Molecularist

Geez, I’ve been contrarian lately. Maybe it’s because I am working with great folks who question everything (they call it the ‘three whys’ – keep asking ‘why’ and if it survives three, then it must have some solid footing). Maybe it’s because I’ve been trying to stretch my mind into the far future and realizing that some measurements we have today will either become useless or need new names.*

Think about it:

We talk about computers in terms of processor speed (in Hertz, xHz) or memory size (in bytes, xb) or bandwidth (in bits per second, bps). Such measurements have reached the giga (10^9) level. And there is talk of storage (in big data centers) in the tera and peta level (10^12 and 10^15, respectively).

Already the talk of processor speed is starting to be meaningless, not necessarily due to the speed going past gigahertz, but because processors are splitting into multiple cores and such.

With storage and memory, it’s quite clear that in a few years we’ll have to learn new Greek terms for numbers over peta, such as exa.

In any case, in our lifetimes, and I mean soon, we’re going to have to establish a new measurement to convey the storage and speed of a computing device.

My wish, though, is that we stop caring. Hence ‘computer’ being a Tired Word for me.

Do you know what the speed and storage is in your car? I don’t, but I am sure it’s been going up in newer models. And I don’t care, so long as I can do what I want to do with it.

Same should be with computing devices. Just let me know that the apps and services I want can run on it and that I won’t run up against any unreasonable barrier.

Really, are these thing differentiating factors anymore for laptops? Will there ever be time we just buy the device based on what it can do rather than guessing what it can do based on a few parameters that are already over-serving the regular user?

Thinking of mobile devices, I don’t think I have ever known the processor speed of my phone and I don’t even know if it’s a valid measurement (and, of course, I don’t care). I do know which phones are faster than others (and, no, it doesn’t follow that newer phones are necessarily faster than older phones, and no reason it should). And storage is rapidly becoming over-abundant, at least for the things I currently do and can do with my mobile device. And that’s with a gigabyte memory card. Soon a gigabyte on a mobile device will be passé.

What do you think? Or do I just have my head in the clouds.

In a bit, I’ll tell you about an article I read that kicked off this and other trains of thought.

*So flippin’ off-topic, you’re gonna boot me out of your feed-reader: If you really want to get geeked out, I’ve been trying to think of a post-electronic age. Being a bio-geek at heart, I’ve been thinking of how one would convey the ‘doing’ power of a biologically based product. Biological systems could probably be programmed via DNA, where ‘lines of code’ are, at some level, are measured in base-pairs or coding units, called genes. But, due to the recursive and code-reuse ability of biological systems, and as we’ve discovered through the various genome projects, size of genome does not necessarily equate linearly with complexity of organism. So, I was thinking of some complexity measure that takes into account the amount of base-pairs, genes, functional units (such as proteins, functional RNA, mutli-part molecules), and cell and tissue types. Heh. I guess I’m off my rocker.

Today I gave a talk for alumni from the Copenhagen Business School (tickled pink to be invited).

I spoke about three topics that are near and dear to me:

1. The growth of the Mobile Lifestyle – how service providers need to understand how folks use mobile phones in their life, rather than just porting experiences from the broadband PC world.
2. The rise of the emerging markets – what a billion new subscribers in the next year or so mean to local and global commerce and society.
3. The fusion of the Web and mobile world – how we can bring the innovativeness of the open Web to the mobile world, along the way teaching operators how to find other areas of value.

I kept the talk informal and there was a good discussion during and after. The one thing that still is bouncing around my brain was a comment from a CEO from a giant electronics firm. He tied two of my threads together: the push for more flat rate pricing and the use of pre-pay minutes as the basis for an informal economy in emerging markets.

He asked what will happen if we go all flat rate pricing, how will folks use minutes as a currency then?

Good question.

It would certainly remove a central role of the mobile in the informal economy and remittances of the developing world. But, we must also keep in mind that even in really mature markets, pre-pay subscriptions are still significant (I think it’s like 50% in the UK). So, while we should be careful what we wish for, I don’t think we should think of the consequences in today’s terms. In future, there will be other things that will make this worry minor.