Where are We are Going---from Where We’ve Been?

 

We are on the edge of a major change in computers not fully apprehended yet by most of us.

As I started to write this posting I realized that I was about to do it the old way.

Then I backed away from my Windows computer and picked up my new tablet to dictate the posting.

So why is the tablet such a revolution?  We can understand better if we look at where computers have been.   Development actually started long before Windows and Apple came on the scene.

Development started in 1947 with the invention of the transistor by Bell Labs.

Bell Labs had a mission of one day connecting all of us together electronically.
It was a distant vision and it was fraught with major problems.

Thousands of researchers were put to work to develop fiber optics, microwave transmission, lasers, and cell phone technology.

The big breakthrough was the development and invention of the transistor.  Today the tablet has billions of transistors.

That many transistors have the capability of indeed connecting us all together.

The objective is to share and use our collective knowledge.

The Google Nexus tablet is directly derived from the original Bell Labs Unix computer operating system developed long before Apple and Windows.  It was given to the public domain and is secure, safe, and free.

(Windows was designed as single user system, with none of the safeties which were provided for the telephone network.)

The major players in providing media, whether books or audios or videos, realize now that they cannot keep their customers without bringing the tablet to everyone.

They are furiously developing better and cheaper tablets just in order to survive. The development will continue until we are all connected with all the capabilities of tablets.

So far no single tablet includes all the capabilities, such as GPS, camera, storage, and even the ability to replace your tower and laptop with a large screen and keyboard.

Yes all these capabilities are available in one or another specific tablet already.

One otherwise basic recent tablet already works with screen and keyboard and costs $70 dollars.   

By the end of the year it is rumored that more capable all-round tablets will be available for $100 from Google as the major players struggle to be in first place.

The tablet will in time take the place of your computer your laptop, your radio, your books, your telephone, drive your TV, and most of the rest of our older tools to connect us together.

The tablet will finally achieve the goal set by Bell Labs in 1947 for one device, the phone.

Oh, yes.   Christmas is coming!

(For more on Bell Labs read Jon Gertner’s book The Idea Factory.)