The most unexpected technology in the last 50 years
On the eve of the iMeme: The Thinkers of Tech technology futurists conference, Fortune magazine asked a number of well-known high-tech visionaries to tell them the success of which technologies that appeared during their life are considered most unexpected. Esther Dyson, Bill Joy, Jonathan Schwartz and others expressed their opinions.
Esther Dyson, Release 1.0 Editor and Founder of EDventure Holdings . The most interesting developments were the result of a combination of business and technology, such as the commercialization of the Internet or the emerging commercialization of space travel.
Bill Joy, partner Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers . Among the pleasant surprises are the Internet and UNIX. Thirty years ago I worked to make these technologies reliable and functioning normally, and now I sit here and use both of them on a UNIX-based Mac with wireless broadband Internet, as I imagined the future 30 years ago. What was unexpected for me was how widespread these technologies have become. We discussed this a long time ago, but really did not believe it. I hope that they will also be surprised about the environmental technologies that I am working on now.
Jonathan Schwartz, Director and President, Sun Microsystems . Phone. I remember the times when they were mounted on the walls. I also remember payphones. Now, cell phones are literally everywhere. There are billions of them around the world, and they are becoming the main device for connecting to the Internet. Through SMS, social networks, maps, bank accounts, music or news - even camera phones already outnumber ordinary cameras. People put a lot of effort into communicating with each other - now it’s much easier for them to do it. Mobile devices and mobile services will eventually only become more interesting and valuable.
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Yusuf Mehdi, Senior Vice President and Chief Advertising Strategist, Microsoft . Despite the amount of time I spent at Microsoft, working on the browser and the accompanying set of technologies, it was the Internet that was the main source of surprises in terms of influencing people, business and software applications. The very basic possibility of providing world-wide access to information for both corporate and individual users was quite expected in principle, but not with the speed and power as it suddenly happened in the sense that information is now created, published and consumed.
Padmasri Warrior, executive vice president and technical director of Motorola . For me personally, the technology that most unexpectedly changed my life was what I call the “device, formerly known as a cell phone.” I still remember the old predictions that by the year 2000 there will be about a million mobile phone owners in the world. How wrong they were! There are about 2.9 billion mobile phones in the world today, that is, more than half of the planet uses this technology, and not only for telephone calls. Today, people call people, not at a specific address. Today, a new text language, common to the entire planet, has appeared. In any country, any teenager knows that “lu” means “love you”. New language destroys borders and cultural barriers between people, making us closer. Today's mobile phone in the store at a cost of less than $ 40 has more computing power than the computer of the spacecraft that sent a man to the moon; and a 13-year-old with such a phone can have more knowledge than the engineers of the Apollo program in 1969! The mobile device of the future will hold your identity. It will store your mail and calendar, it will be your wallet and your decoration, your camera and TV, it will remind you of everything that you have forgotten, and will entertain you with music and games, it will help you to get from one point to another. it will show things that you might have missed, it will understand you and talk with you, it will help you express your impressions to the whole world - and everything is as simple as a regular phone call.
Eva Chen, co-founder and director of Trend Micro . Computer video games. I never imagined that computer games could be something for my mom's generation, and may be related to health and exercise ... but the Wii phenomenon really surprised me. When my mom's doctor prescribed her a Wii prefix and recommended her to practice every day to heal backaches and occasional depressions, it turned out that she liked it very much! What an unexpected twist for this technology throughout my life — from the invention of Pong for bored boys to the Wii for active grandmothers!
Esther Dyson, Release 1.0 Editor and Founder of EDventure Holdings . The most interesting developments were the result of a combination of business and technology, such as the commercialization of the Internet or the emerging commercialization of space travel.
Bill Joy, partner Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers . Among the pleasant surprises are the Internet and UNIX. Thirty years ago I worked to make these technologies reliable and functioning normally, and now I sit here and use both of them on a UNIX-based Mac with wireless broadband Internet, as I imagined the future 30 years ago. What was unexpected for me was how widespread these technologies have become. We discussed this a long time ago, but really did not believe it. I hope that they will also be surprised about the environmental technologies that I am working on now.
Jonathan Schwartz, Director and President, Sun Microsystems . Phone. I remember the times when they were mounted on the walls. I also remember payphones. Now, cell phones are literally everywhere. There are billions of them around the world, and they are becoming the main device for connecting to the Internet. Through SMS, social networks, maps, bank accounts, music or news - even camera phones already outnumber ordinary cameras. People put a lot of effort into communicating with each other - now it’s much easier for them to do it. Mobile devices and mobile services will eventually only become more interesting and valuable.
')
Yusuf Mehdi, Senior Vice President and Chief Advertising Strategist, Microsoft . Despite the amount of time I spent at Microsoft, working on the browser and the accompanying set of technologies, it was the Internet that was the main source of surprises in terms of influencing people, business and software applications. The very basic possibility of providing world-wide access to information for both corporate and individual users was quite expected in principle, but not with the speed and power as it suddenly happened in the sense that information is now created, published and consumed.
Padmasri Warrior, executive vice president and technical director of Motorola . For me personally, the technology that most unexpectedly changed my life was what I call the “device, formerly known as a cell phone.” I still remember the old predictions that by the year 2000 there will be about a million mobile phone owners in the world. How wrong they were! There are about 2.9 billion mobile phones in the world today, that is, more than half of the planet uses this technology, and not only for telephone calls. Today, people call people, not at a specific address. Today, a new text language, common to the entire planet, has appeared. In any country, any teenager knows that “lu” means “love you”. New language destroys borders and cultural barriers between people, making us closer. Today's mobile phone in the store at a cost of less than $ 40 has more computing power than the computer of the spacecraft that sent a man to the moon; and a 13-year-old with such a phone can have more knowledge than the engineers of the Apollo program in 1969! The mobile device of the future will hold your identity. It will store your mail and calendar, it will be your wallet and your decoration, your camera and TV, it will remind you of everything that you have forgotten, and will entertain you with music and games, it will help you to get from one point to another. it will show things that you might have missed, it will understand you and talk with you, it will help you express your impressions to the whole world - and everything is as simple as a regular phone call.
Eva Chen, co-founder and director of Trend Micro . Computer video games. I never imagined that computer games could be something for my mom's generation, and may be related to health and exercise ... but the Wii phenomenon really surprised me. When my mom's doctor prescribed her a Wii prefix and recommended her to practice every day to heal backaches and occasional depressions, it turned out that she liked it very much! What an unexpected twist for this technology throughout my life — from the invention of Pong for bored boys to the Wii for active grandmothers!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/31158/
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