The Post-PC era!!
Since the late sixties early seventies when Robert Metcalfe and others were conceiving the idea of network addressing protocols allowing computers to communicate over a common local network and in 1969 the creation of ARPANET the military forerunner to the modern Internet the number of connected nodes on the Internet has grown from the first four US Universities to about 2.5 Billion hosts worldwide.
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
The idea was that the structure of the Internet was bomb-proof (literally). By having fully meshed paths and a robust addressing scheme with simple protocols along with the packetising of data, no one major disaster could disrupt the integrity of the Internet.
How ever the PC revolution changed all that. As PC centric thinking became the norm users world wide decided to localise their important IT structures and developed local area networks based on accounts and data servers providing in-house answers to security, recovery and archiving.
Seemed like a good idea the industry geared up to provide workstations, enterprise servers and trusted software, the users grasped the idea of having their own IT services and structure under their own control. No more ‘Big Brother’ mainframe centric systems for us. Spread the load far and wide and let the Internet provide access to local systems when and as required.
This has led to vulnerabilities to business and end user data because of so much important data is stored locally it becomes vulnerable to earthquakes and other disasters.
Even the process of off site backups does not help if the disaster wipes out an entire city or district as the off site backups maybe under several piles of rubble as well.
With the proliferation of portable computing important data can be even more fragmented by loss of data. I see a growing trend in Enterprise laptops being thought of as ‘personal’ devices and large amounts of data stored on them that never finds its way to the home backup or corporate servers.
However in the last few years a ‘new’ (like anything is really new) approach to computing started to make the headlines.
It consisted of the theory that users only needed access to the Internet via a browser and they could connect to their software application and data systems through service providers. This would relieve the customer of having to provide software and local servers for email, Data recovery and applications.
Sound familiar, well to make sure its not we’ll give it a new name and call it ‘Cloud Computing’
I have been a advocate of Grid, Mesh, SaaS, Cloud Computing for a number of years. My 40+ years of being a IT tech and teaching Computer IT courses has led me to believe the average computer user is actually getting sold a load of BS when it comes to personal computing. Go forth and buy the latest laptop or desktop and its so friendly you will be zooming through the digital world like a trooper in no time. Yeah right!
Most Techie s don’t really have a understanding of what frustration ordinary everyday computer users go through.
Mrs and Mr Jones go into the local computer store and get sold a new laptop with ‘lets say’ Windows 7. It cost them, if they are lucky, <$1000 more than likly they were talked into parting with >$2000.
They take it home and want to do some word processing and email and maybe the odd family pics uploaded and attached to email etc.
Instead of a friendly experience they are bam-boozled with updates, firewalls, broadband, service packs virus scanning and malware not to mention the fact that they did not realise all they bought was a computer with OS with no idea how to purchase and install applications.
Where is the user friendly computer? Certainly not in the existing range of personal computers available. But just maybe a Cloud Computing device leaning towards the tablet idea, that gets you on the net without any fuss and gives you a one stop access to your applications, email, contacts, calenders, photos, videos and other data is the best hope for the friendly computer scenario.
When I think of all the stories to come out of the Christchurch Earthquake disaster, the one about business loosing access to the IT infrastructure is the one that would not have happened under the original idea of the ‘survivability’ of the Internet. It is only the PC market and Enterprise stupidity the had fostered the systems that are vulnerable to total or partial loss in a earthquake or other disaster.
The Internet and its lack of speed and access to secure well priced broadband plans becomes even more important when you think of what happened in Christchurch.
This along with more businesses and ordinary users willing to rethink the personal computing experience and move to a SaaS cloud computing model would have had many Christchurch businesses operating within hours of the earthquake for their IT needs.
More important the ordinary non-power user would be able to access the computing environment with a cheaper, less frustrating ‘cloud’ computer and still have a application and data rich experience.
Steve Jobs has been tauting the iPad as the post-pc device, in the sense that the device is cloud capable and untethered (wireless) (but still tethered to a pc for updates etc) and portable using SaaS for lots of its applications, he maybe right, but I doubt it.
Netbooks, Tablets and various other consumer devices are still to wrapped up in the hybrid world of part PC part media/cloud device.
I believe that it needs to be taken further though, starting with minimal local OS and application resources (just browser) and become just a turn on access device for the cloud.
There will always be a need for the statuesque, power users and big business are not going to abandon years of resource investment because of cloud devices, but the small business and non-IT literate users will gain huge relief from the frustrations of the present day pc centric world.
My hope is that the Post-PC era will be will mean the Internet is the computer, bomb-proof and not concerned with the size of your Hard Drive etc only how fast your connection is.
Only then will a true post-pc era device for the masses and it will be supreme.
Peter L Shields
Old Techie Guy.
Since the late sixties early seventies when Robert Metcalfe and others were conceiving the idea of network addressing protocols allowing computers to communicate over a common local network and in 1969 the creation of ARPANET the military forerunner to the modern Internet the number of connected nodes on the Internet has grown from the first four US Universities to about 2.5 Billion hosts worldwide.
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
The idea was that the structure of the Internet was bomb-proof (literally). By having fully meshed paths and a robust addressing scheme with simple protocols along with the packetising of data, no one major disaster could disrupt the integrity of the Internet.
How ever the PC revolution changed all that. As PC centric thinking became the norm users world wide decided to localise their important IT structures and developed local area networks based on accounts and data servers providing in-house answers to security, recovery and archiving.
Seemed like a good idea the industry geared up to provide workstations, enterprise servers and trusted software, the users grasped the idea of having their own IT services and structure under their own control. No more ‘Big Brother’ mainframe centric systems for us. Spread the load far and wide and let the Internet provide access to local systems when and as required.
This has led to vulnerabilities to business and end user data because of so much important data is stored locally it becomes vulnerable to earthquakes and other disasters.
Even the process of off site backups does not help if the disaster wipes out an entire city or district as the off site backups maybe under several piles of rubble as well.
With the proliferation of portable computing important data can be even more fragmented by loss of data. I see a growing trend in Enterprise laptops being thought of as ‘personal’ devices and large amounts of data stored on them that never finds its way to the home backup or corporate servers.
However in the last few years a ‘new’ (like anything is really new) approach to computing started to make the headlines.
It consisted of the theory that users only needed access to the Internet via a browser and they could connect to their software application and data systems through service providers. This would relieve the customer of having to provide software and local servers for email, Data recovery and applications.
Sound familiar, well to make sure its not we’ll give it a new name and call it ‘Cloud Computing’
I have been a advocate of Grid, Mesh, SaaS, Cloud Computing for a number of years. My 40+ years of being a IT tech and teaching Computer IT courses has led me to believe the average computer user is actually getting sold a load of BS when it comes to personal computing. Go forth and buy the latest laptop or desktop and its so friendly you will be zooming through the digital world like a trooper in no time. Yeah right!
Most Techie s don’t really have a understanding of what frustration ordinary everyday computer users go through.
Mrs and Mr Jones go into the local computer store and get sold a new laptop with ‘lets say’ Windows 7. It cost them, if they are lucky, <$1000 more than likly they were talked into parting with >$2000.
They take it home and want to do some word processing and email and maybe the odd family pics uploaded and attached to email etc.
Instead of a friendly experience they are bam-boozled with updates, firewalls, broadband, service packs virus scanning and malware not to mention the fact that they did not realise all they bought was a computer with OS with no idea how to purchase and install applications.
Where is the user friendly computer? Certainly not in the existing range of personal computers available. But just maybe a Cloud Computing device leaning towards the tablet idea, that gets you on the net without any fuss and gives you a one stop access to your applications, email, contacts, calenders, photos, videos and other data is the best hope for the friendly computer scenario.
When I think of all the stories to come out of the Christchurch Earthquake disaster, the one about business loosing access to the IT infrastructure is the one that would not have happened under the original idea of the ‘survivability’ of the Internet. It is only the PC market and Enterprise stupidity the had fostered the systems that are vulnerable to total or partial loss in a earthquake or other disaster.
The Internet and its lack of speed and access to secure well priced broadband plans becomes even more important when you think of what happened in Christchurch.
This along with more businesses and ordinary users willing to rethink the personal computing experience and move to a SaaS cloud computing model would have had many Christchurch businesses operating within hours of the earthquake for their IT needs.
More important the ordinary non-power user would be able to access the computing environment with a cheaper, less frustrating ‘cloud’ computer and still have a application and data rich experience.
Steve Jobs has been tauting the iPad as the post-pc device, in the sense that the device is cloud capable and untethered (wireless) (but still tethered to a pc for updates etc) and portable using SaaS for lots of its applications, he maybe right, but I doubt it.
Netbooks, Tablets and various other consumer devices are still to wrapped up in the hybrid world of part PC part media/cloud device.
I believe that it needs to be taken further though, starting with minimal local OS and application resources (just browser) and become just a turn on access device for the cloud.
There will always be a need for the statuesque, power users and big business are not going to abandon years of resource investment because of cloud devices, but the small business and non-IT literate users will gain huge relief from the frustrations of the present day pc centric world.
My hope is that the Post-PC era will be will mean the Internet is the computer, bomb-proof and not concerned with the size of your Hard Drive etc only how fast your connection is.
Only then will a true post-pc era device for the masses and it will be supreme.
Peter L Shields
Old Techie Guy.
