I ve long felt that the proliferation of computing devices, in many guises, will be a driving force of our future. If we re to truly see an integrated web of information aware devices, working in tandem to provide a unique and insightful presence for each of us, we ve got long way to go given the state of consumer devices today. I read an article in Fortune magazine recently about the changes in culture and approach at Microsoft, in light of the challenges they ve faced the past few years. Around page five of the article they begin to talk about engineering features into the Microsoft product family. I think we should ask ourselves if we re even succeeding in make software that the person in the next cubical can use.
Lets start simple.
Many trends point to an explosive growth any day now in home networking and broadband connectivity. Pundits talk about a world full of networked homes, where mom and dad interact with their children in both the physical and the virtual world. Streaming media provide our audio and video information. Networked connectivity will allow the family to have a videoconference will Grandma and Grandpa, and we ll have digital picture frames located around the house and in our friends and family s homes, and the images we capture with our digital cameras and personal video recorders will be beamed around to the frames for proud display. What I didn t write about then was the trouble I was going through to get my home network set up behind a version upgrade of my firewall software.