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<\/a>\nIt abstracts some key points of my perspective on the history and near future of computing.\u00a0 In this and some future posts I\u2019ll be writing about some of those ideas. For readers with an analytic bent, don\u2019t worry too much about what the y-axis represents.\u00a0 This is a conceptual timeline, not a graph of any actual data.\u00a0\u00a0 The\u00a0 y-axis was intended to be something like overall impact of computing upon average individuals but can also be seen as an abstraction of other relevant factors such as economic impact.<\/p>\n
The must important idea from the slide is that, in my view, there have been three major \u201ceras\u201d of computing (or, if you prefer, of the \u201cinformation age\u201d<\/a>). Each of these eras represents a major difference in the role computers play in human life and society.\u00a0 The three eras also correspond to major shifts in the dominant form of computing devices and software. We are currently in the early days of the third era.<\/p>\n The first era was the Corporate Computing Era<\/em>.\u00a0 It was focused on using computers to enhance and empower large organizations such as commercial enterprises and governments. \u00a0Its applications were largely about collecting and processing large amounts of schematized data. Databases and transaction processing were key technologies.<\/p>\n During this era, if you \u201cused a computer\u201d it would have been in the context of such an organization.\u00a0 However, the concept of \u201cusing a computer\u201d is anachronistic to that era.\u00a0 Very few individual had any direct contact with computing and for most of those that did, the contact was only via corporate information systems that supported some aspects of their jobs.<\/p>\n The Corporate Computing Era started with the earliest days of computing in the 1950\u2019s and obviously corporate computing still is and will continue to be an important sector of computing. \u00a0However, around 1980 the primary focus of computing started to rapidly shift away from corporate computing.\u00a0 This was the beginning of the Personal Computing Era<\/em>.<\/p>\n The Personal Computing Era was about using computers to enhance and empower individuals. \u00a0Its applications were largely task-centric and focused on enabling individuals to create, display, manipulate, and communicate relatively unstructured information. Software applications such as word processors, spreadsheets, graphic editors, and email were key technologies.<\/p>\n Today we seem to be in the early stages of a new era of computing. A change to the dominant from of computing is occurring that will be at least a dramatic as the transition from the Corporate Computing Era to the Personal Computing Era. This new era of computing is about using computers to augment the environment within which humans live and work. It will be an era of smart devices, perpetual connectivity, ubiquitous information access, and computer augmented human intelligence.<\/p>\n We don\u2019t yet have a universally accepted name for this new era.\u00a0 Some people call it post-PC<\/a>, pervasive<\/a>, \u00a0or ubiquitous<\/a> computing.\u00a0 Others focus on specific technical aspects of the new era and call it cloud<\/a>, mobile<\/a>, or web<\/a> computing.\u00a0 The term that I currently prefer and will use for now is \u201cambient computing.\u201d\u00a0 In the Ambient Computing Era<\/em> humans live in a rich environment of communicating computing devices and a ubiquitous cloud of computer mediated information. \u00a0In the Ambient Computing Era there will still be corporate computing and task-oriented personal computing style applications will still be used.\u00a0 But the defining characteristic of this era will be the fact that computing is shaping the actual environment within which we live and work.<\/p>\n