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Preprints & Reprints DIGITS IN THE HOME, OFFICE POCKET With the exception of the Personal Computer ( PC) and games machines, electronics in the home has seen little fundamental change since the 1930s. Radio, television and hi-fi are still dominated by analogue technology for transmission, storage and reproduction. Admittedly the boxes have become smaller and more sophisticated, but only in a cosmetic and peripheral sense. For example; TV is essentially the same with just the addition of more scanning lines, colour and marginally larger screens, whilst radio and hi-fi have only seen the introduction of FM and stereo with modest improvements in fidelity. Only recently has the introduction of Compact Disc ( CD) and Digital Audio Tape ( DAT) technology seen the first tentative step towards a wholly digital format. However, digital technology stands poised to trigger major changes with the introduction of new broadcast standards for radio, TV andHighDefinitionTV (HDTV) with the prospect of optical fibre to the home providing a vast information highway on an unprecedented scale. All of these technologies are now at, or past, the advanced demonstrator stage and the necessary engineering standards are being decided. The question is, what further changes and advances will they incite? The digital revolution we have witnessed in computing and communication during the past 15 years has mainly impacted on the office and place of work, with only a moderate incursion into the home in the form of computer games. However, the next phase will involve integrated entertainment and information systems that will create a more uniform, and electronically mobile environment. Information can now be generated, manipulated, stored and transmitted across the planet at very low cost in a digital form that effectively guarantees no distortion or corruption irrespective of time, distance or location. This has been made possible by incredible advances in silicon chip, satellite, radio and optical fibre technology that are now poised to reach out to the home, car, pocket and wrist. The new environment being created will undoubtedly alter the course of society on a grander scale than the industrial revolution of the last century. All the indications are that we are about to participate in the creation of an information world that will see the artificial barriers between work and play, home and office breached. The very nature of companies, commerce and society is already changing in revolutionary ways with company, business national and international boundaries disappearing. The home is the next sector to be addressed and may become the focal point of many near future developments. Watch a 5 year old on a computer games terminal; see a 10 year old use a mobile telephone; watch teenagers doing their homework to the accompaniment of pop music; witness graduates working on computer terminals isolated by their individual walkman environments. Couple this to their increased expectation of higher definition graphics; faster and more sophisticated software; an innate desire for total communication and immersion with the obvious gratification of the immediate response. See also an expectation of a continuous and increased rate of delivery with falling price, then you have an insight into the technology trends and drive from the customers and users of tomorrow. But what is it they ultimately want ? Imagine sitting in a cardboard box at Wimbledon watching the tennis through a square hole cut in the side that only allows you a restricted view of the event. That is effectively how TV is today, with the small screen and camera-man restricting and dictating your view - and how frustrating it can be! Imagine now that your TV screen was as large as your living room wall and gave you an unrestricted view of the scene - and further, if you had control of the zoom facility - you would have become the camera-man. You would control the level of detail of what you could see and hear! Alternatively, suppose you were to don a pair of Virtual Reality ( VR) spectacles and could be instantaneously transported to a specific seat in the Albert Hall, or Yankee stadium. As you moved your head, then the scene would change and allow you to see the people either side of you, or those behind and in front. Impressively the seat that you occupy could simultaneously be occupied by hundreds, thousands or millions of people. Effectively we could all attend the Olympic games without leaving the comfort of our own homes. Does this sound far fetched ? Well, all the base technologies required is available in the research laboratories of the world - and the ability to broadcast all the information is in place now! Some companies are taking this to be a serious prospect, and perhaps a useful focus for effort and technological development released by the peace dividend. Is there much more? Sight and sound are only two of the human senses. The transducers necessary for touch and feel are already at a very preliminary phase of development, with hand, head, limb and body position systems also being developed. So, in principle it may be possible for us to become totally immersed in an electronic environment. Electronic games and interactive video will then take on a whole new form. We would be able to enter into the story, literally, and change the course of events by assuming the role of the hero, heroine, villain or whatever. Games would be more competitive with human pitched against human, or teams against teams, with a near full set of senses and movement, instead of today's restricted visual play against a machine. If such offerings emerge from the computer based electronic games industry around the end of the millennium, what can we expect from the established TV based industry? Unfortunately, the desire for incremental change will probably forestall visually and acoustically immersive systems through the introduction of the more sure footedHDTV with stereo sound systems. Today the perceived market wisdom is that by changing the picture aspect ratio from 4/3 (today's TV set) to 16/9 (conventional cinema screen), with over twice the picture definition, in a slightly bigger box in the corner of the living room is all the market requires. However, experiments with children today - the likely customers in this time frame - show a far greater desire for the big screen, or personalised environment of the head wornVR display. The battle lines are thus being drawn between the old TV, radio and hi-fi based entertainment industry and the new, more radically driven, computer hardware, software and games developers. The most likely outcome for both technology and market related reasons is that the computer based industries and technology will ultimately win. The average home now has two or three TV sets, two hi-fi systems, and at least one computer, plus CAMCORDER and VCR, cameras, digital watches, walkmans and electronic games machines of various kinds. Much of the technology for each of these is common or at least shared. The manufacturer who is able to integrate TV, hi-fi, VCR, computer and games console as a single interactive unit can thus offer a far greater set of facilities at a much lower unit cost that the individual items. Link such terminals to the telecommunications network and a new environment for work and play is realised. For example, a video telephone with distortionless images of people of the correct size and colour with hi-fi sound can, in principal, be created with a standard TV and Camcorder. It is only the limitations of copper cable based telephone and Cable TV networks that prevent this being a practicality today. Once these have been swept aside by optical fibre to the home then it could be realised at very low cost. The likelihood is that the availability of fibre will coincide with that of very large flat Liquid Crystal Display ( LCD) or projection screens that will allow the living room or office wall to effectively fade into a transparent tunnel. So the wall of my living room looks straight into that of my mothers 200 miles away. With such a visual and acoustic link between two distant rooms, the transmission of body language, eye contact, emotion and the spontaneous interaction of the real meeting place, conference or living room can be created. For the office and home worker, the large screen not only allows effective human communication, with a real sense of being there, but also a unique data space for interaction with machines. Experimental systems have shown that shared data space with machines and people working together is far more effective than isolated people, machines, and sectored modes of operation. Many of us commonly carry a selection of the following; mobile telephone, pager, pocket calculator, personal tape recorder or message pad, laptop, palmtop, personal organiser, digital wrist watch, pocket memory bank, portable radio, walkman, smart and dumb cards, etc. Almost all of this can be integrated into a single device now - as evidenced by the recent emergence of thePersonalDigitalAssistant (PAD). Here we have a single device that embodies many of the desired functions, and will soon see true mobility through a radio interface. But this is just the start of a migration towards the computer you wear ! Integrating all of the above functions with the provision of translucent VR spectacles (like a fighter pilots head up display) or even active contact lenses that spray laser light images directly onto the retina of the eye, would realise true mobility. The raw technology to create these new devices is assured through an established line of electronic hardware developments stretching back to 1959, with the introduction of the first integrated circuit, andextending well into the 21st century. We can therefore continue to expect to see computing power doubling at 2 - 3 year intervals for at least another decade, and more probably two, and perhaps even three. This should realise a super computer of human equivalence by the year 2010, which will be reduced to PC size around 2030. The future of software is less sure due to it's relative immaturity, but the likelihood is that the present refinement process will continue with increasing levels of sophistication realised. Probably the most promising developments at present involve evolutionary principles and self organisation. Studies suggest that such software will outclass human programming skills and cognitive abilities by about the turn of the century. The key technology limiter and challenge we now face is that of the information world itself. The apparently simple tasks of information classification, filing, location, retrieval, valuation, validation, updating, costing, charging and billing, become formidably difficult when databases are both massive and distributed across the planet. To cite just a few examples; there are over 6M photographs of church windows in Europe alone, billions of hospital records including individual patient histories, 35 miles of bookshelves worth of new books printed each year and so on. These are distributed throughout thousands of libraries, publishing houses, hospitals, universities and institutions in over 130 countries. How are we going to find that phrase we can vaguely remember, that latest research report, those patient histories, that vital bit of data for our homework assignment ? Perhaps more importantly, how are we going to sort the wheat from the chaff, the good and valuable from the dross ? Somewhere in all this data are the vital clues that relate food, lifestyle, pollution, demographics, medication and diagnostics for many of the major ailments of the human race. The list, and potential for good is endless! Here we face our major challenge that is only now beginning to be seriously addressed in Europe and North America. It might be anticipated that dumb and smart software agents will roam this information world at our behest, calling at data vaults, finding, sorting and correlating information on our behalf, and finally deliver it to us over the global telecommunications infrastructure. In both scientific and engineering terms the hardware war is over (for the time being), the software war is well underway, and the information or content war is just about to commence! All of this offers a world of communication and information on demand, any time anywhere. The most vital ingredient however, will be the interface technology. To ensure success and true utility the technology must be friendly and welcoming to me, my wife, my 5 year old son my 20 year old daughter and my 74 year old mother. What we have today in the home and office will not do! Computer illiteracy has more to do with bad interface design than the inability of the individual. Voice, hand, eye and gesture activation for interfaces, with humanised data that exhibits easily recognised human like responses with some emotion is absolutely vital. Today's technology, with the TV remote offering 76 autonomous buttons, and the PC with its pile of operating manuals, or even my digital wrist-watch with a 25 page manual, is not the path to the future. If the Information Society is to become a beneficial reality it has to be available and accessible to all from home or office and on the move. It must not be the province of a smaller and smaller elite as it is also the only visible solution to the growing ecological crisis created by an increasingly mobile population and the associated burning of hydrocarbons. In short; we have to increase and improve the true effectiveness of our communication, computing and information systems and stop travelling - starting with the office and working back to the home. Word Count = 1806 |