Computers Should Make Stuff Better.

It is clear that we are still at the beginning of the computer revolution. Consumer electronics are very frustrating, Automobiles startingly primitive, home automation doesn't automate a lot of things. This is going to be about how things should be. There are a couple of assumptions that underlie this blog:

• computers are, or soon will be, very, very cheap.
  
• they will talk to each other via networking, which will be standard and very, very cheap.
  
• To be useful, sensors are going to be cheap, and computers are going to have lots of sensors.
  
• To be useful, computers are going to have controllers to affect things in the physical world, much like an engine control computer for an automobile is critical to having it run correctly today. computers will control things, in the broad sense, in the world we inhabit. To people in a lot of industries this is obviously true today already, but are invisible to people outside it: automotive engine control computers, elevators, washing machines, dish washers, refridgerators are all filled with microprocessors today. In the future, these isolated islands really should talk.
  
• telephony, cable, TV, media, broadcasting... they are all in for massive changes, because we do not really need them any more. ubiquitous, cheap, digital networks can transport whatever we want, without any need for broadcasts, which increasingly look like primitive thought control or propaganda methods. Telephony looks utterly archaic. Again, this is obvious to people in the business, but not so obvious to ordinary folks.
  

This stuff is obvious to me, at least, but others might think it is just nuts. I'm going to write about how stuff should be, based on extrapolation of these assumptions. You will be surprised how far these trends will take us.