Deep tech thoughts

Posted at 10:59 AM on April 6, 2009 by Bob Collins (7 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

As I indicated earlier, I'm filling in for Jon Gordon this week on Future Tense. So I'm thinking deep tech thoughts, which gets more and more difficult with every birthday. Seriously, am I really supposed to be excited about Nintendo DSi? The cool kids are, I hear. Then there's Google Voice, and all things Twitter, which the media -- bowing -- is overdosing on just to prove it's a "cool kid," even though we all know it's not.

Whenever Jon is away and I start jumping back into the tech life, I'm drawn back to 1984. The scene: The newsroom at the RKO Radio Network in New York. Anchor Jim Cameron is muttering something about the incredible power of his new 1200 baud modem. It makes patrolling CompuServe so much faster.

What's new and what's hot is often new and hot for a short period of time. The things that are going to change the world with their potential, often don't.

Yesterday's AOL instant messenger is today's Twitter, which is tomorrow's... well, who knows? Ten years from now, maybe it will be as archaic as the 1200 baud modem. Maybe not.

Which technology is most likely to fulfill its promise? And which is a solution in search of a problem?

(h/t: Cyberjournalist.net)

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Comments (7)

I think we had a 300 baud modem for a while. We also won a lottery at the computer company we both worked for back in the 80's and were able to buy a IBM-lookalike PC. It was delivered in several hugh boxes to our front door--and just left there. Nice surprise when we got home from work, one that it arrived and two that it was still there.

Posted by momkat | April 6, 2009 11:56 AM

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Bob take a look at Shoes. An excellent entry point for children to get started in software development. I remember playing with my IBM pc jr when I was a kid and was excited when I could make colors flash on the screen with a little basic code. Now with the same amount of effort a curious kid could build a flicker pic downloading client.

Posted by Joel Calhoun | April 6, 2009 1:19 PM

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Watching TV on the web. A few years ago several companies went bankrupt laying fiber optic cable across the country. There was not enough business after all was said and done. Today we are getting close to full capacity with all the video downloads.

Tell us what is hot in the video download marketplace.

Posted by bigalmn | April 6, 2009 1:24 PM

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Love the video! I was one of the first 300 people to use AOL. I quit after a year in favor of a local ISP.

In a way things have not changed all that much as far as what we actually do online it is just faster now.

Posted by teresa@tboardman.com | April 6, 2009 2:28 PM

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Listening to spoken audio at double or triple speed because who has the time to listen to pauses and inflections anymore? Real life is just tooooooo slowwwwww.

Posted by sm | April 6, 2009 2:49 PM

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What about OLED screens?
Organic light emitting diode, or OLED, screens are comprised of organic materials. They don't require a backlight of any kind, so they use a fraction of the power of a typical LCD. One from Sony was named "2008 Innovation of the Year" by Popular Science.

Posted by Bob | April 6, 2009 3:49 PM

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/ditto OLEDs

Posted by Joel Calhoun | April 6, 2009 5:24 PM

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