Selling Wheels

For many of us, it is apparent that our life are closely tied to machines or technology.

The computer that emails, creates documents lets you browse the Web. The mobile phone that replaces your fixed line phone, SMS your friends and store appointments. The iPod (or music gadgets) that stores your files entertaining you for hours. Or the unknown, chip that powers or monitors your car’s performance.

This convergence between machines and human is here to stay; connecting both is the generic term called technology.

Technology helps people be more efficient.

Computers have been commoditize for the last 10 years. Price for a computer have fallen and is stabilizing over the next few years. Intel chips have hit a performance block after years of ‘performance leap’.

Over the next few years, we will see little change that will ‘WOW’ us about the improvement a computer has. It has been commiditize. It is a ‘matured adult’ now.

What will change, and there are lots of rooms to change is the software part of the computer. While computing chips have grown smaller and more powerful, software have grown the other way. Software has become more bloated.

And as IT literacy increases, more and more will be able to read computer codes.
From excel programming, php for the web to more advanced stuffs like reading C language. More and more people are going to be able to speak ‘computer language’.

How will software evolved? I see, in 10 years time the following:

1. More compact
Software is going to be small and compact. We are going to use more gadgets. Are we going to carry around big machines in the future? Unlikely. Maybe a small embedded chip that is capable to replace our current notebooks embedded into my sunglasses with a 54″ TV view. Software will work in the kilobytes range.

Or the settop box, that receives a broadcast stream from the network. The stream can be a program, a data for a game, for a music file, anything digital.

2. More readable
As the software industry matures, the language that creates the programs will become more readable. Why? More developers speaks the computing language. In the long run, ‘dialects’ for business domain will work just fine in a programming environment.

No longer, do developers have to go through a process to translate business domain knowledge to programming environment.

Software becomes easier to develope as machines and human are communicating in the same context.

In summary, hardware like computers will be commiditize. We will not see dramatic improvements that ‘WOW’ us in the 80s-90s. Computers as we know today, will be like automobiles. The engines hardly changes a lot.

Software on the other hand will undergoes a new transformation. As more people are able to develope programs, we will reach a stage where machines and humans converge. Where the line between a program and data gets blurred as it is sent over the NET to a device like a mobile phone, a settop box or an embedded chip in my glasses.

Software will be more compact, smaller in sizes…kilobytes at most. Software will be more readable as machines and human coverge…’dialects’ will form the basis of interactions. Software may be data as it passes through medium on the NET and only act as a program when it reaches the devices.