Six Future Challenges:
50 years after
The Celebration of
the Birth of the Modern Computer at
University of Manchester
New Paradigms for Using Computers
New Personal Computer Uses
July 16, 1998
Gordon Bell
Microsoft Corporation
NUPC ‘1998
From Questionable...Great Research &
Book Reports to Poor...Profitable Product:
“and then a miracle happens”
For New Uses of PCs Conference…
also New Paradigms for Using
Computers
July 1998
Gordon Bell
Microsoft Corp.
Bay Area Research Center
NUPC ‘1998
Research to Product Models
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The Classical, Feed-Forward Process
Gov’t Model I. Fund product development & then buy
the products
Gov’t Model II. Issue challenge. Buy product.
“We invented it, now productize it, stupid” PARC I
“We invented something, let’s at least try to get our
money back.” PARC II
Fund a company for research & development
Research as a recruiting tool
Hire good people, encourage interaction
Hire good people, large projects, do startups
Do it in/with product development
Fund university research and pray…
NUPC ‘1998
Heuristics for Government
Funding


Fund University Research
Issue “buy” challenges to foster
competition
NUPC ‘1998
The two great inventions

The computer (1946… realised in 1948).
Computers supplement and substitute for
all other info processors, including humans
–
–

Memories come in a hierarchy of sizes, speeds,
and prices… the challenge is to exploit them
Computers are built from other computers in a
iterative, layered, and recursive fashion
The Transistor (1946) and subsequent
Integrated Circuit (1957).
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–
Processors, memories, switching, and
transduction are the primitives in well-defined
hardware-software levels
A little help from magnetic, photonic, and other
transducer technologies
NUPC ‘1998
Moore’s First Law
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Transistor density doubles
every 18 months
60% increase per year
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Exponential growth:
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Chip density
Microprocessor speed
1GB
128MB
1 chip memory size
( 2 MB to 32 MB)
8MB
1MB
128KB
8KB
1970
bits: 1K
1980
1990
4K 16K 64K 256K 1M 4M 16M 64M 256M
The past does not matter
10x here, 10x there … means REAL change
PC costs decline faster than any other
platform
–
–
2000
Volume and learning curves
PCs are the building bricks of all future
systems
NUPC ‘1998
Platform evolution:
How do they all connect?
NUPC ‘1998
Extrapolation from 1950s:
20-30% growth per year
Tera
Giga
Storage
Backbone
Processing
Memory
??
Mega
Kilo
1
1947
Telephone Service
17% / year
1957
1967
1977
1987
1997‘1998
2007
NUPC
Gains if 20, 40, & 60% / year
60%=
Exaops
1.E+21
1.E+18
40%=
Petaops
1.E+15
20%=
Teraops
1.E+12
1.E +9
1.E+6
1995
2005
2015
2025
2035
2045
NUPC ‘1998
Alternative Computing
Futures
• Metropolis (1926)
• Forbidden Planet (1956)
• 2001 (1968)
NUPC ‘1998
Photos courtesy of Microsoft Cinemania
Going forward… SIX challenges
Turing test...
Voice or Video Avatar
any conversation
Everything will be in Cyberspace
Electrons, etc. replace atoms for
“money”, “ownership”… “risk”
Telepresence
The Guardian Angel for health
The Cyber Admin for personal use
NUPC ‘1998
Turing test: you can’t tell who’s on
the other end when communicating
with a machine using
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Text
Voice
Visual image and voice
NUPC ‘1998
Going forward… challenges
Turing test...
Voice or Video Avatar
any conversation
Everything will be in Cyberspace
Electrons, etc. replace atoms for
“money”, “ownership”… “risk”
Telepresence
The Guardian Angel for health
The Cyber Admin for personal use
NUPC ‘1998
Everything cyberizable will be
in Cyberspace!
Continent
Body
Car
Region/
Intranet
Home
Campus,
World
including SANs
Fractal Cyberspace: a
network of … networks
of … platforms
NUPC ‘1998
“Everything will be in
Cyberspace”
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Is this a challenge? goal?
quest? fate?… or
Cyberization enables
new computing platforms that
require new networks to connect
them
–
–
Infrastructure supports the content
Three evolutionary dimensions
NUPC ‘1998
Cyberization: interface to all bits
and process information
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Coupling to all information and
information processors
Pure bits e.g. paper, newspapers, video
Bit tokens e.g. money, stock
State of: places, things, and people
State of: physical networks
NUPC ‘1998
Atoms vs Electrons for bits
Atoms (mass)
people know
bricks & mortar
office hours
database & reports
letter & fax
phone
personal visits
signature
envelopes
Electrons, etc. (massless)
computers know
anywhere
(personnel/clients)
anytime
web access for review
and transactions
email & web access
email, voice & video mail
videophone / videomail
authenticated images
NUPC/ store
‘1998
digital envelopes
By January 2001 there will NOT be 1
billion people on the “net”.
Bet: Nicholas Negroponte $1K
Bet: Nicholas Negroponte
$1K:$5K… it happens by 2002.
Also $1 T of commerce by 2001.
NUPC ‘1998
Why this is the keystone bet!

It determines the market
–
–
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It says something about the utility
–
–
–
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for networks
for access devices… especially PCs
commerce
communication
entertainment
Increased network capacity & ubiquity
enables
–
–
–
–
phones
videophones
television
serendipity
NUPC ‘1998
Internetters growth
12000
10000
8000
6000
4000
2000
0
‘95
World Population
extrapolated at 1.6% per year
Internet Growth
extrapolated at 98% per year
‘96
‘97
‘98
‘99
‘00
‘01
‘02
‘03
‘04
NUPC ‘1998
Internetters growth
10000
World Population
TVs & Phones
1000
“1 Gp by 2000”
Negroponte
PCs
100
Internetters
10
‘95
‘96
‘97
‘98
‘99
‘00
‘01
‘02
‘03
‘04
NUPC ‘1998
Growth in hype
WWW
Infoway promise:
“how great it’ll
be” (politicians,
academics, etc.)
books, Infoway
newspapers
regulation
Infoway
addiction
conferences
lawsuits
NUPC ‘1998
Data from Gordon’s WAG
Cyberspace: A spiraling quest
in 3D real space
Computation
Communication
Cyberization
Programs, Content & messages
NUPC ‘1998
Cyberspace: one, two or three
networks? in 2005, 2010, 2020
Data
Telephony
Television
NUPC ‘1998
Going forward… challenges
Turing test...
Voice or Video Avatar
any conversation
Everything will be in Cyberspace
Electrons, etc. replace atoms for
“money”, “ownership”… “risk”
Telepresence
The Guardian Angel for health
The Cyber Admin for personal use
NUPC ‘1998
Atoms that represent money,
ownership, … risk
NUPC ‘1998
New or old money… it’s just bits
Credit
ATM /
Prepaid
Check
Cash
Prepaid
NUPC ‘1998
Put those checks & statements in
Cyberspace or eliminate them!
NUPC ‘1998
Buying & selling stock: what a pain!
Faxes? Electronic signatures are legal in
Georgia.
NUPC ‘1998
Paperless transactions: put them all
in Cyberspace
NUPC ‘1998
Atoms vs Electrons for financial bits
Atoms (mass)
money
statements
bills / checks
coupons
Electrons, etc. (massless)
database, smart card,
credit card, debit card
web access
bill present. / check free
cyber-coupons
stock
database, web
statements, reports
web access, email
+company infor, analyst reports, etc.
private placements
web access, email
trade confirmation
direct trades
NUPC ‘1998
mail voting
on line voting
NUPC ‘1998
Going forward… challenges
Turing test...
Voice or Video Avatar
any conversation
Everything will be in Cyberspace
Electrons, etc. replace atoms for
“money”, “ownership”… “risk”
Telepresence
The Guardian Angel for health
The Cyber Admin for personal use
NUPC ‘1998
Telepresence
… being there while being here,
at another time, and
with time scaling
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Telepresentations
Telemeetings
The “work”
NUPC ‘1998
NUPC ‘1998
Motivation:
Telepresentations
• Presenter and/or
audience
telepresent
NOT: meeting or
collaboration settings
Forget the nasty social
issues!
Mostly one-way
NUPC ‘1998
Telepresentation
Elements
 Slides
 Audio
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Video
Script,
text
comments,
hyperlinks,
etc.
NUPC ‘1998
Telepresentations:
The Essentials
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Slide and audio a must
Add some video
(low quality)
to make us feel good
Storage and transmission
costs low
NUPC ‘1998
Telepresentations:
The Killer App
Increased attendance & lower
travel costs
 Practical and low-cost NOW
 e.g. ACM97 - 2,000 visitors in real
space, 20,000 visitors on Internet

http://research.microsoft.com/acm97
NUPC ‘1998
Today’s
Experiment
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Would you like to pause, rewind, browse?
Do you wish you could have seen this
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–
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At home?
At another time?
How much does a present speaker add?
How much would you pay for real
presence?
NUPC ‘1998
Telework: It takes screens,
sound, and bandwidth, stupid
NUPC ‘1998
http://research.microsoft.com/barc/GBell/
Telepresence
hold a meeting of type, m
university or technical course
interview, staff meeting, co-ordination, board
meeting, annual meeting, “town hall”,
with p, distributed persons
with as much interactivity and feeling
such that people prefer being telepresent
meetings are provably more productive
meetings will evolve to be asynchronous
NUPC ‘1998
versus traditional synchronous
Conference Rooms with
Teleconferencing
NUPC ‘1998
NUPC ‘1998
Mobile
videophone
NUPC ‘1998
Honda
Robot
NUPC ‘1998
People
surrogates
NUPC ‘1998
Telework: It takes screens,
sound, and bandwidth, stupid
NUPC ‘1998
http://research.microsoft.com/barc/GBell/
“
By April 1, 2001
videophones will ship
in 50% of the PCs
and be in use.
”
Gordon Bell vs Jim Gray
1996 (one paper,
loser gets fed)
NUPC ‘1998
Living in Cyberspace
NUPC ‘1998
Intrastructure
NUPC ‘1998
SOHO (small office, home office)
network computing environment
POTS
(legacy services)
IP Dial tone (Internet, phone,
videophone) >1.5 Mbps
NT Server for:
comm/network, POTS/IP
gateway, file, print, compute
LAN
PC
Phone
...
PC
Phone
...
NC*
Phone
*NC, NetPC,
Xterm,
etc.
NUPC
‘1998
Not shown:
ECG; GPS;
Compass;
altimeter
PCS; Pilot
Libretto,
.5mm
pencil
Libretto PS,
Ricoh Camera;
Swiss Army
NUPC
‘1998
Knife
Problems of living & working in
Cyberspace: socio vs technical
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Isolation & loneliness
– need for communication/stimulation
– chance meetings -- serendipity of ideas
– loss of group/teamwork skills
– danger of becoming “terminal”
interruptions & focus
lack of support staff to help, answer ?s
supervision and ability to have 1:1
unclear that many people want it…
they simply need the contact with
people
NUPC ‘1998
A People Model:
Who wants to be in Cyberspace?
Spock
Analyticals.. Drivers…
being right, results orient.
detailed
formal
broadcast
(in writing)
email
- push
megaloanal
maniacs
retentives
Self-control
Amiables… Expressives...
informal
consensus want
recognition,
(verbal)
builders
need contact
--------------chat---------------spineless
Sally Field
psychotics
wimps
Souter
Evangelism
Managing
Interpersonal
Relationships
(MIR)
2D Model
NUPC ‘1998
Swaggert
Going forward… challenges
Turing test...
Voice or Video Avatar
any conversation
Everything will be in Cyberspace
Electrons, etc. replace atoms for
“money”, “ownership”… “risk”
Telepresence
The Guardian Angel for health
The Cyber Admin for personal use
NUPC ‘1998
The Guardian Angel
NUPC ‘1998
Steve Mann
in
Cyberspace
NUPC ‘1998
Medtronics
Implanted
Cardioplastic
NUPC ‘1998
Audio, pix, T, P, ECG,
location, physiological
parameters…
1 GB
NUPC ‘1998
Going forward… challenges
Turing test...
Voice or Video Avatar
any conversation
Everything will be in Cyberspace
Electrons, etc. replace atoms for
“money”, “ownership”… “risk”
Telepresence
The Guardian Angel for health
The Cyber Admin for personal use
NUPC ‘1998
The Cyber Admin or
the prosthetic memory…
When we can store
everything we’ve:
read/written,
heard/said,
seen/acted, plus
physical parameters.
NUPC ‘1998
What does Cyber Admin do?
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Captures the creation of all
personal/professional information
Stores and organizes
Retrieval is the challenge
–
–

recalling readings, conversations,
presentations, images
help in being the “guardian angel”
What are the apps when we can do
this?
NUPC ‘1998
There will always be plenty of things to
compute ... With millions of people doing
complicated things.
memex … stores all one’s books, records,
and communications, and ... can be
consulted with speed and flexibility
Matchbook sized, $.05 encyclopedia
Speech to text
Head mounted camera, dry photography
Vannevar Bush c1945
NUPC ‘1998
NUPC ‘1998
Storing all we’ve read, heard, & seen
Human data-types
read text, few pictures
/hr
200 K
/day (/4yr)
2 -10 M/G
/lifetime
60-300 G
speech text @120wpm
speech @1KBps
43 K
3.6 M
0.5 M/G
40 M/G
15 G
1.2 T
video-like 50Kb/s POTS
video 200Kb/s VHS-lite
22 M
90 M
.25 G/T
1 G/T
25 T
100 T
video 4.3Mb/s HDTV/DVD 1.8 G
20 G/T
1P
NUPC ‘1998
Sizes of various information stores
that an individual might need
Gigabyte
1,000,000,000
10,000,000,000
300,000,000,000
Terabyte
1,000,000,000,000
25,000,000,000,000
100,000,000,000,000
Petabyte1,000,000,000,000,000
100-3,000 books
disk, 4 years of read text
lifetime of read text
lifetime of coded speech
lifetime of video, low Q
lifetime of video @.1Mbps
lifetime of hi-Q video
NUPC ‘1998
10X in 40 years
(6% per year)
NUPC ‘1998
Library Volume Growth
10X in 150 years
NUPC ‘1998
Now how do you find or
use the rich information
Need the system to:
locate, retrieve, visualize, order,
up load the corporation’s IP assets
(text, proposals, images, videos,
presentations, etc.) …
with appropriate controls.
NUPC ‘1998
SmartMedia
Technologies
Context
Image Recognition for Objects
Relevance
Speech Recognition
Image Recognition, Lexical Cues
Transcripts
Close Caption
Lexical Analysis
Viewing
Color
Previews - Power Point, PDF,
B&W
Brightness Video, Sound, Artwork
Contrast
Volume
Speech-Music
Meta Information
NUPC ‘1998
Virage Video Cataloger
NUPC ‘1998
Sizes of various information stores
Gigabyte
1,000,000,000 shelf of scanned paper,
large book stack
10,000,000,000 movie, large disk
200,000,000,000 2 floor library, videotape
Terabyte
1,000,000,000,000 million volume library
20,000,000,000,000 Lib of Congress, disk array
Petabyte1,000,000,000,000,000 a national library
15,000,000,000,000,00 disk production 1995
NUPC ‘1998
Library of Congress bits...
Scanned LC
assumes 6B pages
13M photos
4M maps
500K movies
3.5M recordings
1PB
13TB
200TB
500TB
2,000TB
5 Bpeople or 2 GB per person
NUPC ‘1998
Publicly generated bits per year
Cinema
5K
Images (all)
52G
Broadcast (station)1500
Recordings
100K
Telephone (min.)
500G
Videotapes
200 TB
520 PB
200/10 PB
60 TB
400 PB
NUPC ‘1998
The end
NUPC ‘1998