Analysis & Commentary:

FUTURIST CALLS FOR OPEN MINDS

As reported by Stephen Lawson, Java developers should keep an open mind about where technology is headed, advised Paul Saffo, director of the Institute for the Future, at the JavaOne conference last week.

Applications of mobile data technology being shown at JavaOne are on the leading edge of an age of personal, interactive media, Saffo told a large audience of developers in a keynote address at the weeklong conference.

Whereas computer time-sharing technology spawned e-mail as its "media expression" and the client-server system model was expressed in the Web, the latest key technology -- peer-to-peer computing -- has yet to find its best expression, Saffo said. That creates an opportunity for Java developers, he added.

"I don't think we've seen the media expression of peer-to-peer yet, but I do believe that where it's going to come (from is) out of something in this hall, and perhaps someone in this room will show us what the real potential of this stuff is," Saffo said.

The Information Age, characterized by scarce information that users accessed through certain interfaces such as the television screen, is giving way to a Media Age in which information is ubiquitous and personalized, Saffo said. Meanwhile, services being offered to people increasingly will depend on communication between machines.

Still, pointing to past predictions that didn't come true, he advised developers not to get tunnel vision toward any particular set of goals. Whereas the 1980s promise of interactive television hasn't become a reality, the Web, then considered decades away, has proliferated, he said.

"Even the most anticipated of futures tends to arrive late and in completely unexpected ways. ... The trick here is to keep a large perspective of what's going on so you don't miss something important," he added.

To illustrate the importance of machine-to-machine communication and ubiquitous, personalized information, Saffo suggested two future applications.

NanoBlocks, developed by Alien Technology Corp, in Morgan Hill, California, are tiny integrated circuits that can be assembled into materials such as glass and flexible plastic. They could be used in place of bar codes, holding far more information and using radio frequencies to communicate with machines that need to collect information, he said. Examples might include luggage tags and milk cartons.

"It's a radical shift toward machines talking to machines, everywhere, on our behalf," Saffo said.

A second example, two-way telemetry technology now built into some automobiles, may lead to a valuable set of services for drivers, he said. In addition to navigation systems and the ability of an auto maker to monitor a car's condition, telemetry could allow information providers and advertisers to communicate continuously with drivers and sell products and services.

"We will no longer buy cars. We will subscribe to cars," Saffo said. Some car makers may even give away cars in order to establish customer relationships with drivers, he added.

During a panel discussion following the keynote, Saffo also advised developers to become "policy wonks" and try to influence government as the entertainment industry has done. He pointed to the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the U.S., which restricted some uses of IT with entertainment products, as a coup by an industry much smaller than the IT business.

"The DMCA was a disaster for this industry (forced) on us by Hollywood," Saffo said.

The Institute for the Future, in Menlo Park, California, carries out research, consulting and conferences on future developments in business, public policy and technology.