That's a really stupid idea Steve.
It was somewhere around 1992 and wasn't the first or last time I heard something it. In fact it's part of the process of doing science - I just was applying it somewhere else. The PR people and business units of AT&T were for looking futuristic communicatons ideas in the labs that could change it's user's lives as the company moved beyond telephony.
I didn't start out as a technologist and still wonder why some people think of me that way. After some post-doc work in physics I joined the Bell Telephone Laboratories when it was still the best place this planet for certain types. A wide range of technologies were not just represented, but were invented there. My work was a bit to the side of the hardcore technologists and developers. My background going in was narrow - I'd get lost in many of the talks. But if you're curious, read and ask questions, anyone can learn. They gave me first-hand tours explaining their ideas in languages I could understand and, if they couldn't, or if they couldn't, they'd find an interpreter. That was considered part of my job. You could see the trajectory of some of the technologies -- threads moving moving forward in time and in some space. Threads that had a history that allowed you to compare your projections with what went on before. They had characteristics like cost, rate of development and dependencies on other technologies. It became a game to look for threads that could weave together in a history of the future. And every now and again a fabric began to emerge.
The rejection I began with was the most beautiful and poetic of the ideas I wrote down.
Maybe in fifteen or twenty years you'll hold a piece of glass in your hand and watch a friend's face on the other side of the world as you wish them happy birthday. The glass will be wireless and buttonless and the service will be too cheap to meter.
It was a weaving of wireless, battery technology, displays, silicon, image compression, and some things that were happen with user interfaces. The need was there. I had learned it paid to create an experience people craved. AT&T had been after the videophone since 1928 with numerous failed attempts, but they kept hammering away at it. It was clear that video over the Internet was possible - heck, I was doing it then - and the other curves looked attractive. The weaving was there, but there were these pesky questions.. How could you get that much bandwidth over a cellular connection. Who would built out a wireless network?
When, How, Why, Who ...?
These were all temporal questions that deserved attention if you were looking into the future. You just need an excuse and the company arguably gave me too much freedom. There were a few ideas they liked. I started thinking about that distant point in technology space.
In math and physics when you're solving for something you often call it X.
Five years later and I was involved in a group specializing in computer mediated human interactions. About a dozen really bright people who knew things I had never thought about. People with patience and their curiosity beyond their own backgrounds. I brought my own background to the group. We did a few neat things.
My favorite was a project a few of you were involved with - Air Graffiti. I won't go into it deeply other than saying it was a realization that phones would become location aware computers with cameras. We hacked together a few computational bricks that gave us a rather clear view into a few things that happened ten to fifteen years later. We thought the basic technology of a location-aware computerphone with a camera would start to mature around 2005 - about the time cellular networks could begin to support links a few tenths of a megabit per second. That'd be a start. There were all kinds of objections, but we learned the trick was to not say much in demos and just give someone the test brick and let them imagine and invent on their own. These were the most amazing demos I had seen and the folks in the group were just amazing... Wayzen, Jessica, Gregg, Dave, Nancy and Steve (yes - we had two Steves). We all developed a healthy respect for user interface and user experience and we had dreams of special hardware. I began to think Apple was going to be the future, but had no idea it would be a phone ..
The fundamental technologies are silicon and radio. The 1992 piece of glass looked very do-able computationally. The requirements were lower than a first generation iPhone and it was just a simple Moore's Law extension. Batteries were more difficult. I was sure GPS would get there with some military funding. The camera and display were certainly possible - it was just a question of picture quality. The big IF was the buildout of the wireless network. I had been playing with folks building community networks in isolated areas in the West. The technology was there .. and the need was there. It was a question of buildout and price. Several of us thought it would happen, but we had no idea what the path and timetable would be.
Today Apple showed me the spot ... that point I called X. It took twenty five years, but the implementation is so much richer than I had imagined. Radio turned out to be an enabler, but in Apple's case amazing specialized hardware has been a driver. It is coupled with software, but that ability to do both is what makes them special.
But the fabric continues to move with new threads weaving their way in. That's what makes it so fascinating and keeps it so rich.
Oh yeah .. and hindsight is at least 20:20 .. I get a lot of things wrong too. But that's how you learn.
Comments