Soon to be departed technologies.
Earlier this week, people in Mexico and the US recognized Dia De Muertos (Day of the Dead), a holiday which recognizes friends and loved ones which have recently departed.
So this week we have decided to recognize some technologies which have recently or will soon be leaving the technology mainstream. Unlike other recent lists, this was fairly easy to construct and there was limited, if occasionally spirited (no pun intended), debate about its order.
AdvertisementSome technologies didn't make it onto the list. Dial-up connections were squeezed out because they are still used by the majority of the world to access the internet, and are still a last ditch method for those of us in the West.
Similarly dot-matrix printing also didn't make it on here, because it is still widely used in certain key vertical markets. My garage still uses dot-matrix printers because the printing head will punch through three layers of paper at a time and they don't mind the noise as it's drowned out by the lathe and buffing machines, and Randy's tuneless singing.
Still, with so many technologies falling by the wayside, we almost certainly overlooked a few so feel free to contribute additions in the comment section.
Honourable mention: Power Cables
Iain Thomson: Shaun was a little sceptical about this one but I think the power cable is going the way of the dinosaurs thanks to growing interest in wireless power.
Palm Pre owners will already be familiar with the concept of wireless power. The Pre sits on a power block and recharges wirelessly with no need for a dedicated power supply. It’s a great little system in a lot of ways.
And who would really mourn the lack of power cables? Most computer users who go on the road have suffered from forgetting to pack power cables at the last minute and had to either buy a replacement or get the unit shipped to their destination. In the last year I’ve had to buy a power cable for an iPod (£10) and have a laptop power brick shipped to me ($100 in customs and shipping charges).
There are problems with wireless power however. It’s not terribly efficient for a start, but manufacturers are recognising it’s the wave of the future and are devising common standards for so that the power brick could be a thing of the past.
Shaun Nichols: I'm still not completely sold on this one, but there is no doubting that cordless power systems are emerging in a big way, and for certain areas the switch can't come soon enough.
Just about anyone who has ever owned a notebook computer can tell stories about people or pets walking past and tripping over a power cord, often with disastrous consequences.
There's also the convenience factor. Who hasn't had to wander around an office or public building searching for an outlet with which to recharge your phone? Wireless power systems can go a long way to relieving the pains of having to charge up electronic devices.
Honourable Mention: Disk-based storage
Shaun Nichols: One of the most popular new technologies in recent years has been the solid-state hard drive (SSD.) Once only offered in the highest of high-end computers and servers, the SSD is increasingly making its way into everyday consumer PCs and enterprise workstations.
SSDs have a number of advantages over disk-based storage. For starters, Flash memory is much faster, cutting down on startup and seek times. Additionally, SSDs are becoming as reliable as the conventional drives. As a result, the market for the old platter-based hard drive is shrinking.
That doesn't mean that disk-based drives will disappear entirely. Despite falling prices, Flash memory is still far more expensive than platter storage. For large-scale storage systems, the conventional hard drive has a stable future.
Iain Thomson: Hmm, I'm sceptical on this one. Disk storage has one major advantage over Flash – what gets written stays written, barring proximity to a major magnet. Call me a curmudgeon but I don't trust Flash for long term safe storage.
Nevertheless it can't be denied that the SSD is the wave of the future. The advantages in speed and power savings are hard to argue with, certainly on desktop and laptop computers. I don't think datacentres are going to buy into Flash in a big way any time soon – the cost would be prohibitive – but storage manufacturers are already bringing out Flash/disk hybrids for use in servers.
But the disk system will survive for the foreseeable future in my opinion, because it provides data security, sometimes a little too much. I got into a conversation with a UK computer police expert about the safest way to wipe data from a disk drive and she said that the technology for retrieving data had now got to the point that the only way to be sure your data was irretreivable was to use a sledgehammer, petrol and matches.
10. The operating system
Shaun Nichols: No, the OS isn't exactly disappearing any time soon, but it is becoming less relevant by the day. As web-based applications become more popular, the locally-stored operating system is becoming less of a factor.
AdvertisementThis is also making the OS a much weaker selling point for new systems. While consumers used to be bound to one operating system or another because of the need to run specific applications, web apps are increasingly making that a moot point, much to the delight of the Mac and Linux crowds.
A shining example of this was the release of Windows 7. While Microsoft as much money and effort into hyping Windows 7 as any other version of the OS, the response from the general public wasn't too much out of the ordinary.
Iain Thomson: Oddly enough this was the most argued point in the entire list. Shaun makes a good case, but I still maintain that the operating system will be around as long as there are computers.
That said, Shaun does have a point in that the operating system is becoming less and less important. What I hope we'll see is a plethora of operating systems for individual devices and computers. Yes, this won't be great for developers but it will put a considerable roadblock in the way of malware writers.
However, if certain common standards can be worked out developers won't be too hampered too much and we'll get a bit more security in the IT world. Unfortunately I suspect malware writers will adapt. Those gits are like the flu virus, they just evolve and make life even more of a pain for all of us.
9. Landlines
Iain Thomson: Landlines are in many ways a 20th century hangover. Go to any developing nation and suggest they lay down copper cable all over their countries for phone or internet services and they’ll look at you like you’re mad.
Wireless technology has the potential to reach a wider pool of people for less cost and with greater efficiency than landlines will ever be able to do. Yes, dedicated fibre links are very useful for high bandwidth needs but Wi-Fi, and increasingly WiMax, will remove the need for landline altogether for 90 per cent of the population.
Data cabling was a necessity in the early days of computing and is still required for most broadband connections today. When the move to mass home broadband in the West came it was natural to use the existing copper infrastructure as the conduit.
But technologies such as WiMax are rapidly making the need for dedicated wired connections redundant and with any luck landlines will be seen as a quaint anachronism in the future.
Shaun Nichols: Like many people my age, I do not have a landline telephone connection in my apartment. In fact, aside from the cable lines running into the living room and a few power cords, my whole dwelling is almost completely cordless.
It's not too crazy to suggest that the landline will completely disappear in the coming decades. And conventional cable might not be too far behind, with fibre-optic lines and wireless systems increasingly finding their way into the greater consumer market.
One question which may arise, however, is that of interference. The 802.11n standard is built to automatically reduce its spectrum use when other wireless devices are detected, and as more and more people switch over, similar systems may have to be developed to prevent the vast array of wireless devices out there from interfering with one another.
. The portable media player
Shaun Nichols: Oh MP3 player, we hardly knew thee. After less than a decade in the market, it seems that the portable media player as we know it is beginning to fade from general public consciousness.
It's not because the products didn't have a market, or didn't develop, or were just a fad. The problem for the dedicated media player is that it is being pushed out of the market by the smartphone. As handsets become more powerful and Flash memory becomes cheaper, more and more people are choosing to load their music onto their phones and leaving their portable players at home.
AdvertisementThe most interesting example of this is Apple. While the iPhone has been wildly successful, the iPod remains a huge cash cow for the company. The increasing sales for the smartphone have to be a little bitter-sweet for the company, as each new iPhone sold increasingly suggests that an iPod will go unsold as a result.
Iain Thomson: Apple really made the media player industry. I used media players from the start and they were uniformly awful. Lousy menu systems, clunky sync software and stunningly poor design were the norm. Creative even brought out a 6GB media player that was the size of a CD player, was considerably heavier and had the battery life equivalent to a snowflake in a blast furnace.
It was the iPod that changed all that. As an avowed Apple sceptic I held off on getting one for a long time but I have to say it's my second most used bit of kit, after my laptop. It was easy enough for anyone to understand, looked fantastic and the initial few versions of iTunes were a joy to use - although that application went downhill like the Nepalise bobsleigh team.
But now Flash memory is so cheap that increasingly phones are the new media players. The first attempts, like the Motorola RokR, were dire but things have come on apace and the dedicated media player will die out over time.
7. Tape storage
Iain Thomson: It’s remarkable that tape has lasted as long as it has. The only reason that I can see is that it is very cheap.
Other than that tape has few real advantages. It is slow to write and retrieve when it comes to data, particularly when you take into account the time needed to physically shift over tapes from storage to the reader and back again. It’s also relatively flimsy, as anyone from the age of the video or cassette knows only too well.
Tape is a relic from an earlier age when we had to make do with the technology that was available. This is no longer the case and tape should be consigned to the dustbin of history as soon as possible.
Shaun Nichols: Unlike most other areas of the technology world, the storage market doesn't progress at a break-neck speed which makes the latest and greatest innovations completely obsolete in less than ten years.
In almost every way, a computer from the early 1980s bears little to no resemblance to modern systems and the technology it uses would be more or less useless today. There is one exception, however. The magnetic tape drives used for storage three decades ago are still in use today, though in far larger capacities.
Tape storage hits a sweet spot of sorts with the storage market. It is cheap and is well-established. This makes it ideal for use in very large capacity backup purposes. Until platter-based storage becomes equally cheap and dense, I suspect that tape storage will continue to have a market in the enterprise space.
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