The Computer for the 21st Century

A coworker recently sent around a copy of Mark Weiser's The Computer for the 21st Century. I remember reading it in college, and it was originally published much earlier: 1991. But the vision it presents is still compelling -- and is (disappointingly) still not reality, (much) more than a decade later.

Even for the non-nerds reading this post, I recommend reading Weiser's article (linked above). But if you don't, here's the first couple of paragraphs by way of summary:

The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.

Consider writing, perhaps the first information technology. The ability to represent spoken language symbolically for long-term storage freed information from the limits of individual memory. Today this technology is ubiquitous in industrialized countries. Not only do books, magazines and newspapers convey written information, but so do street signs, billboards, shop signs and even graffiti. Candy wrappers are covered in writing. The constant background presence of these products of “literacy technology” does not require active attention, but the information to be transmitted is ready for use at a glance. It is difficult to imagine modern life otherwise.

Silicon-based information technology, in contrast, is far from having become part of the environment. More than 50 million personal computers have been sold, and the computer nonetheless remains largely in a world of its own. It is approachable only through complex jargon that has nothing to do with the tasks for which people use computers. The state of the art is perhaps analogous to the period when scribes had to know as much about making ink or baking clay as they did about writing.

Today, we have fast low-power processors, small devices, and powerful networks. But we still spend our days working, browsing the web, and reading email on devices that look and act like computers, which is a problem. Weiser also looked forward to a data-centric world, in which our information is pervasively available but devices are not valuable, not personalized, and not generally noticeable. In contrast, we still very much live in a device-centric world and are transitioning to a network service-centric world. The transition from explicit network services to decentralized pervasive computing is still science fiction, unfortunately.

Here's what I think is the gap between today's technology and Weiser's vision:

1. Pervasive interoperability based on open standards. We still have to think far too much about what format our data is packaged in and what protocol it's traveling in. It's not effortless to connect an arbitrary device to an arbitrary network.
2. Pervasive data authorization control. Weiser emphasizes this at the end of his piece: if every device knows where it is, where we are, what we're doing with it -- and is permanently connected to a global network -- we need ironclad privacy controls.
3. Truly distributed data storage. Right now, I have two extreme choices: keep my data on a particular device that I own or contract the storage to a service vendor (e.g. Google) that will allow me to access the data from multiple devices. The former gives me control but no flexibility. The latter gives me flexibility but no control: If I lose connectivity, I lose access to my data. If I sever relations with my service provider, I either lose my data or I have to download it all to a particular device -- at which point getting it back into the cloud will be very painful if not impossible.
4. Ubiquitous inexpensive hardware. I should be able to walk up to a digital whiteboard in any room and be able to call up my data, or I should be able to grab a computer from the company supply cabinet like I would a pad of paper. The idea that my computer was lost or damaged and therefore a lifetime's worth of data has disappeared is a big problem.
5. User interfaces that are as easy on the senses as physical objects. That means electronic paper-like screens and touch input, for example.

I'd like to say all of these things are right around the corner, but I give it another ten years. That Weiser guy was a smart man.