Going Virtual – The Semantic Web Will Replace Many Things
January 19, 2010
As computers replaced many of our everyday business tools, now the web is replacing our computers. More and more, our handy little devices have fewer buttons and bigger screens. People said the iPhone wouldn’t make it, because it didn’t have a physical keyboard. But that didn’t stop it from becoming the fastest selling phone in history. Why? Because screen real-estate counts, and gesturing on screens turns out to be easier for many people than pushing buttons.
This is an important trend to keep an eye on: features are going virtual. Once, we had telephones, and if you didn’t reach the other person you called later. Then we had answering machines, which let the other person pull your message to him/her whenever it was convenient. Then our answering machines became part of the phone service. Then, we got cable boxes, because we wanted to pull in much more content, and they got absorbed into our TVs. Then we wanted to pull our television shows individually and see them when we wanted, so we got TiVos, and now the PVRs are being absorbed into our new cable boxes. Soon, all of those boxes will go away. Soon, all your stereo boxes will go away. Soon, many of the buttons on your car’s dashboard will go away. They will be replaced by screens, and the screens will be driven by our online data lockers.
A few things in our lives whose features or entire existence will be replaced by software and the internet:
Phones and phone service have already started. Once we have some version of wide-area internet connectivity, we won’t use the phone networks. The big sticking point here is that the governments are auctioning licenses for this part of the spectrum, and the only companies that can afford to buy this spectrum are the telcos. It’s tragic. We may not see good wide-area connectivity for a decade, just because of this.
Televisions will be replaced by screens and the internet. This will happen in the blink of an eye. I predict it will start in 2011 and go mainstream by 2013. Over the next ten years, the broadcast stations will move primarily from the traditional “channels” to their own web sites and places like Hulu.com.
Stereo systems. Eventually, you’ll plug a pair of speakers into the wall, connect them to the internet, and control everything through a browser. One of the interesting innovations here are speakers that take their signals direct from the Internet via WiFi. Companies are just starting to experiment with this kind of speaker, which needs an amplifier built-in, so they will need to plug into the wall (until we have wireless power). The first such system has just been released by Blackfire Research. We can expect more of these as the technology goes mainstream.
Hard disks. Wherever you see a hard disk, that’s going to go to the cloud. So your laptop and desktop machines will just be terminals that can see the web. No more Mac operating system, no more Microsoft Windows, not even Linux. You don’t need a disk operating system if you don’t have a disk.
Keyboards and mice will start to be replaced by gestures and pop-up keyboards on flat screens.
Cash, keys, and Credentials. All the cards you carry in your wallet, cash, keys, tickets, passes, and your wallet itself will be replaced by digital versions that are more secure and more capable.
There’s more in my book. I just want to get you started thinking in this direction, because much of this will happen over the next five years.
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