As someone who started office life not so long ago, I wanted to take time today & write about how the technology has transformed the workplace in the last fifty years or so.
In 1943, the president of IBM predicted that there was a world market for maybe five computers. Now, sixty six years later, imagine how the work will be affected if the computers stop working! Each and everything will come to a halt, period!
Even though data intensive organizations like banks used computers even in 1950s, they were HUGE, ridiculously expensive & kept in special climate controlled rooms. It wasn’t until 1981 when IBM released it's PC that the world actually took serious notice. PCs became more and more popular, & more commercial apps like Lotus 1-2-3 were launched. Once computer had a solid foothold, Internet which till later 1980s was primarily used for military, research & education started peeking into the corporate world as well. Rest of it is relatively recent history, worldwide web, emails, cellphones & now e-commerce.
In the last fifty years or so, technology has completely overhauled the workplace again & again. First the computers became mainstream and then the internet and email. A lot of companies already have an intranet messenger or at the very least use one of the popular messengers to facilitate easy communication between employees. Almost all the meetings are over the phone or internet now & very often, meetings comprise of people spanning multiple continents! Corporate emails & messenger are now finding their way to smartphones, & a new culture of “work anytime anywhere” is being promoted.So, in short for people who started their career about 40 – 50 years ago, it’s very hard to imagine how many changes they have adapted to in a relatively short span of time.
Now, the question is, should we not expect a similar (or much faster) transformation curve in the next 40-50 years? There is absolutely no reason to think why the work place won’t evolve at a fast pace! While it’s almost impossible to predict what the changes will be, we can try & make an educated guess:
- Cloud computing: I guess I believe in it very strongly, but I think in the next 5-6 years, any device with a screen & an input channel that has access to network will be able to provide you with all your data no matter where and how it is stored.
- Avatar: I think our avatars will eventually lead a much more meaningful life online. Even today, several virtual platforms exist today (most notable being “Second Life”) however, there will be a lot of raised eyebrows in the room if you tell them that you spent real money (or Linden dollars) for buying a new pair of shoes for your avatar. However, I think as people develop more mainstream uses for the virtual life, avatar’s will become more important. For example, consider attending an e-conference with people from around the world while you are “working from home”. You might or might not be very comfortable with 10s of people watching you on webcam, but I am sure your avatar won’t be “camera shy”! Infact, all the avatars could potentially meet up in a virtual meeting room & discuss matters that will change the world! (Hey, you better buy land in Second Life while the Linden dollar is still cheap!)
- During the presidential elections in US, CNN used a holographic technique which received a lukewarm reception. Nevertheless, it can have some very interesting applications in relation to “avatar” point above.
 Mobile office. Image taken from http://www.iftelecom.com.au
Ok, I am just bad at coming up with catchy names! I try, but well, let’s just leave it at that…
Till early 2007, I was more or less unaccustomed to the sheer awesomeness of web @ mobile devices! Occasionally, I had seen people glued to their blackberries, but their importance in worklife hadn’t dawned upon me. It’s only in summer 2007 that I got my first Treo (and the data plan to go with it) and suddenly a whole new world opened up for me. The whole experience of having information at my fingertips anytime and anywhere I wanted was almost like a divine revelation!
I am not at all exaggerating, that’s exactly how it was! Suddenly, I was reading news, engadget.com etc., and replying to emails while stuck in a traffic jam, or while standing in a line, waiting for a movie to start….pretty much all the time! Both personal and professional productivity got a super boost…I had so much more time to catch up with current events, latest gadgets, financial news etc..
It doesn’t matter if you are working an 8-5 job, or running your own business. It doesn’t matter whether you want to play along or not, mobile technology is changing the whole work culture and dynamics, and it is here to stay! Slowly, more and more employers and businesses are realizing that it’s to their advantage that employees stay connected via Blackberries, treos etc! It’s an investment that’s worth every single penny.
While trying to make a case for this, it’s only fair that I share my experience and how it has changed my work habits and personal attitude. The experience with Treo was an eye opener ofcourse. It didn’t matter where I was, or what I was doing, I had access to all the information whenever I wanted. My boss didn’t have to wait for me to come back from lunch to get answers to questions that would help move the project along. If an urgent meeting was set up for early next morning after I called it a day, I didn’t miss it anymore. A few months later, I moved to a blackberry, and my mobile experience immediately went up a few notches! Now, I got access even to the corporate messenger etc. I was never more approachable and available to people. I could feel the immediate difference in productivity. Having most up to date information all the time gives you a sense of confidence, and in some cases, an edge over the others.
I can’t imagine it being any different for business owners. It’s about having all the information you need to make important decisions available at your fingertips. If you don’t make an effort to reach out to your customers the fastest possible way, someone else for sure will!
Some of the biggest arguments I have heard against this are:
- I don’t want to be a workaholic
- If I am not at my desk, I am UNAVAILABLE!
- Once I am out of office, I am OUT!
- I am not getting paid for this…
- Waiting another hour before replying isn’t going to bring the Earth to a halt
I am not saying these points aren’t right…there should be a balance between work and personal life, but this is not about that. I agree, once in a while it does get crazy. I have been there…replied to emails at 10 in the night. Most of the times, it’s just about having the right information at your fingertips whenever you need it. It’s about improving your work efficiency and reaching out to people, teammates, and customers sooner. And lastly, it’s about adapting faster and faster to the changes in schedules, requirements and unexpected incidents.
And I’ll sum it up by just saying that if you are not ready for this…there are thousands of people who are! Employers will find employees who are more available and more adaptable to changing office dynamics, and customers will find better informed (and more available) businesses! If you are absolutely sure that no one else in the world can do your work, or provide services that your businesses does, then go ahead and keep using your Moto Razr! If you aren’t so sure..then I urge you to be more open to this rewarding experience!
I can make the exact same case for Web 2.0, but I’ll leave that for a later time!
Microsoft has been investing heavily on its Surface product for some time now. Microsoft believes that the product will be embedded in all aspects of life, right from bedroom, kitchen and closet, to bars and restaurants. Right now the price is probably one of the main factors that's preventing Surface from telling what I can do with the flour (lol!, see the video below), but eventually the price is going to come down, or hopefully a lot of scaled down versions will hit the market.
Though, I think talking to the kitchen part in the video above is very unnatural and somewhat creepy, the rest of the ideas are super cool. (Especially, extending the phone's desktop to Surface and pushing data to the Cloud) While, I can think of hundreds of uses and applications, I particularly like the idea of implementing Surface at the restaurants. Consider the scenarios... Once you get seated, you bring up the menu on Surface and browse through all the options. Selecting an item brings up pictures, ingredients, user rating/reviews and other useful information. To order, you just press the 'order button', and even enter special notes for the Chef. When the Iced Tea starts running low, the waiter automatically gets notified, and you don't have to wait for the waiter to look at you to get more drinks! Once you are done with the food, you could split the check with friends any way you want, and just tap the card on the table to make the payment... So much more efficient. I am sure this will be a big turnoff for a lot of people who prefer the personal touch, and the special treatment at nice cozy restaurants, but this doesn't necessarily have to be an 'either/or' thing. A picture is worth a thousand words, and a cool video still some more, so here's another one showing the implementation in restaurants. Like I said in the beginning, the price has to come down significantly before the main stream deployment even starts!
When Amazon launched a new model of Kindle last week, it created a lot of buzz on how it’ll revive the newspaper industry which is desperately seeking new areas of revenues. (See here)
In my post last week on Kindle, I mentioned that newspapers really need to work on the content they deliver if they expect to generate any significant revenues:
“The newspaper partnership still needs to be improved. I mean getting the morning edition of the paper on kindle is great, but I don’t want to be stuck with the news for the whole day that gets old in an hour!”
While searching the net, I came across this cool video which showcases the next generation E-ink technology which might just make the newspapers(on Kindle) a little more interesting with short video clips, animated images and more (hey, how about animated Dilbert, huh?).
If Kindle can manage to offer this technology at an affordable price sometime soon, more readers might jump in the digital wagon feeling rewarded by a whole new level of experience that it might provide. Well, to put it another way, have you watched the movie Harry Potter and observed their newspaper, The Daily Prophet? Ever wished your newspaper had all those interesting animated/video clips? Well, thanks to devices like Amazon Kindle, it might just happen soon!
Roadblocks:
1. Affordability: The technology certainly looks very promising, but will it be affordable enough? In the end, affordability is one of the main reasons why some technologies click, and others don’t!
2. Data Limitations: Right now, Sprint provides Kindle the 3G connectivity that it needs for free. Once you start including short video clips etc., the data consumption skyrockets. Will Amazon/Sprint be able to support the huge increase in data needs? (especially for free?)
3. Interactive Content: Its true…a picture is worth a thousand words, and a short video clip even more! But, will newspapers be able to provide interesting interactive material for articles that manages to engage the readers and enhance their newspaper reading experience?
FYI, I took a class under the Professor who is featured in the video above ( Prof. David Janes). Awesome, right? Another FYI, If you were spread betting or investingin Amazon on the news regarding Kindle, you likely made out very well.
Given the meteoric rise in the demand for mobile data and text messaging, and the increasing popularity of social networking, and micro blogging sites, some more convergence is bound to happen in the next one or two years. We should start seeing some implementations may be as soon as this year, but the usability should continue to improve over the next few years.
Till now, the phone’s address book has been relatively boring and dry, unless ofcourse you take some efforts to click friends’ pics and individually assign them to each and everyone. Won’t it be awesome, if the phone’s address book could attempt to retrieve your contacts’ profile pics from social networking sites like facebook, linked-in and even twitter? (Depending on how and if you are connected to them) This way there won’t be any privacy issues either. If the contact is your friend, then the phone could try facebook/orkut etc. If you know the contact professionally, the phone could check hise/her profile on linkedin etc. To go one step further, it could even pull the status messages from twitter/facebook/linkedin.
This will just be a starting step towards convergence! The possibilities are virtually limitless. Even though it looks like some OS developers like Microsoft are trying to bar VoIP apps from their 'Marketplace', probably to save the Telecom service providers' main stream of revenue (See here: http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2009/05/microsoft_outli.html). I think eventually, the demand and need will motivate the service providers to encourage these on mobile devices. ( Or the apps will find their ways to handsets one way or the other...like some of the VoIP apps are doing now J)
Consider this example, suppose you are trying to get in touch with a friend who is on a business trip across the globe. When you go to her entry in your address book, it shows you that she is online on Yahoo messenger (on her phone). When you hit the call button, it connects you to her via yahoo messenger, and you could talk to her all you want without knowing the difference (and without the triple digit bills!)
The phone could integrate your location with enterprise messenger etc., and make it easier for your teammates & friends to track you down (unless ofcourse you want to hide from them! In that case, you could simply go offline). It could even decide what the best way to reach you is. For example, say your handset is tied up in a conference call, but a colleague (or friend) is trying to text you. The phone could see that you are still logged on to Enterprise messenger through your laptop, and it could potentially redirect your text messages to the messenger.
Systems like IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystems) will play a crucial role in allowing the telecom service providers to launch these convergence technologies and other Value Added Services (VAS) without having to invest in expensive equipments for each different service. They will be able to provide tons of different services while utilizing the same core servers, thus bringing in a lot of cost savings for them as well!
Even though the technology already exists in some crude form or the other, most of the devices just don’t interact with each other at all. Even when a technology is implemented, more often than not, there are too many compatibility issues, battery limitations etc.
The device interaction doesn’t necessarily have to be complicated. For example, when I get a phone call while I am watching television, I shouldn’t have to tell the DVR to go on mute or pause. As soon as the phone rings, the phone should automatically interact with the DVR to just pause it right there, & then later resume it once I hang up. Ok, maybe this is not the perfect example. Hitting the pause/mute button on the remote isn’t really that tough.
Consider another example. Suppose you have a team meeting after lunch, but you get stuck in traffic about 2 miles away from the office. Shouldn’t your phone step up to the plate and calculate your arrival time based on your GPS location and traffic conditions, and then notify the meeting organizer that you’ll take 10 more minutes? The technology sort of already exists. Services like Loopt let you track your friends’ current position. Almost all the handsets today in US are capable of supporting location based services and most of the smart phones already provide excellent integration with corporate calendar, mail & even messenger. Now, it is just a question of taking the integration to the next level.
Just one more example before I move to my second point. I know the new coffee machines already come with inbuilt timers etc., and you can easily set them to brew coffee at a particular time in the morning and so on. However, wouldn’t it be more convenient & intuitive if the phone sends a signal to the coffee machine to start brewing when it wakes you up with the morning alarm?
If you look at these examples individually, they don’t seem like a big deal. I mean it’s really not that hard to call the meeting organizer from the road & tell her that you’ll be there in 5 minutes. It’s only when you start adding all these scenarios together that the need for intelligent device interaction becomes evident.
Once we start thinking about the applications of intelligent device interaction, we also need to think about how these devices will communicate with each other. Bluetooth and Wireless USB are both excellent candidates. However, I think there is a more efficient solution. Let’s consider 4G handsets that might come in 2-3 years. Since, they already have a 4G radio & IP connectivity, why drain more battery for running a second radio (Bluetooth / wireless USB)? I guess, I am not too sure about the cost effectiveness, but if we could equip all the intelligent devices with 4G radios, then they’ll always be connected to the network and to all the other allowed devices. This has another advantage. Assuming, voice in the future will just be another IP application as well, you could easily transfer phone calls, pictures, videos etc. between computers, televisions & handsets without losing quality or connectivity. What’s more, you could even share input & output channels with all the devices. You could potentially use your phone to change the tv channel or increase the volume, & may be use your computer keyboard to type SMS messages on your phone!
Ofcourse, this all will take some time. There is a huge gap between possibility & popularity. Unless and until this all is implemented in the perfect way that is very intuitive, & convenient, it’s never going to become mainstream. And, it definitely is not going to be an overnight thing (unless ofcourse Steve Jobs implements it J )…we’ll get there in baby steps. Launching an affordable & highly available 4G network will be one of them. Shifting to IPv6 will be another (there’s no way IPv4 can support so many devices..). There will be millions of security concerns that will need to be worked out as well…but I am sure we’ll eventually get there.
One day, I wouldn’t have to tell my coffee maker when to make coffee for me anymore…! JJJ
Image taken from www.shutterstock.com
DISCLAIMER: This post contains forward looking statements about technologies that are still in different stages of development. While these ideas appeal to the common sense at the moment, history has plenty of examples that show just how wrong some of these statements turn out to be ( See here: http://tech.msn.com/news/articlepcw.aspx?cp-documentid=16829041) . My suggestion is, don’t put a leash on your imagination, develop whatever appeals to reason & then let just demand & supply rule the day!
Cloud computing has quickly become a well known celebrity in the world of budding next generation technologies. The technology is certainly very exciting, & promises to open a whole new world of opportunities. I am just writing this post to discuss some consumer centric ideas which to me sound enticing.
The whole idea is actually not all that complicated. In very simple terms, it just refers to accessing data, software applications & computing resources through the network (or the CLOUD..) Now, just imagine the possibilities that will open up once you combine the high speed 4G network & cloud computing! All your files, music, videos & pictures will be at your fingertips no matter which device you use, & no matter which part of the world you are in (As long as you have access to the network). I guess this is already true for photos through services like picasa, but what I am saying has much broader application. Imagine, never having to worry about a lost Ipod / flash drive, damaged hard disk, & broken computer! Imagine, your ‘cloud connected’ car playing the same playlist that you were listening to at home the night before. The DVR could directly record your favorite shows on the network, & you could literally watch them in HD on any portable device while running on treadmill @gym 100s of miles away….
Ease of access is just one aspect of cloud computing. The technology has the potential to revolutionize each & every electronic device, whether it is a smartphone, or a desktop computer. The devices as they exist today require their own ‘brain’ to process the input/output functions & numerous other computations. If the ‘brain’ of these devices is shifted to the cloud, imagine what it’ll do to the devices. The laptop for example will just have a screen, keyboard & mouse, & minimal hardware to interact with the network. The hard-disk, the processor, & may be even the cooling fan would disappear. It will weigh less than a pound, cost 100 dollars & switch-on in an instant & still be a hundred times faster as compared to the computers today.
To get an idea of the increased speed & efficiency, just try searching for an email in MS Outlook (with the indexing feature turned off) & then compare it with the time it takes to search for the same email using a web client…the results will be obvious.
While all this sounds good & charming, it raises some interesting questions as well. What happens if suddenly the network goes down, or you end up in a place where you simply don’t have internet access …? One moment you are flying @ the speed of light, & then suddenly you crash in to the stone age…that’s what it will be like! Success of cloud computing will essentially be dependent on presence of high speed reliable networks. Thanks to my work at Sprint, I have seen one such network in action..the Wimax network. I am sure the LTE network will be the same as well.
I am very excited about cloud computing. Are you?
DISCLAIMER: This post contains forward looking statements about technologies that are still in different stages of development. While these ideas appeal to the common sense at the moment, history has plenty of examples that show just how wrong some of these statements turn out to be ( See here: http://tech.msn.com/news/articlepcw.aspx?cp-documentid=16829041) . My suggestion is, don’t put a leash on your imagination, develop whatever appeals to reason & then just let demand & supply rule the day!
Sources:
http://www.hyperic.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/question-cloud.jpg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hplXnFUlPmg
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