| Friday, March 25, 2005 |
| Lunch Talk |
I came up with several titles for this post:
"Technology: Before and After"
"The World we live in"
"The World we live in : Before and After"
"Generations: Previous and Next"
I was not convinced with any of them and was tired of thinking. So for lack of a better name I decided to name this post "Lunch Talk"
Over lunch the topic of how the world is changing came up and my colleague said that over the past 50 years there has been a tremendous change. There was the invention of radio, TV, music systems, cds, dvds, computers, internet, ipods and most of the luxury items that are common today.
Our previous generation like our dads and grand dads have lived through all this. When my grand father was young there were no radios ...so I ask myself what did he do? May be he just read and played all day. When my father was young ...there was no TV? So what did he do? My father says he used to listen to the radio. So when our next generation like our kids, grandkids reach our age they will ponder over the question: When my father was young there was no internet ...what did he do? I might say ... I watched TV and listened to the radio. It is amazing to see how things have changed in a small timespan.
My colleague says that currently we are seeing a new revolution of the information age. Computers and internet have become house old names. Everybody is now trying to improve the user experience. We are now more worried about:
1. how to make the coolest and best possible game that gives the user a real playing experience.
2. how to make gadgets as small as possible ( egs 1" laptops, nanotechnology products, MAC mini, iShuffle) . Geeks are saying "Small is Big" ... is it?
3. how to merge the media that is spread all over ( on ur laptop, iPod, CDs, cassettes etc) into one singe entity. Imagine your media centre is one stop shop for anything u wld need both online and off. And also that u cld take ur data with u or it just is available everywhere u go.
4. how to make the coolest robots that can act and be like humans.
I can keep going but I think you get the picture.
I agree with my colleague that all the ideas are not really far fetched and we have already seen some of these dreams realized. We have seen the iPod and Apple mania. iPods revolutionized the way people think of music. It is estimated that an average of 40 iPods are sold per minute (see link). We are seeing concepts like BitTorrent, Myth TV and Tivo taking control. Block buster, Net flix and other rental stores are fighting a losing battle. Evidence of this is the new schemes that BB comes up with every month to save their skin. Also, next generation tech products are trying to bring technology closer to the user. We already have palm pilots, music on phones, portable PSP etc. I am sure there is more on the assembly line. For eg: Next generation iPod products like vPod , wireless iPods, iPods in the car, iPhones etc. ( check above link).
So I ask myself will we move into a world of "Minority Report", or "I, Robot" where computers and technology are ubiquitous. What will it be like living in that world? Also, will we experience the same level of paradigm shift that our previous generations experienced? My colleague thinks we will see a similar or greater shift. I, however, beg to differ. I feel that though there will be a change it will not be as huge as the one our previous generation experienced. My reasoning is that our previous generation were in the phase of laying the foundation for a whole new world but our generation and the next is just building upon this foundation. I think the latter is far easier than the former. But I may be wrong; only time will tell. But I am definitely excited and looking forward to this new world. |
posted by BUS @ 1:24 PM  |
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| 1 Comments: |
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Maybe it is part fact part fiction.
As is a normal human habit he/she embellishes each narration in his own way and maybe some parts got embellished/exagerrated while others didnt. Similarly some parts would have definitely gotten lost in the narration or in the translation.
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Maybe it is part fact part fiction.
As is a normal human habit he/she embellishes each narration in his own way and maybe some parts got embellished/exagerrated while others didnt. Similarly some parts would have definitely gotten lost in the narration or in the translation.