Tecknowledgry

I read a lot of the tech sites. Job related hazard. I've written previously about the omni-device or "OD" and thought I might reiterate those sayings as the full implications seem to keep being missed by the tech media world at large. Because I'm a SupraGENIUS and they are f33bz.

Computing can be divided in to broad classes. You have high-end people doing actual useful work. Physics sims, aerospace design, climate modeling, that kind of thing. Then you have gaming, which is a special case in that optimization can reduce the need for hardware, or, put another way, dedicated hardware can reduce the need for general computing. Finally there is "everything else" also known as "the average user".

Clearly it's in the interests of the companies to encourage you to over buy, and really it's in our interests as well. This is because they need money, and lots of it, for research, and we need ("need") smaller computers that work faster.

But this stands in contrast to the current state of things which is more access based than computing based. You need to get to the internet to get to Yahoo which is where you put your email. You need to get to the internet to get to iTunes to get new music. You need to get to the internet to get to Youtube and Myspace and IM.

So step one is internet access (in the future we'll talk about ON the omni-net) and then step two is data access or local storage.

That part is pretty cheap though really compared to the rest of it. 4GB micro-sd card for 25$ currently. Nobody yet has seemingly twigged to my brilliant idea of WORM storage. Never erase, just expand. Go look at one of those micro-sd cards. Tiny! So small they come with something else to read\manipulate them. So rather than a spinning magnetic platter you get tiny little chips and plug them in to banks. Probably in serial also in some fashion as your oldest data will likely be access least and your most recent data will be highspeed-cached local to your display\processor. So when you run low on space you buy another 6-pack (in the future everything will be a "6pak" as the basic unit of measure, you'll be required to overbuy in order to provide economic churn, which will create micro-economies of resale as well, but anyway....)of storage and slot it locally and move some of your stuff to your home system or upload to remote storage (data fortresses will be big business in the future, beyond the data center, little arcologies) it will be both really. Then we get to the OD.

All you need is ON access and some small but functional amount of highspeed local storage. The rest of it comes to you from the ON.

The ON is a unified kind of broadcast medium. No more analog, tv, cell, wifi, wimax, just a big weird mesh, software to sort it all out. Intel has made a software radio that fits on a chip, that's basically it.

The iPod multi-touch thing is cute but still pretty lame really. I read about a set of goggles that can recognize objects and record and catalog them. I've talked about that level of functionality before as well. Finger gloves and virtualized keyboards are next. They have "brain mice" which I think are actually more like "brain keyboards" now, retail "read your mind" style products. These will get smaller.

The goggles then can be set up as augmented reality display devices as well. And that's your essential OD. The pod module lump itself then doesn't have\need any interface, maybe some basic readouts, power, connection, etc.

But mostly it just serves as a constant parallel task manager. If you need additional computative power you can rent\buy it from other local ODs or local CPU farms. But really what will you need it for? For gaming you'll want a dedicated hardware lump and improved display surface. So mostly you'll just need data access and storage. Communications.

The first stage Shell will feature a battery, charged from a variety of low power sources, harvested body heat and motion, solar, wireless charging surfaces.

So they work towards this, but they never seem to address it directly. The iPhone will be replaced by ODs and the ODs will replace the computer as we know it.

Current computers of the mobile variety are limited by the need for a display surface and the power issues that come with that. Other big power drains are spinning the hard disk or any other spinning disk (DVD) and we'll replace those with solid state stuff. It doesn't have to be fast, just fast enough. Same with the CPU, most tasks are bandwidth limited, access limited, not CPU time limited. Once we settle a universal data standard we can actually configure the hardware to work based on those ideas. CPUs engineered to crunch Flash, HTML, XML, etc.

And then computers in the personal sense come to an end. Their logical endpoint is the OD. The thing you carry with you all the time that does all the things you want, most of which involve data access in one form or another and very few of which involve any actual computation, particularly computation that must be done local to your system.

But the interesting part is the effects of all that. The research engines will have stopped by that time. I suspect that, barring Zombies in 2013, this will happen about 2015 or so. iPhone gen 4 or 5.

ID Theft can be killed as mentioned. Access verification. Nothing happens with out you knowing it, nothing accesses your data without you being aware of it and aware of what and who it is. Your OD notifies you of these events.

You combine this with universal debit\credit transations via biometrics (finger prints) plus pin plus access verification. You want to buy something you pick it up, scan it, your OD talks to the vendor OD, accesses your data, you see that request, you verify that you are present (biometics) and you verify a short number sequence.

Then you can't be effectively robbed either. There's nothing to take and not much of a way to coerce people with out getting caught. Since you can't for instance take them to a ATM and make them take out money for you. There is no money. Jacking ID info results in that access being logged, so even if you could use it, you'd be caught quick.

Of course there will be hackers and such, no getting around that, but it's much less personal in the crime department. Nobody jumps out of an alley for your cash.