Liberty and Safty

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary 
Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
                                                        Benjamin Franklin

Privacy and Internet

The biggest casualty of terror I see is the privacy. Governments across the globe are embarrassing themselves with privacy invading laws. And people are are somehow OK with it.

With that companies too are finding ways to creep into your browsers, hiding behind cool features. And we are unknowingly letting them know so much about us. Needless to name, you-know-who is leading the pack. We don't realize but the browsing habits can reveal so much about out personality, our habits and our needs. Think about it, if you are selling a brand of gadget. Won't you be ready to shell out good money just to know, if people are searching more for your brand or your rivals ones. That, in which area, which time of year, and so on. The one you buy this information from captured from it for free.

Now whatever you do, people are so scarred these days, they don't mind being watched. Now you can fight for your and their privacy. Or. Be the evil lord and make use their fear. I would recommend later. Cause, if you don't someone else. So its better be someone lesser evil.

The time is ripe for hitting the market with such products. Trust is all time low. Lower than Mr. Bush's popularity ever was. This is best time to sell surveillance products. Both hardware and software. In coming years, it will only get easier to sell software that will capture data directly where is generates. Without human interventions. Managers don't trust their employees anymore. They want the information right out of the your machine. You don't have to fill time sheets anymore. Won't you would be fudging it anyway. Because you don't trust you employer with honest reporting.

Internet and Browser

We can't imagine the world without Internet anymore. It's into our life so deep and even those who would vow against computers unknowingly are so dependent on it. Superstores, ATMs, reservations, where not?

Browsers has been the way we access it. Start with text only like Lynx. Then came Mozilla and IE. And with that started something new. Standards. We started talking about standards. Open standards, to be more specific. Standards are like Law. You are supposed to follow them but if you want to get faster, richer, better than other then you have to bend few and break some. That's what IE did too. And now chrome doing the same. Trying to optimize the browsers in favor of particular format for the content. But that's another debate.

So the content is what makes the Internet. And the content is getting richer by the day. It can be so because the bandwidth is increasingly getting cheaper. We start with text, then images, then videos and now we are already talking about real time streaming HD quality. So will the browsers remain relevant in next decade? I certainly don't think so. We are probably seeing the end of them. In two more years, as enter next decade, they will become much incapable to cope up with the amount of content and the processing required to present it.

How we will be browsing net in next decade?

Before trying to envision that, lets quickly check the kind of data we be dealing with. HD quality video stream, 3 D worlds like SecondLife, IP TV, VoIP, Maps, Gaming, MMOs and MMORPGs. Today we have separate desktop application to deal with each of them. So, of course, a new platform has to come that can present this rich content. That platform needs to be hardware accelerated. That is, it need to take help of your graphics cards and you need to have a good one. Quality graphic cards might be luxury today but so were CD drives and sound cards once. Near future we can expect them so be standard part of motherboards.

Does this mean we will be browsing using sophisticated browser?

Again, we will have to glance back to predict this. With the internet and dot com boom of late 90s a variety of browsers became available. Many couldn't sustain or perform with time and hence, gone obsolete. History will repeat itself. We will have variety of paltforms for rich content delivery. Few will win.

What about standards?

Well, we will gradually start writing standards too but then who will follow them? I will be equivolcal here though. Because we do need standards. And the way it will work in reality will be that there will be some standard and everyone will be deviating away from it. But the deviation will be much controlled and lesser copared to abscence of standards. You can say the variance will be much lesser and that will be a good thing.

Who will be causality?

Browsers shall be first. Then, the technologies that can not support rich contents like XML. Yes, I don't see the future of XML in content delivery. Doesn't mean XML will die. XML will remain and hopefully be used only were its really needed. Next will be the companies, the sites and the platforms which won't support rich contents. Google is slowly moving that direction already. Microsoft made a head start ( we are already seeing early prototypes of photosynth, etc from them).

Conclusion

Changing times ahead. Once this economic depression is over and the IT industry is weeded out of non-IT thinking brains ( there was a time when everybody thought they could code). And with that IT industry will probably come of age. Internet would have penetrated much deeper in out lives. The way we look at computers and internet will change. Because the way computer and internet look will also change. With all this technological biggest casuality will be PRIVACY!!

Next is what?

Lets start a new series. New year. New chain of thoughts. Lets try and think and innovate. Lets glance back and gauge where we stand today. And from this lets try to extrapolate tomorrow. It'll be fun. Let me know if you had any premonitions :)

Happy New Year

Wish you a very safe, peaceful and joyous New Year 2009.

The definition for "Happy" changes each year. And I believe this year Happy means being safe. And being at peace - with self, with others, with mother nature and with God. These are difficult times and might it be getting darker ahead. But I wish you sleep peacefully - not having to worry about you job, your mortgage, and your family's future.

So wish you again a "Happy" New Year. We will be discussing more stuff. More of innovation and less of my dose of philosophy :)

I have been away for a while as I was busy welcoming new addition to our family. We were blessed with an angel last September the 1st, 2008.

Hope to be back and regular here again.