2020 Vision: Twenty Years of Technology

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2. Legalized Video Recorders – Content
TWENTY-TWENTY Vision: owners in Hollywood sued Sony and argued
20 YEARS OF TECHNOLOGY that VCRs lead to copyright violations, but the
Supreme Court didn’t agree. As it turns out, the
By Wayne Caswell “Betamax ruling” didn’t hurt the movie business
and cleared the way for a multibillion-dollar
This expands on previous articles about three videotape business where Hollywood makes
types of trends affecting home networks: (1) more money from rentals than box office.
Technology, (2) Market & Consumer, and (3)
Social & Economic. For reference, follow the 3. Launch of the Macintosh – Apple’s
links at www.hometoys.com/mentors/caswell. graphical user interface sparked a major
change in how we interact with PCs. And now
Twenty-twenty Vision can help you build Apple’s new iPod player and iTunes music
homes that outlast the mortgage, but you must service are changing digital music too,
first embrace the unlimited possibilities. Only resolving similar digital rights issues as the
then can you visualize a version of the future Betamax case.
you prefer and set that as your destination.
These three landmark events signaled a
This article helps you create that vision with convergence of computing technology,
historical trends and a look at technological telecommunications, and content.
developments that make new things possible.
Calculating their probability, however, is an
entirely different matter.
Technology
Orwell’s 1984 Apple Mac
Let’s start by reviewing key developments from
twenty years ago and then look forward twenty
years or so.
Content Telecom
January 1984 wasn’t quite what George Orwell Betamax AT&T
envisioned in his book, but that year serves as Decision Breakup
a benchmark for how far we’ve come since.
Likewise, some of my predictions may never
happen while others will be too conservative.
Other important technologies from 1984
th
January 2004 marks the 20 anniversary of include the CD-ROM and portable CD players,
three key events that shaped our era: the camcorder, the laser printer, and IBM’s
PC/AT, which marked a shift in the company’s
1. Breakup of AT&T – The largest antitrust suit PC strategy to focus more on large enterprise
in American history broke up AT&T, created customers and less on small business and
seven regional “Baby Bells,” deregulated the consumers.
long-distance market, and created competition.
No longer would a single carrier monopolize Highlights since 1984 include handheld PDAs,
telecommunications, own every phone line, GPS navigation, direct broadcast satellite, the
and manage every call. Telecommunications Act of 1996, digital &
high-definition television, flat plasma TV
screens, DVDs, digital video recorders, MP3

WINTER 2004 CABA Home & Building Automation QUARTERLY

players, Auto PCs, wireless home networks, Gigabit Networks
broadband Internet service, the start of service There’s little need for gigabit home networks
bundling, e-commerce, and more. when most homes dialup at kilobit speeds.
Even DSL & cable networks offer minimal
Technology has already changed home performance with about 1 Mbps downstream
design. With hang-on-the-wall plasma and 56 Kbps up. U.S. broadband connections
displays, we no longer want a large hole in the are slow compared to countries like South
wall for a 35” direct view TV set. But we do Korea.
want network connections to stream audio and
video from our DVR or media center to TV sets • Broadband Policy – South Korea has the
and stereo systems in other rooms. That’s just highest penetration rate of any nation – 95% of
a start of design changes we can expect. households are covered and 54% subscribe.
Korean Telecom offers VDSL (2-40 Mbps) for
The Internet just $25/month, and another $8 adds Wi-Fi
The Internet changed how we live, work, play, access.
buy things, communicate with others, and
participate in society. For study purposes, it Aggressive Korean policies call for ubiquitous
has five major components: broadband access of 155 Mbps to 5 Gbps by
2005. The government has already made
1. The Network Itself – media (copper, coax, direct investments of $2 billion in a national
fiber, wireless), bandwidth, latency. backbone network, $600 million to promote
digital content, and $100 million in loans to
2. The Applications we Run – as the Net gets service providers who deploy new access
faster and integrates into cars and homes, networks. And they’ve committed an additional
access devices get smaller and new apps & $30 billion for public/private broadband
user interfaces appear. infrastructure by 2010.

3. The Content we Access – all information U.S. policy makers must wake up and realize
about everybody: our report cards, love letters, that an aggressive policy will help us compete
arrest records, medical histories, sales in the global information economy. And
receipts, tax reports, surveillance videos, builders and equipment makers should
history of web site visits, email, and IM & demand and expect performance of at least
newsgroup postings. 100 Mbps and probably much faster.

4. The Devices that Connect – from desktops • Home Networking Standards – Faster
to handhelds and embedded devices – they’ll processors help improve the performance of
work together over the Net. different media and networking standards.
5. The Location and Context – Internet access Ethernet, which appeared in 1985 at 10 Mbps,
from everywhere (office, home, car), where we has since evolved to 100 Mbps, 1 Gbps and 10
must consider the context of that location. Gbps already. Some people recommend using
cat.5e or cat.6 cabling for gigabit networks, but
By 2024, the very fabric of society will be faster chips will soon that that speed to cat.5
bathed with Internet access, and what we cabling.
know about the world around us will depend on
the networks. HomePNA (using phone wires) and HomePlug
(using power lines) are two no-new-wires
home network standards that appeared around
1998 with 1 Mbps performance. HomePNA 3.0


now supports 128 Mbps, and the pending With smart agents and speech recognition,
HomePlug AV spec will also support speeds machines and humans can work side-by-side,
up to 200 Mbps. speaking to one another. The latest systems
no longer sound like robots and instead sound
Even wireless standards are pushing past 100 like anyone you want. They’ll soon be able to
Mbps with proprietary Wi-Fi extensions hold a conversation in natural language with a
available at 108 Mbps. Twenty years from now, large vocabulary, answering questions and
wireless should easily reach gigabit speeds performing tasks.
and could replace all need for cabling. Until
then, install cat.5 cabling (or better) where Since microphone distance is an issue for
feasible. speech apps, you might need a microphone
array with digital signal processing to eliminate
• Convergence of Services – Service noise, echoes and reverb so voice commands
providers that survive industry consolidation are understood when you’re far away or close
will offer a “triple play” bundle of voice, data by. Or you could simply wear a wireless
and video services – available at lower cost, Bluetooth headset with speaker and
with greater performance, more function, a microphone.
single monthly bill, and a single support line to
resolve problems. They’ll need home networks The increased use of speech recognition is
to connect TVs, PCs, stereos, and phones. driven by smaller devices without keyboards,
and enabled by faster processors and more
Applications Online memory. I don’t think speech will be the
The “network is the computer” when apps primary interface, however, just an optional
move online, and Web-advertising makes most one. That’s because sometimes we want quiet,
of them free, where all you need is a browser – like when we’re working late and don’t want to
on a PC, TV, PDA, or phone. disturb others, or when it’s easier to hit a
switch than say “lights out.”
• Shared Apps & Files – Move the apps and
files online, and you get remote access to Digital Content & Rights Management
everything (pictures, music, floor plans…) from Broadband networks with a mix of voice, data,
anywhere. You can share what you want with and video help eliminate redundancy and dead
family, friends and business acquaintances. space, including the idle time when no one is
Forget about installing software and keeping it talking on the phone, the dead space between
up to date. Data managed by a trusted service words, or TV channels that no one is watching.
guarantees its security and safety, and even if
your house burns to the ground, those • Compression – Digital content is easy to
treasured photos, movie clips, recipes, and tax compress and decompress (codec) and helps
records are still there – for as long as you like, to further eliminate redundancy. It can be
and shared with whomever you like. either “lossless” (for data apps) or “lossy” (for
pictures, music and video where users notice
• Speech & Agents – What happens when little difference).
machines listen, speak and appear intelligent?
Smart agents act on your behalf, either • Music & Radio – Digital compression
because they are taught (rules-based agents) improves broadcast radio, whether it’s the new
or because they learn on their own (through HD Radio format, satellite, or live streaming via
sensors that recognize temperature, motion, Internet, and faster processors make for even
voice commands, and even faces). better compression so networks can carry
more interesting content.


The MP3 music codec made it easy to send trend will soon put high-end PC power on your
music through the Internet over relatively slow fingertip.
connections, but it raised concerns about
intellectual property. Apple’s iTunes music • Embedded Computing – As technology
service has since found a way to protect the disappears into everyday devices (light
rights of artists and record labels while also switches, smoke detectors, doorknobs,
making it easier to buy and download music. appliances, jewelry, eyeglasses, clothes, toys
and other consumer electronics), we move
For homes, this means consumers will want from the 1975 mainframe era of hundreds of
easy ways to distribute music to speakers people sharing a single computer to an era of
anywhere. embedded computing with hundreds of
processors per person.
• Digital Video & Television – The digital
video recorder and its ability to bypass • Wireless Networks – You won’t need to run
commercials destroyed the old advertising cables to the smart toilets and windows since
model; so new business models are needed. wireless networks complement your structured
We can expect a mix of video-on-demand, wiring. Even though wireless is the best option
subscription services, personalized ads, and for mobility and will eventually support all of the
product placements with hotlinks to buy or just apps you can imagine, wiring will still be the
find out more. most reliable, secure, and best performing
option in 20 years.
T-commerce is a term describing personalized
ads that match viewer interests so they’re • The exploding PC – More and more PC
more effective. Interaction adds the ability to functions are moving into networked
find more information and buy online while appliances, and printers, gateways and hard
advertisers gain a way of knowing who is disks already connect to Ethernet. That way
interested. Nearly every home in 20 years will PCs, DVRs, game consoles, media centers,
have highly interactive digital television, but and other devices can all use them.
you may still want to just sit back and watch
passively. With ultra-fast broadband access, these PC
functions can move onto outside services, but
Even when everyone can record video and it’s not clear what will be stored locally or
publish online, a few large media companies remotely. It is clear that you’ll have lots of
will provide most of what you watch, because storage available.
few people have enough talent or funds to
make compelling programs. • Disk Storage – The desktop PC of 1984
had a 20 MB hard disk, a 16-bit processor, a
MPEG-4 is a fairly new video codec that needs clock speed of 8 MHz, and a retail price of over
far less storage and bandwidth than MPEG-2. $5,000 (in 1984 dollars). Today’s desktop is
Rather than 3 Mbps to send DVD-quality video, 250 times faster and has 2000 times more
MPEG-4 needs only 750 Kbps to get nearly the storage with a 40 GB disk.
same quality. And instead of 20 Mbps for
HDTV, MPEG-4 needs just 2-3 Mbps. If we still have desktop PCs twenty years from
now, which I doubt, they’ll each have terabit
Terabit PCs with Lots of Storage processors and 2 petabytes of storage, given
Moore’s Law describes a semiconductor trend the current trend.
where transistor density doubles every 18
months so products keep getting cheaper, What would you do with 2 petabytes? Store a
smaller and faster with no end in sight. That million feature-length movies? How about


recording everything you hear, see, read, and enough for walls, so we may need new formats
write each day, so you can recall it later from and faster networks.
your wearable computer, heads-up display,
and wireless network? Never forget a face or • Media Server – It’s not clear what sort of
name or birthday or anniversary. converged device will become the dominant
media server, managing collections of music,
• Solid-state Memory – The capacity of movies, photos and Internet content. If it’s a
postage stamp size, non-volatile flash PC, it goes in the home office; and if it’s a set-
memories will increase to 1GB this year and top box, it goes in the family room. Either way,
soon hold feature-length movies, but that’s just we’ll want to send content to any PC, TV or
the beginning. Researchers are developing an stereo and control the content from there.
inexpensive, fast, low-power, and non-volatile
memory device that can replace flash, DRAM Convergence at a New Level
(dynamic RAM), SRAM (static RAM), and The last 20 years were about the convergence
embedded memory in system-on-a-chip of computing, telecom and content; but the
processors. vision of an e-society with anywhere access to
all human knowledge depends on pushing the
MRAM (magnetic random access memory) technology drivers and removing the inhibitors,
uses magnetism to store data instead of including complexity, security, social,
electricity, so contents remain when power is economic, and political barriers.
off. MRAM is faster than static RAM and can
be dense enough to replace the hard disk. That’s why I envision a new set of
MRAM devices will also use far less power, be convergence spheres that bring together
more reliable with no moving parts, and Nano-Science, Information Science, and
eliminate the delays of saving data to disk, Political Science.
shutting down, or booting up.

• Remote Access & Security – Following the Information
mantra of “any content, anytime, anywhere, on Science
any device,” wireless devices can control home (Find, Protect)
apps and access home files. However, builders
must understand the security issues.

I’ve seen multi-million dollar homes where the Political Nano-Science
systems integrator provided wireless access to Science (Molecular,
(Regulatory) Atomic)
the home security system without knowing how
easy it is to break the weak security of Wi-Fi
and gain access to the home and its contents.
• Nano-Science – The nanotech evolution is
• Displays Grow Large & Small – Since large shrinking semiconductor features to molecular
TV displays keep getting thinner, forget in-wall and atomic dimensions, and that will extend
cubbyholes and think about getting power and Moore’s Law well into the future.
network cables to wall-hung TVs.
With individual components self-assembled
As mobile displays get smaller for wearing on from molecules, and with nanometer
eyeglasses, large TV displays will get much connections, the circuits will be much smaller
larger – even wall-sized and building-sized. We and more powerful than anything made from
may find that the 1080p HDTV format, which silicon. They may also be so inexpensive to
looks great on 70” displays, is not good


make that they’re essentially free, and with this and attitudes, and social, political,
scenario, the value comes from programming demographic and economic trends.
the circuits.
This article was just a start, and you may now
The result for homes will be hundreds and want to check out my other Trends articles on
thousands of intelligent devices that work HomeToys.com.
together, assuming that other barriers are
removed and standards allow. Wayne Caswell is founder of CAZITech
Consulting, serving broadband, wireless and
• Information Science – Believe me, your home network markets with marketing related
services. Contact him at 512.335.6073;
financial transactions, written opinions, love
wcaswell@cazitech.com; www.cazitech.com.
notes, inquiries and disclosures are already
online somewhere and there to stay. How will
you find them when you want them, and
secure them so others can’t?

As we collect more information, we must learn
more about the nature of information itself so
we can use machines to search and parse the
data and deliver useful knowledge and insight.

• Political Science – The most difficult
problems – universal broadband access,
copyright, free expression, social networking,
due process – have technical issues but aren't
really technical problems. They depend more
on politics, business models, policy, changes
in laws, and other factors.

Who will be the new political and business
leaders? What companies, industries and
nations will dominate? The business leaders
must innovate more and rely on gut instinct,
and the policy makers must have the courage
to avoid political pressures from powerful
lobbyists and focus instead on public good.

Education will become an even more important
factor as students struggle to keep up with
evolving science and consumers find it difficult
to adopt technology and accept change.

Closing
The future isn't what it used to be and is
coming faster than ever. We can’t just study
the past, extrapolate trends, and learn about
what’s possible. The greater challenge is in
knowing the right things to do, so we must also
study changes in consumer behavior, lifestyles


2020 Vision: Twenty Years of Technology

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