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While the online masses are deciding whether or not Facebook’s sudden changes to its privacy policies in its haughty quest to be the semantic “social graph” for the Internet are going to destroy the brave new world they are all helplessly addicted to, and many eyes are on the hundreds of thousands of dollars being quickly – and loudly – raised for “open” competitors to be built, the true effect of this burning need for all to be connected has yet to be realized. That’s because it has nothing to do with the infrastructure of the network or the service, but rather of the device that connects to it. The personal computer revolution of the late 1970s and 1980s changed everything for our world. Don’t worry, don’t worry. I’m not going into a dissertation about it; we all know it because we’ve all lived it or studied a little history. The fact is, the desktop, tower, and laptop form factors that we’ve been pounding on for the past thirty years have been as ubiquitous and expected as any piece of furniture, no matter where you are: home, office, school, library, fast food joint, coffee shop, or even in places of worship. There’s nary a location one might come across a PC where there’d be surprise and the relatively recent popularity of netbooks shows that there’s a future for standard computers as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth become wholly integrated into our municipalities and establishments…or does it? The trending of Moore’s Law for the cost of improving integrated circuits is coming to an end(how old does that makes you feel?), so manufacturers now have to focus on engineering and marketing multiple core processors, and when you do that, clock speed (GHz) and like “speeds and feeds” are no longer relevant. Only people who still want to build their own computers for the thrill of it will be interested in such specifications. Everyone else will just want to pick out the device that can do the things they’re most interested in, while being presented in the package best suited for their personal tastes. The user experience becomes the most important factors, not the commoditized piece of hardware and what’s under the plastic. If the good people at “Will it Blend?” (http://www.blendtec.com/willitblend/) have taught us anything, they all look the same under there. The margin computer manufacturers make on these machines that need to continually be faster and sexier, while maintaining a drastically falling sticker price for consumers, is razor thin. With the introduction and clear desirability for iPad-like mobile devices, it seems the fate of the personal computer with its unwieldy footprint has been sealed. Don’t be surprised in a few years if you go to your favorite computer manufacturer’s store and find only “smart devices” as broadband access reaches upwards of 100mbps. With those sorts of speeds available through your mobile service provider’s networks and the costs amortized across millions of customers and supported by governments, you also shouldn’t be surprised if you no longer need a home router creating your own network. Why bother with all that technical confusion and expense of upgrading when you can just pick up a light, thin, and attractive device that connects to all your info stored in a “cloud” of shared data that is served to you as fast as you get television today by “traditional” means. Isn’t that what we’ve all been hoping for all these years? The promise of picking something up and being able to intuitively grab the content we need and do with it what we might. No boring computer classes, no frantic and frustrated calls to our children for help, no ponderous manuals with their many assumptions. And, mercifully, no bulky pieces of equipment to clutter up our already crowded lives. Know your computer parts and how they work. Visit USB to serial adapter
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