At 12:02 PM +0000 3/3/11, gplw...@letterboxes.org wrote:
The "cloud" is already forming. A goal is to have all operating system and application software available online. Terminals (a monitor and user input hardware) will connect at high-speed with devices that have a small kernel of an operating system installed on them. The user will download whatever parts of the OS and whatever apps are needed at the time. The user will store their personal data "in the cloud" online, eliminating the need for large storage devices, except for solid-state, flash-type memory devices which can be use for portability between terminals.
Somehow this prediction sounds eerily familiar. When I came to this university in '79 there was one big computer that everyone used on a time-sharing basis. Students carried their programs around in cardboard boxes of IBM punch cards. Professors and secretaries still used typewriters. It was only about 4 years later that our Engineering School became the first to require their students to buy personal computers--and in their wisdom they chose the IBM Peanut!!! ONE member of our music faculty had written a grant to purchase an Apple II, and that was it.
Wasn't it an IBM executive, back the the '60s, who predicted--presumably with a straight face--that the worldwide demand for computers would require at most something like six, all operating with time-sharing?
I guess the more things change, the more they look the same, right? And in the meantime the phone companies get unspeakably rich because this Brave New World is based on wireless connectivity, which they just happen to sell!
John (Who does not text, tweet, "friend" anyone or play online games, and who owns about an 8-year-old cellphone that is used very seldom and then only to make or receive phone calls! Color me conservative.)
-- John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music Virginia Tech Department of Music College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A. 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:john.how...@vt.edu) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html "We never play anything the same way once." Shelly Manne's definition of jazz musicians. _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
