May 31st, 2010
There is one last “dimension” of Moore’s Law to discuss briefly — the continuing advance in our communication networks. Again, all you need to do is think back a few years (well, all right, maybe more than just a few) to the era of 100-baud modems, followed by 300 baud, 1200 baud, and then 2,400 [...]
May 30th, 2010
In an earlier blog in this series, I reminisced about an experience I had had in a mainframe computer room, back in the mid-1960′s: a high-speed drum, roughly the size of a family-size washing machine, had begun vibrating so hard that it snapped the bolts anchoring it to the floor, and began vibrating its away [...]
May 29th, 2010
In previous blogs, I’ve discussed the possible impact and consequences of several “dimensions” of technology advances predicted by Moore’s Law — e.g., what happens if we see tenfold, or hundredfold, improvements in the speed and cost of computers? Today I’ll explore another such dimension: size, or “footprint.” What happens when computers get ten times smaller? [...]
May 27th, 2010
Yesterday I blogged about one obvious consequence of the cost reductions that Moore’s Law brings to us with computer technology: the likelihood of ubiquitous computing in the next few years. Today, I’ll blog about three other consequences: Disposable computers Multiple computer gadgets for everyone, not just one Shift in power, as scarce technology becomes a [...]
May 26th, 2010
In yesterday’s blog posting, I wrote about the likely impact of significantly faster computers that we can look forward to in the future. Today, I’ll explore another dimension of improvement suggested by Moore’s Law: cheaper computers. In rough, general terms, the computing power that costs me $1,000 today should cost $100 in five years, and [...]
May 25th, 2010
As I discussed in yesterday’s blog posting, Moore’s Law tells us that we should expect to see computer technology becoming ten times more powerful in the next five years, and 100 times more powerful a decade from now — in such key dimensions as speed, cost, size, and storage capacity. Let’s start with the dimension [...]
May 24th, 2010
As I suggested in my previous blog on this series of commentaries on future trends in the IT industry, we could probably spend several years improving things even if computer hardware didn’t change at all. But the fact of the matter is that hardware has changed, and will probably continue to do so for the [...]
May 23rd, 2010
I just finished presenting a two-day seminar on “Enterprise 2.0” in Rome on May 19-21, 2010. You can download the 57.3-megabyte PDF file by clicking on the link above, or the image below, or by viewing/downloading the presentation from my Slideshare page. A few of the slides may seem rather cryptic and mysterious, but if [...]
May 17th, 2010
Here’s an interesting question to consider: would the IT industry improve during the next, say, five years if there were no improvements in hardware technology? Think about it: no new mainframes from IBM, no new desktop computers from Dell, no shiny new Powerbooks from Apple. No breathless announcements of a new hard disk that stores [...]
May 16th, 2010
Back in the Dark Ages — which, for me, was in the early 1970s — staying in touch with family, friends, and business colleagues while traveling abroad was a relatively straightforward affair: it simply didn’t happen. It was possible to call people on the phone, but there were no discount phone services, so it was [...]
