One of the great American stage shows is “Oklahoma!” and one of the most memorable lines from that play is “Everything’s up-to-date in Kansas City, they’ve gone about as fur as they can go.”  In a real sense, that observation describes my feelings about the basic computer revolution. We are unlikely to see the kind of radical development of new digital tools that has characterized the preceding decade. While we may not have gone as far as we can go, change in this decade will be incremental. Our software and hardware will get better and better at doing the things we now do on a regular basis. Voice driven computing is just around the corner as processing speed grows from the current 1.5 billion cycles a second to an amazing 10 billion cycles per second in the next few years.

One of the most overused phrases from the last decade was “paradigm shift.”  Relatively modest kinds of technological advances were described as paradigm shifts, and yet few, if any, of the things that were so described were really worthy of the designation.  Certainly, the development of the personal computer multi-tasking operating systems was one.  And so too was the development of the graphical user interface for the Internet.  But while the change from the Intel 8088 computer chip with 29,000 transistors, to the current Pentium 4 chips with 42 billion transistors is a dramatic and powerful change, it is not a shift in a paradigm in any real sense.  That change simply reflects the maturation and continued development of a basic concept embodied in computer chips.  I see that process of maturation and continued development as the defining characteristic of computer engineering over the next decade.  For example, one area of computer-based activity that is likely to grow very rapidly in the coming years is video conferencing.  The growth of that technology, however, does not involve the shifting of paradigms. Rather it reflects increasing sophistication, decreasing price, and rapidly expanding high-speed Internet connections that will allow the growth of Internet based video conferencing at extremely affordable costs.

During the decade of the 1990’s there was tremendous growth in the development of software tools for use in offices.  And, while those tools will continue to be refined and made increasingly powerful, I am hard put to think that there will be much more than simply incremental change in Word Perfect Office or Microsoft Office products.  Voice recognition technologies will continue to improve, and some new emerging technologies will be applied to that field that will vastly increase the usability and effectiveness of voice recognition.  But once again, the change is really incremental.  Even exotic technologies such as holograms and holographic rendition of witnesses and objects in the courtroom and in the office are but extensions of a technology that has existed since 1947, when British/Hungarian scientist Dennis Gabor developed the theory of holography.  The development of the laser in 1960 made Gabor’s  theory reality and the high speed processors that are coming down the line will make holograms in the courtroom and office real. That change will be dramatic and very useful, but the technology is not new.

Now, I am not saying that there will not be technological paradigm shifts in the next decade.  What I am saying is that I don’t know what they will be.  There is a widespread rumor about a technology referred to as “IT” that is supposed to be some revolutionary kind of personal transport mechanism.  Whether the hype about “IT” is really just that, or whether it does represent some revolutionary technology in fact, is something we will just have to wait for and see. There are rumors of revolutionary change in automobile engine technology and the development of fuel cells and energy storage but for the moment they are just rumor and speculation. My first automobile was a 1935 Pontiac (which looked a great deal like the new Chrysler PT Cruiser).  My current 1999 Honda is a huge advance over the Pontiac but I often think back with great fondness about my Pontiac adventures.  I look back as well, but with far less fondness to the days of MS DOS and my Compaq luggable computer.  But, while the change in functionality and ease of use between MS DOS and Windows 2000 is incredible, the core technology is not much different.  My Honda has a six-cylinder internal combustion engine and four wheels just as did my Pontiac. The Honda is faster, and much easier to drive, but it is still just another automobile. Powerful change, to be sure, but incremental change nonetheless.  There is a radically different future ahead of us but it can only be dimly perceived from where we are today. For example, Kai Wu, a young undergraduate at Cornell has this vision of the future driven by Nanotechnology, which is molecular manufacturing or, more simply, building things one atom or molecule at a time. ( A nanometer is one billionth of a meter, 3 - 4 atoms wide):

' Imagine a technology so powerful that it will allow such feats as desktop manufacturing, cellular repair, artificial intelligence, inexpensive space travel, clean and abundant energy, and environmental restoration; a technology so portable that everyone can reap its benefits; a technology so fundamental that it will radically change our economic and political systems; a technology so imminent that most of us will see its impact within our lifetimes. Such is the promise of Nanotechnology'.

Kai Wu http://www.englib.cornell.edu/SciTech/s95/ntek.html

We certainly will see other technological paradigm shifts in this century—perhaps many more in addition to Nanotechnology, such as the development of new forms of energy transfer, genetic engineering, Electronic Paper, Biotechnology, Robotics and Virtual Reality systems.  We are on the verge of building computers that are able think like human beings but that is fundamentally the product of the continued exponential growth in processing power.  The “next big thing” is as unknown as it is exciting.

That said, there is much room for incremental improvement in computer technology but the focus at the moment is on making it better, easier to use and cheaper. IBM has started a major inititative by endorsing a concept called “autonomic” computing which focuses on making computers able to repair and adjust themselves just as the human body does. Autonomic computing proceeds from the observation that modern computing is still plagued by system glitches and breakdowns. So was my Pontiac and if IBM can make my daily computing as reliable as my Honda we will have achieved a great deal. I do look forward to that day!!!