Computer Currents James Hein An exciting time Ten years of Post Database and ten years of changes in the computer industry and what a ten years it has been. We have seen so many changes both in the technologies and the development paradigms over those years. Thailand has at least developed the hardware distribution mechanisms though the availability if real versions of software at reasonable prices still remains a challenge. Some of the more annoying things about computers still plague us like the operating system and application software crashes we continue to see especially with new releases from companies like Microsoft. I still hate being asked to provide a company name for home software, read my lips "no more mandatory company names for software installations". On the whole however it has been an exciting time. Just three short years ago most people on the planet had not even heard of the Internet let alone connected to it. These days there are millions of people all over the world that would be very upset if they could not browse their way down the information highways. Yes, it has only been three years. As a result people are starting to become more computer aware and at the same time I think people are starting to become more globally aware. It would be nice to think that over the next ten years this will bring the global community closer together, I mean the common people not the global leadership, they love their politics too much. The best With ten years of technological advancement it is hard to decide on the best hardware innovation of the past ten years. CPUs have made a gradual advance, as have things like monitors, hard-drives, printers and the like. My first thought was for the advance in three-dimensional graphics processing but I think the best innovation in hardware for me is the writable CD. Even today this is a very popular way of rearranging your music CD collection, distributing information and as an inexpensive backup storage mechanism. The technology is very cheap in terms of media with a blank disk these days costing around a dollar a disk. As far as a software innovation I would have to pick the whole object oriented programming and more recently object oriented database technologies. The object-oriented approach has allowed software to take the next step and give us a different type of user interface and programming methodology. Instead of writing a long COBOL-like programme we can now start with a screen and add different pieces and small logical elements. This means debugging is easier because you can now focus on a smaller part of the program code. For the application developer this means quicker releases and upgrades with functionality from one piece of software easily movable to another. Companies like Borland build their future on rewriting everything into a object based platform and the stability of their products is the result. Microsoft did not take this approach and the instability of their products is the legacy. A close second is the Web itself; this 'software' platform has allowed millions to put up their own sites for others to visit. Each site is often as unique as the individual but even those with minimal programming skills have used the user oriented development tools to make their marks. It remains to be seen what impact technologies like XML and others will make on the future of the web but I don't think that anyone will challenge that the Internet is going to continue to grow at an accelerated pace. The only limits to the www are those of the underlying local and global communications networks. The worst As far as software failures Microsoft Bob must be up there in the top of the list along with other Microsoft products like Access which was released simply to have a comparable product with other office suites. One of the stupidest software innovations has been copy protection because all it ever does is inconvenience the people who buy the real versions of software. The pirates end up with the cracked copy after about a week and if something happens to our computer we spend hours trying to find where we put the stupid serial number because the application software company did not put it on the installation CD. I had an experience recently where I could not find the serial number for my legal copy and so I installed a pirate version instead. I was trying to think of the worst hardware innovation of the last ten years and this is a difficult one. Failures have been things like the various replacements for the floppy disk but these have not necessarily been bad devices they just did not catch on. So after careful consideration I choose the boring beige colour that computer cases and monitors have been for the past ten years. It is time the PC world did something like the Mac world did and adds a bit of color to the lives of computer users. The dreaded dongle -- symbolising copy protection problems. A close runner-up in my mind is the dongle, that useless piece of hardware you attach to the back of your computer for some copy protection schemes that pirates bypass and the innocent people suffer with because it interferes with their printer and more often than not crashes the computer. The Thai future I think there are two pressing issues that face Thailand for the future and both of them require changes by the Government. The biggest of these two issues is the education of the Thai people in the IT techniques necessary to move them into the next century. Unfortunately it will take a number of years before these teaching changes will show any affects because these changes will require fundamental changes in the whole Thai education system. The current education system, from the ground up is aimed at teaching children to remember things. What Thailand needs to move out of this century is a group of children who have been taught how to think. Lateral thinking, creative association, problem-solving and challenging traditional though processes need to be built into the system from the beginning. Until this happens I see a stagnating IT industry that will not produce their own systems beyond the more basic levels. The second biggest challenge is the delivery of both hardware and software to the general population and one of the biggest stumbling blocks at the present time is the Royal Thai Customs Department. The government of the day needs to start at the top of this organisation and sweep down to the bottom. At the moment any goods coming into the country are subject to a creative application of the import duty schedules. In some cases this has cost Thailand major projects. In the case of software and hardware it means that the average Thai must pay more than they should be for a piece of software or hardware because a group of customs officials decided that they wanted more spending money at the end of the month. I have talked to dozens of people who have had first-hand experiences like this. The future of IT The hardest thing someone can do these days is try and predict the general future of the IT world, especially as far as ten years ahead. One trend that will certainly continue is the current gradual trend towards a single chip computer system. I expect to see a CPU in five years time that also includes all of the basic PC chipset on the same wafer and will also include multiple DSP units that can be programmed to perform the music, graphics, modem and other functions required on an as needed basis. Such a chip will be necessary due to the rapid rate of change of CPU technologies and it will also allow the motherboard designs to be much simpler. With the basic chipset functionality included in the CPU upgrading will be a simple matter not requiring a new motherboard each time. With the increase in power I also expect to finally see the advent of the Virtual Reality Internet. This will include Avatar based access and towards the end of the ten years I expect to see a true machine/mind interface technology driving the access. Something along the lines of the Johnny Mnemonic technology we saw in the film. I am not so sure we will have implants as common technology within ten, though I certainly expect them to exist. I see a number of barriers to the acceptance of this technology especially in the older generations. You can e-mail James Hein at jamesh@inet.co.th Back to top