for which there's a known answer)".
(1977) "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home."
Around 1990, Byte Magazine, published a great article on the future of computing. Many of the predictions were for 2000. My favorite:
Jerry Pournelle - "By 2000, anybody will be able to get the answer to any question (for which there's a known answer)".
RebateMonger
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- Dec 24, 2005
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RebateMonger
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No. I thought that Pournelle's was the most accurate prediction of that entire 300-page Byte edition. I still have that magazine. It's fun to re-read it once in a while.
Download more porn more faster.
There really hasn't been any fundamentally new things that personal computers can do today compared to 10 or 15 years ago, in spite of massive increases in CPU, RAM, storage, and multimedia capability. There have only been extensions, expansions, or improvements of things computers have been doing since the late 1980s or early 1990s.
e.g. Online social networking, gaming, file sharing, and communication were all the rage [among us nerds] in 1987 via the BBS. More crude, slower, more expensive, but not essentially different.
Even where personal computers have gained some 'new' capability, it is only new in the sense that it was previously done without computers.
e.g. Online shopping is a speedier version of the mail and phone order catalog. People have been buying things without leaving their home or office for more than a century.
There really hasn't been any fundamentally new things that personal computers can do today compared to 10 or 15 years ago, in spite of massive increases in CPU, RAM, storage, and multimedia capability. There have only been extensions, expansions, or improvements of things computers have been doing since the late 1980s or early 1990s.
e.g. Online social networking, gaming, file sharing, and communication were all the rage [among us nerds] in 1987 via the BBS. More crude, slower, more expensive, but not essentially different.
Even where personal computers have gained some 'new' capability, it is only new in the sense that it was previously done without computers.
e.g. Online shopping is a speedier version of the mail and phone order catalog. People have been buying things without leaving their home or office for more than a century.
0roo0roo
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- Sep 21, 2002
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well 10 years ago there was no ipod. no gigs of flash memory for cheap hanging off your keychain. no gigs of ram for under 100 bucks. no 500+gb hd's for cheap. 30" lcds with 4 million pixels. all that woulda blown ur mind, i doubt anyone predicted that seriously.
Exactly, with static or decreasing footprints. All of those things are just scaled versions of their predecessors. iPod = much improved Sony Walkman.
While I do not pretend to have predicted flash memory technology, the interface it would use, or the year that certain milestones or benchmarks would be reached, I certainly knew 10 years ago the floppy, Zip, and CD-R were not the last word on commodity removable storage. I could reasonably envision 1GB of commodity removable storage in a footprint that was at worst no larger than the floppy and at best 50% smaller.
Gigabytes on a keychain came several years sooner than I might have anticipated, but I knew it was a matter of when not if. Still, it can be impressive when it finally becomes a real product. I still marvel at 1GB MicroSD cards, let alone 8GB MicroSDHC!
Various sources have been talking about one form or another of flat panel technology replacing CRTs for two decades now. Futuristic movies have tried to depict 'flatter' screen technologies for 30+ years, often quite badly due to budget and special effects limitations.
When 20GB was the largest HDD, it wasn't that 500GB or 1TB drives were difficult to imagine so much as how long it would take and imagining what the hell we would be using that much storage capacity for.
RebateMonger
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- Dec 24, 2005
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From an individual productivity viewpoint, there hasn't been much change at all in the past twenty years.
My MOST PRODUCTIVE computing was done in the late 80's, with i286-i386 computers and 40 MB hard drives. I ran DESQView then (multitasking DOS and Windows applications), WordPerfect, Lotus 123, and PCTools (including a GREAT calendar, database, backup, AV, and notes tools, all for about $40). I find the current Windows environment MUCH less productive than that early combination.
Regarding predictions, I recall a discussion of CD-ROM drives in 1982 in a graduate-level Business Computing course. My fellow businessmen and businesswomen were arguing about the need to develop CD-ROM drives.
A common argument:
"What will we need CD-ROMs for? What would we put on them? There's no need for that much data on a single disk."
RebateMonger
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Well, it's pretty and all. And takes a hellacious graphics card.
But is it any more "fun" than 1993's multiplayer "Doom"? Nah.
Well, I certainly got a wide range of responses. Some of you may be interested in why I posted this question. I am going to retire in ten years and I have been researching some predictions of what life will be like then. It seems most people's predictions are based on their political affiliation. Liberals, it seems, have a negative outlook while conservatives are more positive.
As far as technology goes, communications will show the biggest advancements. Crime stats will be lower due to advances in cameras. We should be able to have very small cameras on our person to record all of our time. Thus recording any crime to our person.
All very interesting.
As far as technology goes, communications will show the biggest advancements. Crime stats will be lower due to advances in cameras. We should be able to have very small cameras on our person to record all of our time. Thus recording any crime to our person.
All very interesting.
That sounds more like a statement that a prediction. You'd probably do well to compare that to the rise in violent and alcohol-related crimes here in the UK despite the ever-encroaching spread of CCTV into cities; people still get drunk and kick the shit out of innocent people, they do it while giving the finger to the video cameras too.
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