A.P. Lawrence

2005/07/04 convergence (everything you never needed)

I suppose it's inevitable that music storage will be added to today's camera/cellphone/internet access gizmo's. Even I, with little interest in music or taking pictures, have to admit that every now and then I'd like to snap a picture of something and who knows, if it's right there in my phone, heck, I might even fire up some classical music or even some vintage Queen once in a blue moon or so.

Don't panic, I'm still a grumpy curmudgeon. It's just that if it's cheap to do, and can be done with reasonable battery life, even I have to say "Why not?". On the storage side, I would hope and expect that they'd implement this as a distributed virtual file system like Coda. That would seem to make the most sense to me, and cut down on the necessary local storage and power consumption.

How far can we take this? Virtual keyboards, of course. Distributed computing power? Why shouldn't I be able to (someday) "run" Linux, Mac OSX, Windows, etc. all through one device I can carry in my pocket? Of course Windows will be a hobbyist OS by then, used by the same sort of folks who like to fire up their old TRS-80's now..

Realistically, we aren't far away from all this now. In crude forms, all of it exists, or could exist, today. It's just a matter of time - assuming, of course, that the religious fundamentalists don't drive us back into the Dark Ages and that we don't poison our air and water, collapse into apocalyptic war, or otherwise destroy our future.

Psst - Wanna work for yourself?

Comments


Mon Jul 4 05:59:49 2005: Subject:   Phil
Don't worry too much about the religious "fundamentalists". I'm sure the US and its allies have them pretty well shut down. It's not as if there's a Bali or a Beslan every day.



As for having MS in my pocket - please no!

Mon Jul 4 09:33:33 2005: Subject:   TonyLawrence
Actually, I'm worfried about the fundies in this country :-)



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