1. July 16, 1998 Gordon Bell Microsoft Corporation
Six Future Challenges: 50 years after The Celebration of the Birth of the Modern Computer at University of Manchester New Paradigms for Using Computers New Personal Computer Uses
July 16, 1998
Gordon Bell
Microsoft Corporation

2. For New Uses of PCs Conference… also New Paradigms for Using Computers
From Questionable...Great Research & Book Reports to Poor...Profitable Product: “and then a miracle happens”
For New Uses of PCs Conference… also New Paradigms for Using Computers
July 1998
Gordon Bell
Microsoft Corp.
Bay Area Research Center

3. Research to Product Models
The Classical, Feed-Forward Process
Gov’t Model I. Fund product development & then buy the products
Gov’t Model II. Issue challenge. Buy product.
“We invented it, now productize it, stupid” PARC I
“We invented something, let’s at least try to get our money back.” PARC II
Fund a company for research & development
Research as a recruiting tool
Hire good people, encourage interaction
Hire good people, large projects, do startups
Do it in/with product development
Fund university research and pray…

4. Heuristics for Government Funding
Fund University Research
Issue “buy” challenges to foster competition

5. The two great inventions
The computer (1946… realised in 1948). Computers supplement and substitute for all other info processors, including humans
Memories come in a hierarchy of sizes, speeds, and prices… the challenge is to exploit them
Computers are built from other computers in a iterative, layered, and recursive fashion
The Transistor (1946) and subsequent Integrated Circuit (1957).
Processors, memories, switching, and transduction are the primitives in well-defined hardware-software levels
A little help from magnetic, photonic, and other transducer technologies

6. Moore’s First Law
128KB
128MB
2000
8KB
1MB
8MB
1GB
1970
1980
1990 1M
16M
bits: 1K 4K
16K
64K
256K 4M
64M
256M
1 chip memory size
( 2 MB to 32 MB)
Transistor density doubles every 18 months 60% increase per year
Chip density
Microprocessor speed
Exponential growth:
The past does not matter
10x here, 10x there … means REAL change
PC costs decline faster than any other platform
Volume and learning curves
PCs are the building bricks of all future systems

7. Platform evolution: How do they all connect?

8. Extrapolation from 1950s: 20-30% growth per year
Tera
Giga
Mega
Kilo 1
Storage
Backbone
Processing
Memory
Telephone Service 17% / year ?? 65

9. Gains if 20, 40, & 60% / year 60%= Exaops 40%= Petaops 20%= Teraops 67

10. Alternative Computing Futures
Metropolis (1926)
Forbidden Planet (1956)
2001 (1968)
Photos courtesy of Microsoft Cinemania

11. Going forward… SIX challenges
Turing test... Voice or Video Avatar any conversation
Everything will be in Cyberspace
Electrons, etc. replace atoms for “money”, “ownership”… “risk”
Telepresence
The Guardian Angel for health
The Cyber Admin for personal use

12. Turing test: you can’t tell who’s on the other end when communicating with a machine using
Text
Voice
Visual image and voice

13. Going forward… challenges
Turing test... Voice or Video Avatar any conversation
Everything will be in Cyberspace
Electrons, etc. replace atoms for “money”, “ownership”… “risk”
Telepresence
The Guardian Angel for health
The Cyber Admin for personal use

14. Everything cyberizable will be in Cyberspace!
Body
Continent
Region/
Intranet
Car
Home
Campus,
including SANs
World
Fractal Cyberspace: a network of … networks of … platforms 26

15. “Everything will be in Cyberspace”
Is this a challenge? goal? quest? fate?… or
Cyberization enables new computing platforms that require new networks to connect them
Infrastructure supports the content
Three evolutionary dimensions 80

16. Cyberization: interface to all bits and process information
Coupling to all information and information processors
Pure bits e.g. paper, newspapers, video
Bit tokens e.g. money, stock
State of: places, things, and people
State of: physical networks

17. Atoms vs Electrons for bits
Atoms (mass) Electrons, etc. (massless)
people know computers know
bricks & mortar anywhere (personnel/clients)
office hours anytime
database & reports web access for review and transactions
letter & fax & web access
phone , voice & video mail
personal visits videophone / videomail
signature authenticated images
envelopes digital envelopes / store

18. By January 2001 there will NOT be 1 billion people on the “net”
By January 2001 there will NOT be 1 billion people on the “net”. Bet: Nicholas Negroponte $1K Bet: Nicholas Negroponte $1K:$5K… it happens by Also $1 T of commerce by 2001.

19. Why this is the keystone bet!
It determines the market
for networks
for access devices… especially PCs
It says something about the utility
commerce
communication
entertainment
Increased network capacity & ubiquity enables
phones
videophones
television
serendipity

20. Internetters growth World Population extrapolated at 1.6% per year
12000
10000
8000
6000
4000
2000
World Population extrapolated at 1.6% per year
Internet Growth extrapolated at 98% per year
‘95 ‘96 ‘97 ‘98 ‘99 ‘00 ‘01 ‘02 ‘03 ‘04 60

21. Internetters growth World Population TVs & Phones PCs Internetters
10000
1000
100 10
TVs & Phones
PCs
“1 Gp by 2000” Negroponte
Internetters
‘95 ‘96 ‘97 ‘98 ‘99 ‘00 ‘01 ‘02 ‘03 ‘04 61

22. Growth in hype WWW books, Infoway regulation newspapers
Infoway promise:
“how great it’ll be” (politicians, academics, etc.)
Infoway addiction
conferences
lawsuits
Where did I get the data for this graph? I made it all up.
This one shows the growth in hype vs.. reality. The first curve shows the rise of speculation on how great it'll be -- politicians, telecom presents and futurists all making statements about Cyberspace. Then we had an impulse, a function that is infinitely high and takes zero time The impulse was the world wide web with hyperlinks followed by the mosaic viewers. All three were needed. These caused a takeoff in books and newspapers about the Internet. Conferences about Internet follows along with growth in browsers. And then there will be lawsuits. Since we are all spending hours browsing there will be info way addiction. And that's followed by info way regulations.
Data from Gordon’s WAG

23. Cyberspace: A spiraling quest in 3D real space
Computation
Programs, Content & messages
Communication
Cyberization

24. Cyberspace: one, two or three networks? in 2005, 2010, 2020
Data
Telephony
Television

25. Going forward… challenges
Turing test... Voice or Video Avatar any conversation
Everything will be in Cyberspace
Electrons, etc. replace atoms for “money”, “ownership”… “risk”
Telepresence
The Guardian Angel for health
The Cyber Admin for personal use

26. Atoms that represent money, ownership, … risk

27. New or old money… it’s just bits
Credit
ATM /
Prepaid
Check
Cash
Prepaid

28. Put those checks & statements in Cyberspace or eliminate them!

29. Buying & selling stock: what a pain. Faxes
Buying & selling stock: what a pain! Faxes? Electronic signatures are legal in Georgia.

30. Paperless transactions: put them all in Cyberspace

31. Atoms vs Electrons for financial bits
Atoms (mass) Electrons, etc. (massless)
money database, smart card, credit card, debit card
statements web access
bills / checks bill present. / check free
coupons cyber-coupons
stock database, web
statements, reports web access,
+company infor, analyst reports, etc.
private placements web access,
trade confirmation direct trades
mail voting on line voting

33. Going forward… challenges
Turing test... Voice or Video Avatar any conversation
Everything will be in Cyberspace
Electrons, etc. replace atoms for “money”, “ownership”… “risk”
Telepresence
The Guardian Angel for health
The Cyber Admin for personal use

34. Telepresence … being there while being here, at another time, and with time scaling
Telepresentations
Telemeetings
The “work”

36. Motivation: Telepresentations
Presenter and/or audience telepresent
NOT: meeting or collaboration settings
Forget the nasty social issues!
Mostly one-way

37. Telepresentation Elements
Slides
Audio
Video
Script, text comments, hyperlinks, etc.

38. Telepresentations: The Essentials
Slide and audio a must
Add some video (low quality) to make us feel good
Storage and transmission costs low

39. Telepresentations: The Killer App
Increased attendance & lower travel costs
Practical and low-cost NOW
e.g. ACM97 - 2,000 visitors in real space, 20,000 visitors on Internet

40. Today’s Experiment Would you like to pause, rewind, browse?
Do you wish you could have seen this
At home?
At another time?
How much does a present speaker add? How much would you pay for real presence?

41. Telework: It takes screens, sound, and bandwidth, stupid

42. Telepresence hold a meeting of type, m with p, distributed persons
university or technical course
interview, staff meeting, co-ordination, board meeting, annual meeting, “town hall”,
with p, distributed persons
with as much interactivity and feeling
such that people prefer being telepresent
meetings are provably more productive
meetings will evolve to be asynchronous versus traditional synchronous

43. Conference Rooms with Teleconferencing

45. Mobile videophone

46. Honda Robot

47. People surrogates

48. Telework: It takes screens, sound, and bandwidth, stupid

49. “
By April 1, 2001 videophones will ship in 50% of the PCs and be in use. ”
Gordon Bell vs Jim Gray 1996 (one paper, loser gets fed)

50. Living in Cyberspace

51. Intrastructure

52. SOHO (small office, home office) network computing environment
POTS (legacy services)
IP Dial tone (Internet, phone, videophone) >1.5 Mbps
NT Server for: comm/network, POTS/IP gateway, file, print, compute
LAN PC PC
NC*
*NC, NetPC, Xterm, etc.
...
...
Phone
Phone
Phone

53. Not shown: ECG; GPS;
Compass; altimeter
PCS; Pilot
Libretto, .5mm pencil
Libretto PS, Ricoh Camera; Swiss Army Knife

54. Problems of living & working in Cyberspace: socio vs technical
Isolation & loneliness
need for communication/stimulation
chance meetings -- serendipity of ideas
loss of group/teamwork skills
danger of becoming “terminal”
interruptions & focus
lack of support staff to help, answer ?s
supervision and ability to have 1:1
unclear that many people want it… they simply need the contact with people

55. A People Model: Who wants to be in Cyberspace?
Spock
formal (in writing)
Self-control
informal (verbal)
Sally Field
Analyticals.. being right, detailed
anal retentives
Drivers… results orient.
megalo-maniacs
Managing Interpersonal Relationships (MIR)
2D Model
broadcast- push
Expressives... want recognition, need contact
psychotics
Amiables… consensus builders
spineless wimps
chat
Intensity
Souter Evangelism Swaggert

56. Going forward… challenges
Turing test... Voice or Video Avatar any conversation
Everything will be in Cyberspace
Electrons, etc. replace atoms for “money”, “ownership”… “risk”
Telepresence
The Guardian Angel for health
The Cyber Admin for personal use

57. The Guardian Angel

58. Steve Mann in Cyberspace

59. Medtronics Implanted Cardioplastic

60. Audio, pix, T, P, ECG, location, physiological parameters… 1 GB

61. Going forward… challenges
Turing test... Voice or Video Avatar any conversation
Everything will be in Cyberspace
Electrons, etc. replace atoms for “money”, “ownership”… “risk”
Telepresence
The Guardian Angel for health
The Cyber Admin for personal use

62. The Cyber Admin or the prosthetic memory… When we can store everything we’ve: read/written, heard/said, seen/acted, plus physical parameters.

63. What does Cyber Admin do?
Captures the creation of all personal/professional information
Stores and organizes
Retrieval is the challenge
recalling readings, conversations, presentations, images
help in being the “guardian angel”
What are the apps when we can do this?

64. There will always be plenty of things to compute
There will always be plenty of things to compute ... With millions of people doing complicated things.
memex … stores all one’s books, records, and communications, and ... can be consulted with speed and flexibility
Matchbook sized, $.05 encyclopedia
Speech to text
Head mounted camera, dry photography
Vannevar Bush c1945

66. Storing all we’ve read, heard, & seen
Human data-types /hr /day (/4yr) /lifetime
read text, few pictures 200 K M/G G
speech 43 K M/G 15 G
M 40 M/G 1.2 T
video-like 50Kb/s POTS 22 M .25 G/T 25 T
video 200Kb/s VHS-lite 90 M 1 G/T 100 T
video 4.3Mb/s HDTV/DVD 1.8 G 20 G/T P

67. Sizes of various information stores that an individual might need
Gigabyte 1,000,000, ,000 books
10,000,000,000 disk, 4 years of read text
300,000,000,000 lifetime of read text
Terabyte 1,000,000,000,000 lifetime of coded speech
25,000,000,000,000 lifetime of video, low Q
100,000,000,000,000 lifetime of
Petabyte 1,000,000,000,000,000 lifetime of hi-Q video

68. 10X in 40 years
(6% per year)

69. Library Volume Growth
10X in 150 years

70. Now how do you find or use the rich information
Need the system to: locate, retrieve, visualize, order, up load the corporation’s IP assets (text, proposals, images, videos, presentations, etc.) … with appropriate controls.

71. SmartMedia Technologies
Context Relevance
Image Recognition for Objects
Speech Recognition
Image Recognition, Lexical Cues
Transcripts
Close Caption
Lexical Analysis
Viewing
Color
B&W
Previews - Power Point, PDF, Video, Sound, Artwork
Brightness
Contrast
Volume
Speech-Music
Meta Information

72. Virage Video Cataloger

73. Sizes of various information stores
Gigabyte 1,000,000,000 shelf of scanned paper,
large book stack
10,000,000,000 movie, large disk
200,000,000,000 2 floor library, videotape
Terabyte 1,000,000,000,000 million volume library
20,000,000,000,000 Lib of Congress, disk array
Petabyte 1,000,000,000,000,000 a national library
15,000,000,000,000,00 disk production 1995

74. Library of Congress bits...
Scanned LC 1PB assumes 6B pages
13M photos 13TB
4M maps 200TB
500K movies 500TB
3.5M recordings 2,000TB
5 Bpeople or 2 GB per person

75. Publicly generated bits per year
Cinema 5K 200 TB
Images (all) 52G 520 PB
Broadcast (station) /10 PB
Recordings 100K 60 TB
Telephone (min.) 500G 400 PB
Videotapes

76. The end