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| We‘ve only seen act one |
September 24, 2001 |
By: Peter Wolchak
We like to think the Internet has really changed our lives. And it has a little: e-commerce activity is booming, the Web is a useful information resource and e-mail is an entirely new form of communication.
But five years from now we’ll smile when thinking back to 2001, when we believed the Internet had made a substantive alteration in our lives.
Consider today’s best-case scenario: you have a PC or notebook with high-speed ’net access that works most of the time. Your personal digital assistant (PDA) or cell phone offers some e-mail functionality. And if you’re particularly well-heeled you enjoy limited mobile computing—you have wireless access to e-mail and some Web pages, and can make phone calls to and from remote parts of the globe.
That’s cool enough—but it’s a pittance compared to what’s coming. In the near future your computer, phone and PDA will operate in an always-connected mode in which ’net access is a given, not an afterthought. And these traditional Web-access devices will be overshadowed by a range of appliances that each swim through a sea of interconnected technology and data. Your furnace will inform a service firm when it needs maintenance. Your kitchen will tally a grocery order as you chew through your food stock. Your car will feed you directions to the restaurant it selected based on your preset culinary preferences. Your main business computer will collate real-time corporate information with current market trends, providing a summary that’s accessible anywhere, anytime.
On a larger scale, retailers will sell directly to individuals based on stated preferences and spending limits, just-in-time manufacturing will take on a new dimension as automated factory systems independently order supplies in real time, and faster and richer communication technology will dwarf the e-mail systems that today seem so critical to business processes.
If this future vision seems too grand, consider two determining factors: the public has demonstrated an insatiable appetite for cool technology, and industry heavy-hitters are pouring millions of dollars into related R&D projects.
Hewlett-Packard, for example, has a vision of the future it calls Cooltown, a name that encompasses a research project, product set and a worldwide series of demonstration centres. A recently-opened Cooltown demo centre in Mississauga, Ont., joins facilities in Palo Alto, Calif., and Geneva, Switzerland, with more to come. At these centres visitors view prototype Cooltown implementations: a rental car that can download your business calendar, car-seat adjustment settings and favourite radio stations; in-wall communication devices that transmit and receive information at your bidding; a vending machine that uses cell phones as a payment method; and business technology, such as printers, that is connected to PCs through a URL rather than a cable.
Perhaps the most poignant scenario suggested by HP is that of an elderly woman who collapses in her apartment. Her biometric watch senses a medical crisis and directs emergency medical personnel to her address. Paramedics then use a PDA to access her medical records and administer treatment accordingly.
HP predicts that its Cooltown vision will become reality in North America in five to seven years.
IBM, too, is investing heavily in this always-connected future and is willing to make bold promises about what will come. "I guarantee you can make money with wireless technology in any aspect of your business," said Val Rahmani, IBM’s general manager of global wireless solutions.
She cautioned, though, that businesses have to implement these technologies well or people will be turned off. A consumer, for example, probably won’t want to browse through books on a cell phone’s small screen but "if a book was out of stock…your phone could signal you when it’s in and you could confirm the purchase on your phone."
The upshot of all this innovation will be a sea change in the way individuals and businesses interact. The technology wave that has already hit us is but an indication of the tidal wave that’s coming.
pwolchak@backbonemag.com
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