CTO Articles
Published in IT World
E-Business in the Enterprise – May 18, 2004
The impersonal computer revolution
By Sean Mc Grath
What is personal about your personal computer? Two things I would suggest. First, the CPU, the RAM, the keyboard, the mouse, the screen -all that stuff - is personally yours. In the early days of personal computing this was a really novel, powerful idea. A computer all to your little old self. What luxury! These days of course, it is no big deal. The physical bits and bobs that make up PCs are ubiquitous and cheap. Besides, all the bits are basically the same. A keyboard is a keyboard is a keyboard.
The second thing that makes a personal computer, personal is of course, the data. Your data. What is the most time consuming aspect of moving from one machine to another? Moving data. I do not feel any personal allegiance to my current CPU or my current keyboard but I am truly, madly, deeply in love with my data. I suspect you are to.
In the early days of PCs, data storage was physically bulky and heavy -especially if you had a lot of data. In recent years storage capacities have shot right through the stratosphere and the physical size has shrunk dramatically. So much so, that your average teenager-with-an-attitude-problem carries a 20GB hard disk around in their shirt pocket without so much as a whimper. It is called an MP3 player.
Another important trend over the last few years has been the increasing decomposition of the PC into its component pieces. Fast peripheral systems such as USB and firewire obviate the need for the PC's components to be so tightly joined together. These days, it is no big deal to have a 20GB hard disk in your shirt pocket which you can connect into any computer by simply plugging it in. Soon, you will be able to store that amount of data in your wristwatch, or in your wallet on a credit card.
This creates, I think, an interesting new dynamic in the personal computing world. If I can carry all my data around (and I do mean *all*), simply plug it in to any PC and have it work, then maybe I won't bother to carry around my own screen, my own keyboard and so on. After all, a keyboard is a keyboard is a keyboard and these things can be as common as coffee cups.
Picture this. A "Personal Computer" with the standard, critical applications all built-in. E-mail, browser, office applications and so on. Everything you need except it has no "soft storage". No hard disk. You carry an 80GB disk around with you (in your shirt pocket or purse) and you plug it in using the standard USB (or perhaps Firewire) port. These "impersonal" personal computers would be everywhere. Every coffee shop, every airport, every library, every hotel, every company reception area.
Of course, those who need 24x7 computer access and advanced computer applications would also carry around a laptop. A laptop with the same slot for our illustrative 80GB hard disk.
Looking around at the people in my own office, I can see quite a few potential takers for the impersonal approach to personal computing.
Assuming (presuming!) this makes some modicum of sense, the hard part of course is choosing the applications to make ubiquitous by building them in to the self-service PCs. Browsers are easy because, by definition, all the data is on the server side. I see at least two competing systems emerge. A self-service PC with a suite of Microsoft technologies and a self-service PC with a suite of Open Source technologies (Linux, Ximiam, OpenOffice perhaps).
The business model? Remember all those quarters you used to put in to telephone kiosks before you got your cellphone?