Something About the Future Smells Funny
Today an article caught my eye that was about a survey conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project of technologists and technology journalists. The headline read “Keyboards, DRM to become scarce in 2012.” That seemed a bit farfetched to me. The article was pretty brief and didn’t provide a lot of detail, but it did at least warn that the “computer journalists” are not “especially known for their prognosticative abilities.” That is definitely true. It did have a link to the actual report on the survey. Since it is a 138 page PDF document, I didn’t read the entire thing, and just skimmed the sections I was interested. I suspect the person who wrote the article did the same.
The report starts out with a summary of Pew’s findings, and then the bulk of the report consists of more elaborate explanations of the questions and their findings along with quotes from the journalists and technologists that comprised the “experts.” The questions/predictions I focused on and their results were:
· Few lines divide professional time from personal time, and that’s OK - 56% of “experts” Agree
· Talk and touch are common technology interfaces(the “No More Keyboards” one) – 64% of “experts” Agree
· Content control through copyright-protection technology dominates. – 60% of “experts” Disagree
I was really shocked that only 56% of the “experts” thought that the line between work and personal time will be blurred in 2012. I carry a blackberry, I am periodically “on-call” for work and even when not officially on-call I could be summoned for some crisis or something. I work plenty of overtime too. I suspect a lot of people are in my same situation, not just in my field (IT) but in others. The Internet really makes working from home almost as productive as working in the office, and that can’t help but erode the distinction.
The keyboard one, about talk and touch technology was pretty silly in my opinion. In the future people will have little projections of keyboards from tiny handheld devices that they will use instead of a standard keyboard when they are not dictating to their computers like Star Trek. That projectable keyboard thing exists today. It looks cool. I have never used one, and I am sure they will make even better and cooler looking ones in 2012, but I still don’t think they will be as fast or as pleasant to use as a standard keyboard. As for dictating to your computer, imagine how obnoxious an office full of people dictating to their computers would be. Many of us can type faster than we talk, and giving commands like “copy” with “ctrl+c” is easier than telling the computer to copy.
They lean slightly toward the utopian side of things when it comes to copyright. There were some nice utopian quotes like this one:
“Cultural forces are much stronger than corporate fascists, and whatever they seek now to block will simply arise from other providers in other sectors, even if it means a return to singing around campfires and pianos, or making homegrown media products. Here's a thought: maybe as the digital-rights-management Nazis kill their golden goose, they will also force creatives beyond excessive postmodernist remixing as an aesthetic, and artists of all stripes will start to value ‘originality’ over ‘derivation.’”
Stuff like that warms my heart, but I think big media has a lot of fight left in it. The RIAA will be suing old ladies and children for many years to come.
The experts were fairly divided on almost all the questions, which makes me wonder what value the survey really has. Basically it says “experts mostly disagree on the future of technology,” which boils down to “we don’t know what will happen in the future,” and that was exactly the state of affairs before the survey was published.
The report starts out with a summary of Pew’s findings, and then the bulk of the report consists of more elaborate explanations of the questions and their findings along with quotes from the journalists and technologists that comprised the “experts.” The questions/predictions I focused on and their results were:
· Few lines divide professional time from personal time, and that’s OK - 56% of “experts” Agree
· Talk and touch are common technology interfaces(the “No More Keyboards” one) – 64% of “experts” Agree
· Content control through copyright-protection technology dominates. – 60% of “experts” Disagree
I was really shocked that only 56% of the “experts” thought that the line between work and personal time will be blurred in 2012. I carry a blackberry, I am periodically “on-call” for work and even when not officially on-call I could be summoned for some crisis or something. I work plenty of overtime too. I suspect a lot of people are in my same situation, not just in my field (IT) but in others. The Internet really makes working from home almost as productive as working in the office, and that can’t help but erode the distinction.
The keyboard one, about talk and touch technology was pretty silly in my opinion. In the future people will have little projections of keyboards from tiny handheld devices that they will use instead of a standard keyboard when they are not dictating to their computers like Star Trek. That projectable keyboard thing exists today. It looks cool. I have never used one, and I am sure they will make even better and cooler looking ones in 2012, but I still don’t think they will be as fast or as pleasant to use as a standard keyboard. As for dictating to your computer, imagine how obnoxious an office full of people dictating to their computers would be. Many of us can type faster than we talk, and giving commands like “copy” with “ctrl+c” is easier than telling the computer to copy.
They lean slightly toward the utopian side of things when it comes to copyright. There were some nice utopian quotes like this one:
“Cultural forces are much stronger than corporate fascists, and whatever they seek now to block will simply arise from other providers in other sectors, even if it means a return to singing around campfires and pianos, or making homegrown media products. Here's a thought: maybe as the digital-rights-management Nazis kill their golden goose, they will also force creatives beyond excessive postmodernist remixing as an aesthetic, and artists of all stripes will start to value ‘originality’ over ‘derivation.’”
Stuff like that warms my heart, but I think big media has a lot of fight left in it. The RIAA will be suing old ladies and children for many years to come.
The experts were fairly divided on almost all the questions, which makes me wonder what value the survey really has. Basically it says “experts mostly disagree on the future of technology,” which boils down to “we don’t know what will happen in the future,” and that was exactly the state of affairs before the survey was published.
posted by Dylan at
8:14 PM
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