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The 100x Factor: A New Generation of
Microprocessors Challenges Content Providers |
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26 June 2006 |
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After chugging along with decades worth of PCs that never
seem to get appreciably faster in relation to our content
needs, hope is on the way. IBM's new experimental computer
chips promise a 100x improvement in processor performance,
with its availability to everyday users likely in years
rather than decades. For those who had hoped for an
evolutionary progression of publishing into the electronic
realm, forgive me for being the bearer of bad news - the
revolution will be at your fingertips even sooner than
expected. |
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When I fired up my first
Windows-powered PC in 1992, I waited patiently as it chugged
through its startup routine, a process of several minutes once
I'd loaded on a good amount of software. Today, with more than
twenty times the processing power of that then-"hot" machine, I
power on my Windows PC and...I wait several minutes for all of
the software to load. Technology has advanced in computing, but
only as much as it has been necessary to maintain a certain
status quo. Thus the changes to the content industry tied to
electronic delivery, as radical as they have been over this
period of technological innovation, have been throttled to some
degree by machines that are tied to software and hardware
providers that are trying to give their products a reasonable
shelf life.
But this careful balance might be upset if innovations at
IBM come to
light any time soon. As noted in
The New York Times IBM has come up with a
microprocessor that will operate at speeds of 500 gigahertz
when chilled to a super-cooled state. At room temperature, it
plods along at a mere 350 gigahertz - about 100 times faster
than today's typical high-end PC or corporate server. While
commercial production based on this new design is a ways off,
Bernard Meyerson, vice president and chief technologist in
I.B.M.'s systems and technology group, noted in the article
that technologies in this advanced state typically take about
12 to 24 months to make their way into production. Assuming
that it would take another two or three years for these chips
to work their way into the consumer end of the market it will
be only about five years before we have personal computing
devices and infrastructure that are 100 times more powerful than
those we have today. That would be five times more advance in
processing power in a few years than my PCs have experienced
over fifteen years.
In a world in which "10x" improvements in productivity are
likely to bring huge accolades and profits 100x improvements in
processing efficiency in the hands of individuals and
institutions equipped with these powerful technologies are
likely to have a profound effect on publishing as we know it
today. It means, first and foremost, that tomorrow's wired and
wireless users will be able to afford technology that can allow
them to jump easily into competition with many mainstream
publishers on a scale never achieved before. Their ability to
fill the Web with their own content and content of their own
selection from other sources will far outstrip even today's
rowdy environment of technology-empowered users feeling their
oats. Here are some key factors to bear in mind as computing
power begins to accelerate the growth of user publishing beyond
previous bounds:
- The central database meets its match. While the
processing power provided by databases in major data
centers will always be an important element in publishing, a
radical increase in processing power at the user level
combined with immense storage capabilities will accelerate
the ability of users to find and aggregate more valuable
content in personalized contexts closer to its ultimate
consumers. Instead of having to rely on central services to
determine content relevance at a generic level it will become
far easier for networks of individuals and institutions to
collaborate directly to determine relevance in ways that take
their own knowledge bases and publishing into account much
more cost-effectively. This will not mean the death of
central search services such as Google but it will mean that
networks of individuals with their own high-power search
appliances built into their desktops will be able to become
active members of both public and private search and sharing
"grids" that can help them solve problems far more
efficiently than with central services that must respond to
more generic needs.
- The focus of marketing shifts. 100x processing
power may not spell the end of advertising as we know it, but
the intimacy with audiences that marketers crave is likely to
take new turns that will accelerate where and how money is
spent to persuade today's buyers. Already major corporate
advertisers such as GM are
beginning to recognize that being in on user-initiated
online conversations is a crucial key to being able to
communicate marketing messages effectively. The facilitation
of user-enabled conversations and knowledge forming through
increased processing power and immense local storage systems
is likely to accelerate the need for marketers to come up
with strategies that embed them in those conversations
effectively. Marketing communications will become much more
personalized - and more focused on content of all kinds, with
our without origins from copyrighted sources, that can gain
context in those settings.
- Value-add services go real-time. Web services that
enable content to take on life with advanced functionality
are today largely relegated to portal services that pull up
information from central databases: they are little-used
outside of relatively specialized publishing applications and
a handful of "mashups". But an enormous increase in
processing power opens up the need for Web services to be
deployed closer to users who have their own personal portal
environments forming on their desktops and in their portable
devices. Large-scale destination sites will continue to
thrive in this environment but the enormous power of
distributed computing will place a far greater emphasis on
bringing content-enabled Web services to users' desktops for
their personal use. The era of the true "content concierge"
that anticipates our interests and serves up valuable content
and new services is coming soon.
The transformations seen through three decades of personal
computing technologies are profound, yet we forget that many of
these changes have happened at a fairly slow pace - slow enough
to fill up these technologies' capabilities fairly comfortably.
The changes that we can expect from omnipresent supercomputing
are going to be multifold and oftentimes unanticipated but the
final sledgehammer against the wall separating traditional
media operations from personal and institutional publishers is
looming clearly through its power. For publishers hoping to be
able to evolve a smooth transition to online revenues, beware -
the road is going to become far more revolutionary than we can
begin to imagine.
-
John Blossom
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