A bogus view of the future
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I recently saw a video that was prepared by Microsoft’s business team to give their partners a look at what the next 10-15 years will hold for businesses and consumers. It struck me as odd that their vision of the future involves everyone giving up on their regular computers and switching over to using computers built into walls, built into glass wall separators, and in translucent pads that all seem to lack keyboards.
The future of computing seems enormously troublesome and uncomfortable.
In addition to these new and awkward computing interfaces, there seems to be advertising built into everything, as though we will want to walk around town with our translucent computing pads, see an advertisement, and then suddenly feel the need to know more about the product on display.
Microsoft’s vision for the future seems to depend on people being massive consumers, constantly on the lookout for new products that we may want to buy. The ads seem less like a plausible vision of the future and more like they let a group of advertising executives and visual effects people have a big budget and a camera to see what they could create without bothering to let reality get in their way.
A world full of wall sized computers and glass screens everywhere would be a complete disaster, can anyone imaging the mess you would have with massive touchscreen computers in every room in homes and businesses? Windex shares would shoot through the roof.
6 Comments
Scott Kindorf
March 10th, 2009
at 1:59am
I hate to disagree with you…oh, who am I kidding! I *must* disagree with you! I came from an era where those of us who actually worked on *real* computers wore white lab-coats and programmers had all of their code on punched-card decks. The vision Microsoft shows is as different from today’s computers as today’s computers were to the house-sized systems I worked on in 1979. To think that the vision of the future of computing that Microsoft presented is un-attainable or unrealistic illustrates a common problem these days: lack of *true* vision. Look where computing was a mere 15 years ago…and compare that with what we have today and what is coming down the pike in the next 5 years: the whole landscape of computing has changed, and it will continue to change.
D Lowrey
March 10th, 2009
at 3:57am
Let’s see…with many jobs never coming back and according to CNN…one in 50 Americans homeless…nice future based in 1998…not 2009. Even after we come out of this economic upheaval…where will the decent paying jobs or even the jobs going to be for the people to be these uber consumers?
As much as I watch Star Trek and Star Wars…I see the future more like Blade Runner and/or The Road Warrior than the former.
Snowball TiVo ~ Windows Fanatics
March 10th, 2009
at 4:49am
[...] Does Microsoft have a bogus view of the future? [...]
mikez333
March 10th, 2009
at 8:59am
microsoft is going to turn everything into a touch screen! now people without fingers can use computers. hurray. (sarcasm)
Cliffystones
March 12th, 2009
at 6:26am
When you described Microsoft’s vision, I was immediately reminded of the movie “Minority Report” with Tom Cruise. The computers would scan people as they walked by, determine their identity, and then deluge them with targeted advertising.
This kind of nonsense would never work with me. I’m one of those people who likes to be pretty much left alone when making purchasing decisions. I know full well that I’m in charge because it my money and it’s in my wallet. A car salesman’s worst nightmare.
zenium
March 12th, 2009
at 5:54pm
Actually I think much of this Microsoft advertised future as bogus. It seems that true to form Microsoft is again late to the table on what is truly innovative.
However that has never stopt the Microsoft machine from claiming they were first with the innovative vision.
In other words much of what is shown in the video has already been shown or demonstrated by others long before Microsoft put it into an advertisement video. Same old story from Microsoft; make people think they are a leader instead of a follower!