In Touch - Inserts

Interactive Entertainment
Technology is moving so fast that it is about to transform our lives in the place where it affects us most - at home. Appliances that we take for granted - the telephone, the TV, VCR, the computer and hi-fi - are about to disappear completely. They will converge into new, more intelligent devices that are going to revolutionise how we work, learn, and spend leisure time.

In a Philips dramatisation of the home of a future, a father sits in the living room with his son. They are watching a television programme, projected directly onto the wall. The man talks into a microphone that looks like a ballpoint pen, and calls up a friend for a videoconference. The friend's image also projected on to the same living room wall. They discuss the evening's social arrangements and hang up. The daughter comes into the room to nag the father about the garbage. So the father calls "kitchen" into the microphone, and his wife's image is projected onto the wall. They discuss the garbage and she tells him to get into the kitchen right away. Once he leaves, the daughter changes the TV channel using a touch pad, and the children continue watching.

The point of the dramatisation is that all the technology driving the appliances is invisible. There are no computers present, only the remotes that control the information and the wall-screens that display the information. The technology has become convergent, pervasive, user-friendly and invisible.

Greg's attire is rather strange in this insert - he's wearing a formal shirt, tie and jacket, but very informal boxer shorts. Finally Greg decides to explain his rather outlandish attire: "Video-conferencing. Take the telephone and the television, combine them, and you get video-conferencing - a communication medium which is re-writing the book on how people work. Already some companies in Silicon Valley, California, share one workstation between ten workers. Each worker only comes into the office every tenth day - the rest of the time he works from home or wherever he happens to be. This system uses video-conferencing and the ability to dial into the office network from a remote location.

"Think about what that means. Hierarchical management simply will not work. For example, my boss has no idea only the top half of me is in the right dress code. So how do you check up on a worker who is not 'at work'? The technology itself is creating a new way of working, with task-based teams, who don't even have to be in the same city."

In fact, it might even be an advantage if they are actually if different countries. Software will take care of language translation problems, exchange rates can be used to benefit the employer, and, best of all, with workers in different time zones the work continues around the clock. As one team member approaches the end of his day, he simply hands over to another member in a time zone where the sun is just rising.

The Philips dramatisation shows how this would work. Two people are collaborating on a clothing design. Sounds pretty normal, except the man is in America and the woman is in Italy. Using video-conferencing and interactive viewing documents, they "converse" (with software handling the translation), talking about aspects of the design while viewing the images together.

Some futurists predict that work itself is being transformed. This new way of working spells the end of a lifetime career followed by a pension and a gold watch. Instead, employers will create global teams that will exist only for as long as it takes to execute a specific objective, then the teams will disband. New teams will then re-form under new employers to work on other projects.
This new world will be the domain of the global knowledge worker, and the rewards will be high for those who are techno-literate, specialised, and in demand.

But will it create a new underclass? A low-tech caste of society, prevented from reaping the fruits of the digital age, because of their techno-illiteracy?

Take another example of convergence: the computer and TV both have screens, they both display information. So, why not have one screen do both? In the future, the tube-screen itself will disappear, replaced by flat-screen wall displays, or ceiling-mounted projectors. Surfing the web will move out of the study and into the family room. On the same display, you will be able to watch TV with fully immersive surround-sound, play interactive games at a level of realism never before experienced, video-conference, send e-mail, watch videos, and even do your homework.

In fact, the office network - where all the computers are connected to a central server using dataports - is about to move to the home. Each home will have its own local area network, or LAN, with a server in the basement, and permanent access to television, the Internet and e-mail.
The LAN will connect to dozens of devices in the home, making education, game playing, communication, and even visiting the doctor, interactive experiences, all without leaving the house. Even the video rental store may disappear, replaced by a server-farm, where viewers can access and pay for videos remotely, and view on demand.

Silicon Graphics recently made this a reality, by creating an interactive village of two thousand residents in Orlando, Florida. Residents could call up, view, and even scroll through videos via fibre-optic links to a remote server. They could play games against opponents in different houses, or even go shopping at the cyber-mall.

It does not stop at video - soon even broadcast television could become interactive. As more and more video information becomes available on the Internet, and as satellite systems like Teledesic, Iridium and Globalstar begin to beam broad-bandwidth Internet data out of the sky, traditional television broadcasting as we know it may disappear altogether.

The same technology is also transforming the way we educate our children. The Internet will become an indispensable tool for gathering and processing information for school projects, and in the classroom, multimedia displays linked to the school's central computers will make the learning experience far more efficient and entertaining.

Faith Popcorn, futurist writer and author of 'The Popcorn Report' and 'Clicking', has a name for this new, homebound lifestyle. She calls it 'cocooning', but as more and more digital citizens weave their cyber-cocoons, will the real world - and the real problems outside those four walls - become increasingly ignored? Only the future will tell.

CONTACTS:

Linda Primos
Products Manager
Silicon Graphics, South Africa
Ground Floor, Norwich Life Towers
13 Fredman Drive, Corner Bute Lane
Sandton
2146
South Africa
Phone: +27 11 884 4147
Fax: +27 11 884 5409
E-mail: lindap@johannesburg.sgi.com

Silicon Graphics Main website:
http://www.sgi.com

Silicon Graphics South Africa website:
http://www.sgi.co.za/