The Future of the PC

For years on end, the PC has been at the center of most

technological innovations. New devices and technologies were making that machine

which sits on your desktop, better, faster or more versatile. And what didn’t

affect the PC was usually relegated to the back pages. But the winds of change

seem to be blowing, and blowing hard.

If you look at the technological innovations that are making

it to the front pages today–WAP, Bluetooth, GPRS (General Packet Radio

Switch), VoIP (Voice over IP)–they have almost nothing to do with the PC.

Instead, the current darling of the technology world is the cellphone. And if

you notice, the cellphone has gained popular acceptance faster than the PC ever

did. Just a couple of years back, you got to see cellphones only in James Bond

movies, but suddenly everyone, from corporate chieftains to chaiwalas and school

students to housewives are sporting one. And services, particularly e-mail and

the Web, which once were the exclusive domain of the PC, are swiftly moving over

to the cellphone.

Why?

The cellphone is in many ways what the PC is, and goes beyond

to be many things that the PC could never be. The most obvious is that the

cellphone has processing power. Add to this, the screen that can display

information and the keypad that can be used to enter information, and you have a

device very similar to your PC. Going beyond, the cellphone already handles

voice commands much better than the PC has been able to do. Now add to this the

fact that the cellphone is way cheaper than the PC, its batteries can hold

enough power for the long haul, and you can carry it around in your pocket

whereever you go. Do you see the beginnings of a computing device more

compelling than the PC?

But the cellphone is not fully there yet.

For one, the display is still small and largely monochrome

text. That could change soon, with the PDA merging with the cellphone. Or better

still, a virtual display could be added to the hands-free kit–along with the

earphone and microphone, there would also be an eyepiece that would project the

screen directly on to your retina.

The next issue is the lack of bandwidth. Data communication

on your cellphone is still caught in the primitive 9.6 kbps era. So, sending

content, particularly multimedia content to and from a cellphone is a major

headache today. But that too is on the verge of changing. Better compression

techniques coupled with higher bandwidths could soon be sending multimedia

content to the large-screen projected on to your eye from the hands-free kit.

Why, the cellphone could replace not just your PC, but also your TV!

Is it the end of the PC?

The PC, or rather the workstation, still has its unique

position in the scheme of things. For example, you wouldn’t be writing code or

editing video on a cellphone. For that you would use the PC. But the number of

people who would use those programs or watch those videos would be many, many

times more than those creating them. And all of them would use cellphones!

Cellphones that would be more of a PC than the PC could ever become. Cellphones,

that at the same time, would be as unlike a PC as can ever be.

So, if you want to see the PC of the future evolve, watch

what’s happening to the cellphone.