There are lots of interesting gadgets available. I kind of think we’re just on the cusp of a whole bunch of new special-purpose gadgets that’ll be coming out. One of the attractions of the personal computer back in the 1980’s was that it was a general purpose machine capable of being programmed for a whole variety of capabilities. Computers were expensive enough that having dedicated, single-purpose machines was not practical.
In the mid-1800’s when electricity was becoming generally available, the electric motor was particularly expensive. General Electric planned to build a “house motor” to which a variety of attachments would be available, each taking advantage of the one motor. The concept was brought to market, but by that time the electric motor technology began making great strides and the single motor idea was abandoned. The same idea made it’s way into farming where the tractor became the “big engine” to which a variety of attachments were available, each drawing on the tractor’s universal power system to operate.
The computer has followed the same route. Initially, the thrust was to build bigger and faster computers with more and more memory. In the past few years, however, that has changed into building more and more special-purpose machines. My favorite at the moment is my iPhone!
I love my iPhone. I really like iTunes and the application store. The entire eco-system works wonderfully well. In the next year or so I’m sure that Apple will loose the tight control they exercise over the entire iPhone system. Other companies will finally figure out that ease of use trumps geekiness! Meantime, the iPhone is quite delightful.
The device that I’m looking forward to is something like the Amazon Kindle, except capable of doing vibrant color (the current Kindle is gray-scale only). I think that kind of a device that will prove to be the resurrection of magazines and newspapers … given that Amazon puts together an eco-system similar to what Apple has done for the iPhone. Ease of use will again trump everything else.
Ta ta for now!