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Peter Cochrane's Hard Drive 2000 Convergence? Not in your life! FOR the past 20 years, an almost universal and established wisdom in the IT industry has assumed a future with all information and communication carried on one unified digital network to singular devices capable of doing everything and anything anywhere. Moreover, it has also been assumed that this physical convergence would be complemented by a merging of service delivery with telephone, fax, email, World Wide Web, radio, TV and much more, presenting a standard interface on a single-screen device. So people ponder the PC becoming a TV, the mobile phone becoming a PDA and vice versa; Web pages becoming standardised, global control and management. I hate to disappoint them, but all the evidence points toward a substantial and expanding divergence, with virtually no convergence. No doubt about it, we have seen our planet being traversed by optical fibre networks of vast proportions, with every continent linked by slivers of optical fibre capable of transporting vast libraries of information in seconds. On the North Atlantic route, for example, there will soon be sufficient fibre capacity for everyone in Europe to talk simultaneously to everyone in the Americas. And in the US, as in many other countries, the long-lines transmission capacity now installed currently exceeds that in the local loop by an order of magnitude. Then, of course, we have geo-stationary and low-earth orbit satellites, balloon and aircraft-based orbital systems, parasitic networks of things using Bluetooth and the like being developed, plus first, second and third generation mobile, and much more in the pipeline. While all of these use digital transmission, the modulation schemes and signalling standards are all very different. At home and office, in car and on body, we are also witnessing an explosion of devices spanning: variant TV, hi-fi, PC, PDA, mobile phone, fax, copier, CD-player, MP3, and each with different and fast-changing standards. Far from converging, we see more divergence than ever before. I think we can safely assume that while our base silicon and software technologies continue to advance at an exponential rate, we will enjoy an increasing richness of device and network in support of an expanding choice of services. Will we ever see convergence? Perhaps, but I suspect, not for some considerable time. All the evidence of the past says that until technologies stabilise, convergence is always insignificant. It has been true for our weapons systems, agricultural machinery, cars, aircraft, wristwatches, pens, pencils and jewellery, food processing and packaging. The next roller coaster ride is already approaching, with the decoding of genetic materials and the fundamental understanding it brings, regarding the relationship between life forms, and the linking of biologically evolved and engineered systems. The hybridisation of carbon and silicon life, sensors, actuators and computing power, will not only create a raft of as yet unthought-of industries, but hopefully, also give us new tools to better cope with a continually accelerating world. Peter Cochrane holds the Collier Chair for the Public Understanding of Science & Technology at the University of Bristol. His home page is: |
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