Ever heard of cloud-computing? It’s all about data and programs being stored in a central network ‘cloud’ so that computers become ‘lighter’ and can run more efficiently. Originally the concept appealed most to businesses who saw the idea as a way to cut down on their hardware in a major way, offloading almost everything to a powerful central server core. But now, mostly thanks to Google, the whole concept of cloud computing is coming to the public. Think of the internet as the cloud, with all of your programs and data living on it rather than on your computer.
Need to write an essay? No problem, just open up Google Docs, write it and save it ‘in the cloud’. Need to access that same essay from the other side of the world? S’easy, just login and open it. How about some music, or a movie? Simply open up your online music and movies library to watch it online. Say goodbye to pesky software installations, goodbye to lengthy data back-ups and goodbye to painful security updates. Say hello to the Google Chrome Operating System, coming late 2010.
The concept is simple; people are using the internet more and more, you can design applications to do almost everything on the ‘net, things go wrong with computers without professionals (and money) around to constantly update and repair them – so why not offload all that hassle by only using the internet? While the new Nexus One and the opening of the Google Store have clearly put Google in competition with Apple (see Part 2), there’s absolutely no doubt that the Chrome OS will place them in direct competition with Microsoft. Are Google daunted? You bet they’re not. With the increasingly successful Google Chrome web browser, their mobile operating system Android and their recent departure into the world of hardware thanks to the Nexus One, Google are clearly confident about expanding their reach.
Reports that Google may be working on a netbook (see Part 4) or similar device to accompany the launch of the Chrome OS are hardly surprising, but Google will also have to ready with adequate online apps for Chrome to run. As Chrome will essentially be a sort of ‘super web browser’ and as Google already designs and runs many web applications (Gmail, Google Docs, Google Maps…), while ever-creating new ones for the Android OS, this shouldn’t be a problem for the internet giant. And if Google’s foray into the cloud-computing industry is successful then others are bound to follow suit. Whether the Chrome OS will co-exist or eventually eat Google’s mobile Android OS is as yet unclear, but perhaps soon all computer operating systems will adopt a similar strategy and begin running through ‘clouds’… First however, adequate internet infrastructure will have to be in place. City-wide wifi zones, higher internet speeds and more reliable connections are all important elements necessary to instill a true cloud-computing revolution.
The news of hacks into Google’s Gmail system in China has also fueled the increasing worries over security breaches in a cloud system. The fear is that clouds may not be secure enough to trust with such large-scale personal data storage that a cloud OS would require. Yet is a virus prone PC at the moment any safer? Statistically even the option of keeping personal data on an encrypted USB data stick is probably less safe than uploading your data to a cloud system that might occasionally be hacked into by government hackers – but if Google (and others) want to convince the public of this then they have a hard sell on their hands. Improving and ensuring security should be Google’s number one priority right now if it really wants to make cloud-computing big.
Cloud-computing is just one example of how our world is growing increasingly virtual thanks to the internet. Another is the incredible concept is that of ‘Augmented Reality.’ Augmented Reality (AR) seeks to ‘enhance’ our experience of the world by giving us personally relevant information on what we see around us in real-time. Remember all those icons above floating above things in the Microsoft view of 2019 video (see Part 1)? Well imagine that in real life, with the icons displaying useful information. Sounds completely crazy, but it’s already beginning to happen with the Google Goggles smartphone app.
Google Goggles allows you to take pictures with your phone and then do a search on the internet using those pictures as your search terms. Sort of like TinEye if you want to try it out yourself on a computer, but it’s apparently more effective. The idea is if you need info, take a pic and do a search. Want to know if the book you just picked up is worth buying? Snap, search and read a review. Wondering who that statue you walk past on the way to work every day is of? Flash, search and read the history. Lost in Oman because the signs are all in Arabic? Snap, convert to text, translate. Or take a shot of the landscape and search for it through Google StreetView. You get the picture.
Google Goggles isn’t alone either; Layar is a free AR application developed in the Netherlands which has already launched both in iPhone app store and with Android. It doesn’t require picture snapping either – simply go into view mode and the info pops up in real-time. Very nifty. Below is a crude mock-up of possible uses for AR, just to give you an idea (image sourced from Jamais Casico’s flickr), although the previous links to Layar and Google Goggles will direct you to actual demo videos.
But Layar and Google Goggles is just the first step – people are lazy and they want an easier solution than holding their phone up in front of their face the whole time. So the tech-xperts give us the answer: actual goggles that give us info in the form of digital labels overlaid onto what we’re seeing, much like the labels seen in Microsoft’s video. Need to find a friend in a crowd? Digital arrows will guide you – provided they’re online and using a similar device to yours of course. Is this really possible? Thanks to social networking like Facebook, it is. But just like cloud computing, it would need faster and more reliable internet infrastructure in place before it can take off, not to mention a significant investment by companies to design the goggles. Of course they won’t remain goggles for long, because they’d be too hard to market – prototypes will start off as goggles, then develop into looking like actual sun-glasses. All this should be common place by the end of this decade, but meanwhile smartphone Augmented Reality enabled devices are said to increase massively this year.
And then, if you go by the predictions of Bill Thompson (of the BBC World Service’s Digital Planet), it will also be capable of integrating directly into digital contact lenses. Into our very eyes. Currently under development at the University of Washington, there is a prototype using a single red LED, which is powered by radio frequency transmissions like the passive RFID chips in Oyster cards are. According to Babak Parvis who is managing the project, eventually we’re going to have lenses with built-in control circuits, display circuits and miniature antennae that will be capable of projecting images directly into the retina. Although we are still somewhat far away from that, Bill Thompson is confident that these lenses will hit the mass market by the end of the decade, but then become advanced enough to fall victim to hackers and viruses by 2020; he’s fearful that proper security encryption protocols will not be integrated at first as it would delay their entry into the market. This seems unlikely however as a technology as life-changing as digital contact lenses are bound to come under heavy scrutiny when they’re first released, so it’s probably more likely that we’ll see these technological wonders appearing at the beginning of the next decade. Let’s not forget either that less internet reliant technologies could also be incorporated into these lenses – from optical zooms to night-vision and medical bio-scans. Sounds pretty useful.
Check out the Aurora concept videos to see Mozilla and Adaptive Path’s view of what future web-browsers could look like. With so much integrated in the web browser it’s essentially another cloud-computing concept, where even the interface is designed like a virtual cloud. It’s reminiscent of Tactile3D Interface, a program that let’s you explore your files in a 3D virtual world, claiming to be a ‘next generation 3D desktop.’ Although it’s doubtful that Tactile3D will ever be more than a fun (try it out!) and somewhat useful tool to use for organising your files, the concept behind it is the same that Aurora and others in the industry are currently exploring in their search for the next-generation interface. If they can find a way to make it as practical and as easy to use as Apple’s ‘coverflow’ iPhone and iPod interfaces, then they will really be on to something.
Other than that, the Aurora browser concept makes good use of touchscreen, motion-sensing, voice recognition and Augmented Reality software, all of which have been or will be discussed later in this series. It’s certainly a realistic possibility for what future browsers could look like and the virtual card idea (one virtual card with all of your cards -from banking to healthcare and id- digitally stored on it) would be brilliant if it can be made hack-proof and user-specific, which will probably become possible through fingerprint recognition.
One important element of the future that Aurora highlights is that of current (and future) technologies converging. Video, online, phone, browser, applications, TV, motion sensing, touchscreen…they’re all being used together. In the next article we take a closer look at this convergence of technologies, notably at the next generation of tablets and touchscreen technology. By the way, Google coming up so often in these articles is only because they truly are being innovative and futuristic these days. I’m really not trying to sell you anything from Google, honest! And I’m not going to mention them again in my next two articles…at least I’ll try not to. Okay, maybe just once more.
Part 4 of The Future Is Shiny: Emergence of Convergence is online and available to read here!
