As time passes, technology passes

Recently I have been reading articles on Apple vs. MSN and the downloadable music wars. More interesting (at least to me) than who will win this battle is what it all means. In the last 25-30 years (one generation), we have gone from phonograph records to half inch square memory chips (which now, by the way, come in gigabyte sizes). Let's look at the trends here:

Music goes from tape, to optical (CD), to bits. Does anyone doubt that video will go down the same path?

Displays go from CRTs at 640x480 to flat screens at 1280x1024.

Why is a music DVD more appealing than it's companion CD? Part of it is the video, but the DVD also has 3-4 times the audio density. The music sounds better because it is better.

Ok. So what does this all mean?

If it were me, I wouldn't buy Blockbuster stock or glass company stock (although Corning is a player in flat screen technology as well). I figure that in the next 2 years I'll have all my music as bits and the CDs will be in the bottom of some closet. How long before my movies get there?

Well... Hitachi now sells a 400 gig hard drive. That's about 100 movies, which is more than I have. But the key for movies is still bandwidth. We are now at the point (just this year) where more than half of all the homes that have Internet connectivity have high-speed Internet. The problem with Movies is that we don't yet have the right software and appliances (something we're working on a bit...). Give it another couple of years.

Oh, by the way, did you know you can produce a pretty good display using laser interference patterns... something to think about!

 

Friday, September 10, 2004 3:41:45 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)      Comments [0]  Observations

Backa's First Law

The level at which a technology is a commodity moves up the ISO model over time.

There was a day when a wireless phone was novel, expensive and difficult to make work. Now we take them for granted. The ISO and its interpretations provide the framework for a connected, digital universe. There was a day when getting a 3Com network adapter to exchange packets with a Novell adapter was a challenge. Now everyone takes this level of connectivity for granted. Later there was a time when getting a Mac, a PC, and a Unix box to talk was a challenge. Now this too is commodity technology.

There is a continous trend here. Namely the action and the interesting problems move up the ISO model over time. Below this line, everything is a commodity and can be assumed to work. Above the line, most things have no clear defacto standards and are likely not to interoperate well.

Once you understand where this line is, you can figure out other things like the relative economics of playing in one space or another.

Friday, September 03, 2004 4:46:08 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)      Comments [0]  Backa's Laws

Backa's Laws

Most of us have heard of Moore's Law, Murphy's Law, and other Natural Laws that apply to technology and sometimes life itself. Backa's Laws add other observable laws of nature to this collection.

Friday, September 03, 2004 4:31:20 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)      Comments [0]  Backa's Laws