simondelliott

Technology predictions to 2030

Ive been gazing into my crystal ball, thinking about the future and trying to make some sense of whats happening in the techno world. The long and short of it is that I have come up with some technology and social predictions.
They are based on market analysis, trend extrapolation and good old fashioned intuition.

Some of these predictions are contraversial (deliberatly so), but times are changing and things happen fast.

• 2010 Microsoft give up on vista
• 2010 Ubuntu is home standard
• 2011 IT becomes all about mobile
• 2011 silverlight dies
• 2011 3d standardization
• 2011 Windows applications disappear
• 2012 Hacking event causes world turmoil
• 2012 Cloud replaces servers
• 2012 Diverse office computers is standard
• 2012 International security database
• 2012 Designers take over from developers
• 2012 Email becomes obsolete
• 2012 flexible screens on packaging
• 2012 low cost genetic sequencer
• 2012 MRI scanning in doctors surgery
• 2012 News papers will die out
• 2013 Online democratic systems
• 2013 AI services emerge
• 2013 removable media becomes obsolete
• 2013 Systems Integration de-skilled
• 2013 Television replaced by online
• 2013 Google not top search provider
• 2014 Media overtake computing companies
• 2014 VB script dies
• 2014 all software is either service or open source
• 2014 Virtual worlds used by business
• 2014 Apple becomes biggest content provider
• 2015 brain pace makers become common place
• 2015 Employees use their own computers
• 2015 flexible screens become standard
• 2015 getting lost is impossible
• 2015 Google is top enterprise software provider
• 2015 governments stop buying servers
• 2015 handheld genetic sequencer
• 2016 Human lands on mars
• 2016 implants into humans become common place
• 2016 IT services becomes about data meaning
• 2016 It will be possible to index video
• 2016 Linux becomes is standard OS
• 2017 Full scale cyber war
• 2017 opensource hardware
• 2017 programming is obsolete skill
• 2017 Relational databases are obsolete
• 2018 business delegated to AI services
• 2018 Imagination more valuable than skill
• 2018 The office becomes history
• 2018 Call center becomes the past
• 2019 Automomous robotic toys
• 2019 Printers disappear
• 2019 Mobile phone becomes history
• 2019 weather news mega important
• 2019 Semantic web services
• 2019 Opensource car
• 2020 Talking computers
• 2020 HUD is fashion item
• 2020 Petrol Engine abolished
• 2020 Tabacco smoking illegal
• 2020 riding a bicycle becomes the norm
• 2020 Office blocks repurposed
• 2021 Ubiquitious internet
• 2021 Intelligence in almost all devices
• 2022 global state controlled media
• 2022 the depression is over
• 2023 Paper outlawed
• 2023 All knowledge electronic
• 2023 Autonomous vehicles
• 2024 natural language programming
• 2024 English replaces all lanuages
• 2025 world covered by CCTV
• 2026 querty keyboard dies
• 2027 most work from home
• 2027 Writing not taught
• 2028 Astro Holidays

PONG is more than just a game … its a way of life

Have you ever wanted to learn a new programming language?
Have you ever had to introduce a student to programming?
Have you ever had to teach a team how to code for a new platform?

Well if you have you will know that all these are difficult jobs, most seasoned professionals will have done them many many times.

Its difficult to learn these things straight from books, infact to get the real experience you neeed to professionally make software quickly when you dont have the skills inplace its downright impossible.

I have a standard approach … and too keep it all fun it involves pong
.

When Im setting up a team using a programming language that they dont know, I ask them to make pong, without using copy and paste.
Pong is a simplistic game that involves very few computing tricks. However it is also very challenging for the platform. You dont need a functional spec before you start codeing as everyone knows pong.

The ball has to travel quite quickly.
The bats have move slowly enough to make it a challenge
The AI of the computer opponent can not be too good.

If they can make a good imitation of the game on the platform then you know that have a good grasp of the programming language. It teaches them how to structure the code, the repository, the build procedure and also how to get the most from the platform. You would be surprised just how many platforms Ive worked on that simply cannot run a good pong game.

If you love pong / programming and working in a team then join my Facebook pong group

Media Industry trends 2009 and beyond !

Ive made a few predictions for 2009 and would love to hear what you think.

In 1993 there were 50 large US media companies. Acquisition and merger have consolidated this number down to just 6 very very very large media organizations (such as Time warner, news corp, disney, viacom, and so on).

All of these organizations are heavily investing in web technology and Internet media distribution. We can expect to see of these companies merge with an online provider.

Google revenue is derivative from advertising placed on or around media consumption and is a revenue share with the content owner or distributor. However this is a limiting revenue source; we can expect to see Google acquiring content or content companies thus allowing them to derive 100% of the revenue.

Google is also investing in cable TV and mobile operating systems possibly as frameworks for them to hang advertising business. Interestingly Microsoft are giving up their content provider aspirations and are adopting Google like advertising business model.

The sony book reader is the must have Christmas gift of 2008 (possibly a little overpriced in the UK) . This new media device will open up a new platform for the sale of electronic books. Sony’s and Waterstones hope is that this will be to books what itunes is to music.

Broadcast and post-production automation is high on everyone’s agenda. This goes hand in hand with the exploitation of the back catalog and provides a new high tech market for production and broadcast companies. This is offset by the production cost dropping massively with new cheap cameras and open source software leading to an exponential increase in the amount of content.

Think Bandwidth! Bandwidth! Bandwidth! all this content and content consumption is driving demand on bandwidth up and up and up.

Is Interactive TV dead? the answer is no. far from it.
It just that’s its not on TV its on the iPlayer or VOD instead. And guess what … all the old iTV patents are still applicable. Acquisition of a failing iTV company that owns patent in this area is now being seen as an investment for the future.

Advertising is the engine of the media industry, so with the users being able to fast forward, skip and generally avoid the adverts where is the revenue going to come from? A short term solution is advertising pretending to be content, either in the form of product placement or in the form or well made watch able adverts.

The amount of community generated content has exploded, and this explosion has only just begun. In the near future we can expect to see every piece of human art, cometary and information in video, audio and written form. The number of undiscovered but talented directors, artists and actors is vast. These people will find that youtube is the simplest route to their audience.

The evil overlord of the media industry is the “Minimum Guaranteed Return” if you buy content from a studio, then they will set you a MGR that you have to meet when reselling the content to the public. These MGR’s are falling (mainly due to the change in audience behavior). This will make a big difference to the VOD offering of the content aggregator.

Home shopping channels are dying if not dead, people that have the internet … don’t home shop.

The days of the closed platform are over, mobile operators, cable TV companies games console companies are working how they can open their platform and still derive revenue.

The media market in China is now opening up. It is not uncommon for a TV Show to have 100 million viewers! figures that are unheard of in Europe and USA. Traditional mass media companies that are trying to avoid the change to new media are venturing into this new market.

Design simplicity and the trouble with requirements.

I design products are either highly involved with the user interface on consumer devices or designing web portals that sell consumer media products, and I keep coming up against requirements wars.

The problem that I had with “requirements” was it was always less risky to add to them than to remove them. Political business people who did not care for the consumer user experience would often pile in a whole shed load of requirements that in some way benefited their department (sometimes this was just to halt development till their department could publicise a rival solution)

Inexperienced product managers and marketing people who were uncertain about user behaviour would always add bells and whistles till the original product concept was hidden in a miasma of crap

The result was always the same;
A requirements document that was compromised, with no design simplicity.

This often resulted in commercial failures, and blots the good name of my development.
Where as … the things that we “just did” and that managed to get highlevel backing often made headlines and were always met by rave reviews.

Agile offered me mild relief, as I could control scope or even back out of committing to products that were clearly plagued by too many stakeholders and requirement bloat, and I could do this even after development had started

The problem is that someone who is seeking to mitigate risks will see a small requirements set as a risk, where as this is not compatible with reality. Design simplicity is a great way to reduce risk, it is also a great way to make “nice to use” products.

My belief is not that it was the process of requirements gathering or the format of the requirements that causes the problem, as I over a number of years I changed this again and again trying to improve the number of hit products.

What I want to be able to understand is how the traditional requirements gathering procedure is compatible with increasing the risk so that a company can be commercially competitive?

A happy motivated company that is making good products operates at the highest comfortable level of risk.

The solution is … don’t have the traditional approach to requirements, make a list if you like but certainly don’t use it as your major design document. Instead make a diagram or picture or animation or movie or podcast or wiki or even code – any thing that best expresses the essence of the design

Computer architecture?

What is the difference  between an architect and a programmer?

The metaphore of considering a large system to be a building a very close, and extremely accurate simile. However real architects have spent many thousands of years defining and expanding their craft, but in essence a computer architect is performing the same role as building architect, it just that all his or her tools are only 30 years old.

Gaudi did not know how to fire a brick or join a staircase.
Burnell did not know how to weld a joint or lift an key stone
Eiffel did not know how to roll an RSJ or pin a steel plate.

They designed using abstraction, and the forms they designed are a meta abstraction on the skills of the craftsmen that made them. Computer architecture is the meta design above the logic of coding, integration and configuration. Programmers and script kiddies are artisans rather than architects. The currency of the architect is form and function. The architect has to trust the artisan to implement his or her vision.