Futuríveis
sábado, setembro 10, 2005
Most people will never turn their homes into electronic control centres
...
Why not? Because convergence usually goes against the grain of human nature. A converged device is invariably complex, and people like simplicity. A converged device represents a single point of failure, and people like to know that they can still look at baby photos even if the TV breaks down.
The digital-home technorati boldly beg to differ. Their visions are predicated, yes, on specialised devices as “spokes” around the house, but also on all of these spokes connecting to one central “hub”. Their disagreements, which are passionate, are only about whose box and whose technology should constitute that hub, with Microsoft, Intel and computer makers pushing the PC, the telecoms and cable operators lobbying for their proprietary set-top boxes, and the consumer-electronics makers fighting for their consoles, TV sets or digital-video recorders. Collectively, they seem unbothered that the few instances of converged super-gadgets that already exist, such as the so-called “media-centre PC”, have been utter failures.
That intransigence is a pity because not all parts of their vision are ridiculous. Downloading entertainment (as opposed to buying it on physical discs) is convenient, and if consumers were confident that such “content” could play on any sort of device, they might do a lot more of it. But this is not the case, because each company is also aiming to recreate the sort of dominance that Microsoft achieved in the PC era by anointing its own technology as the universal standard, reducing other firms to royalty-paying serfs. Thus each is refusing to bring its own standards into harmony with those of rivals.
For consumers, this means economic risk (if they bet on a technology that goes extinct) or lots of fiddling with manuals full of gibberish. Admittedly, at least around Silicon Valley, there are people (mostly men) who quite like the sound of this. They, however, tend to live near, or even with, other Californians (mostly women) whose Feng Shui consultants are vehemently opposed to it. The Economist reckons the latter will gain the upper hand.
...
Digital living | The home of the future | Economist.com
Why not? Because convergence usually goes against the grain of human nature. A converged device is invariably complex, and people like simplicity. A converged device represents a single point of failure, and people like to know that they can still look at baby photos even if the TV breaks down.
The digital-home technorati boldly beg to differ. Their visions are predicated, yes, on specialised devices as “spokes” around the house, but also on all of these spokes connecting to one central “hub”. Their disagreements, which are passionate, are only about whose box and whose technology should constitute that hub, with Microsoft, Intel and computer makers pushing the PC, the telecoms and cable operators lobbying for their proprietary set-top boxes, and the consumer-electronics makers fighting for their consoles, TV sets or digital-video recorders. Collectively, they seem unbothered that the few instances of converged super-gadgets that already exist, such as the so-called “media-centre PC”, have been utter failures.
That intransigence is a pity because not all parts of their vision are ridiculous. Downloading entertainment (as opposed to buying it on physical discs) is convenient, and if consumers were confident that such “content” could play on any sort of device, they might do a lot more of it. But this is not the case, because each company is also aiming to recreate the sort of dominance that Microsoft achieved in the PC era by anointing its own technology as the universal standard, reducing other firms to royalty-paying serfs. Thus each is refusing to bring its own standards into harmony with those of rivals.
For consumers, this means economic risk (if they bet on a technology that goes extinct) or lots of fiddling with manuals full of gibberish. Admittedly, at least around Silicon Valley, there are people (mostly men) who quite like the sound of this. They, however, tend to live near, or even with, other Californians (mostly women) whose Feng Shui consultants are vehemently opposed to it. The Economist reckons the latter will gain the upper hand.
...
Digital living | The home of the future | Economist.com
posted by CMT, 11:51 da manhã
