Hartford Courant du lieu suivant : Hartford, Connecticut • Page 52

E4 THE HAITKXO COUIANT: TWvJoy, Apr! 17, 1997 a THIRD ANNIVERSARY ISSUE From dawn until nightfall, computers guide you through the day JE Li Continued from Page El customized to your particular interests, so you don't have to flip through those sections you never cared about. But for now, while your hands are busy fixing breakfast, the television news works best so you ftick on the flat-panel video display on the wall. DVD: A WARNING It might be a bluff, but still an ominous sign in the early stages "of DVD: Warner Home Video says it will stOD producing office. But this morning, you've got time to review your e-mail and the overnight sales figures from Asia before the 10 a.m. video conference.

While you slept, software programs called "agents" scanned the global computer network for news about your company and its competitors. By now, this information has been packaged into a single built into the steering wheel. Voice-recognition software takes the notes, converts them to text and sends them via a wireless link to your personal storage space. Every so often, you glance at the map projected faintly onto your windshield so you don't lose your way on this unfamiliar detour. Just to make sure, the car whispers directions whenever a turn is coming up.

Despite the traffic problem, you arrive just minutes later than your usual time. Better still, because you've done so much work at home and in the car, you arrive to a clean desk ready to face the rest of the work day. Hours later, you head home. No need to work now, so music selected especially to match your tastes plays softly inside the car. You've never heard this particular band before, ery you programmed last spring is still properly set.

"I saw that," your mother says, referring to your quick look-away. "I'm not talking about the gift. I'm talking about a call." "You got it, Mom. Call you both tomorrow," you say. When the conversation ends, you tell your computer, "Remind me to call my Dad tomorrow at 5 p.m." The computer enters a note in your master calendar.

Suddenly, it's time for the video conference. In moments, your home office is linked over the global network with other members of your project team living in Seattle, Madrid and Tokyo. A highly secure system of cryptography makes sure no one eavesdrops on this important strategy session. When the meeting is over, it's time to head to the office. You hop into your car and mention your destination.

The vehicle, which is linked Here, too, the news is customized for you and condensed to whatever time you have available. So you get a quick report on the top business news and sports. local economy is booming, and the National Hockey League is begging to come back to Hartford. Hmmm You get through breakfast OK but run out of eggs, milk and cheese. A quick swipe of the empty packages over the bar-code scanner in the countertop adds the items to your electronic shopping list.

The supermarket will deliver the fresh groceries later in the day, automatically discounting the price based on coupons found on the Internet. Next, you grab your newspaper printout and head down the hall for the home office. Your desktop computer, equipped with a video camera, recognizes you as you enter the room. It greets you in a pleasant voice, instantly turns on the appropii ate lighting and displays your daily schedule on the massive monitor. You notice there's a meeting scheduled this afternoon in the "meatspace" of your company Silicon chips will be omnipresent Michael Dertouzos has seen the future, and it is made of silicon.

In just a few years, we will be surrounded by computer chips that help us to manage our memory and our environment, said Dertouzos, director of the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science. "You will not think of these things as gigabytes of data. You'll just think of them as appliances, as utilities, as things that are going to help you with what you're doing," he said. Dertouzos said the computer chips of the future will be like the motors of today quietly doing work everywhere but rarely noticed. An average home, for example, currently has as many as 200 motors somewhere inside.

They're in the refrigerator, the washer and dryer, the ar, the stereo, and the children's toys. Wo one gives them a second thought. And that, said Dertouzos, is the mark of a mature technology. It is one that has begun to fade into the background, a tool rather than an end in itself. Dertouzos, who has recently published a new book called "What Will Be: How the New World of Information Will Change Our Lives," divides computers of the future into two categories.

One category will be "person-cen- i'MX with regional traffic lookouts, alerts you to a traffic jam. "Hope it's not another -accident caused by buggy auto-navigation software," you think. "Good thing I upgraded this car to version 2.1 Your car recommends an alternate route around the traffic jam. From bitter experience, you know enough not to override the suggestion. As you buzz into work, you dictate a letter and make notes to yourself by speaking into a small microphone Function will dictate The computer of the future won't look a thing like a computer.

So says Ted Selker, manag er of the ergonomics research department at IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose. Selker is best known for his invention of the "Track Point" mouse, that little red eraser like nub in the middle of IBM ThinkPad laptops. But his research covers wide ground, including dreams of tomorrow's computers. One of the most important things to keep in mind when contemplating future PCs is to realize the speed at which these devices are growing in power and shrinking in size. Today, the bulky size of monitors, systems units, speakers, modems, hard drives and other components means we have to tolerate computers that demand their own desk.

Their size dictates the way they are designed. But soon, said Selker, computer parts will be so small and powerful, we'll be 3 XTTIN, software by the end ffi of the year if the rest I of Hollywood does Tint ctart cimrwirini Sr the new digital for mat. Warner Home Video released 40 movies on DVD, with plans for eight to 12 more each month. Other studios, however, have been slow to enter the market. SAVED BY JENNY MCCARTHY? Then again, maybe DVD will be all right, now that Playboy Home Video has agreed to start shipping its adult-entertainment titles in the DVD format starting next month.

That's not so far-fetched, either. Adult entertainment is credited with helping bring the VCR, the Internet and CD-ROM drives to the mainstream. MICROSOFT WEBTV Microsoft has agreed to buy WebTV Networks, which supplies Internet content to those set-top TV boxes sold by Philips and Sony. That will make the software giant even bigger. For its $425 million purchase price, Microsoft increases its potential market from the 35 percent of U.S.

households that own a computer to the 98 percent that own a television. OF MOUSE AND MAN In 20 or 30 years, you'll be able to hold in your hand as much computing knowledge as exists now in the whole city, or even the whole world." Douglas Engelbart, upon receiving the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize, the crown jewel of inventor prizes, in New York last week. Engelbart, 72, invented the mouse and is responsible for e-mail and the Internet. CHANGE OF ADDRESS First there weren't enough telephone numbers to go around, and those dreaded area codes were' added. Now Internet addresses are pushing the limits of possibility, so seven new endings have been approved for future addresses: for businesses offering goods, for information services, for individuals who want personal sites, for businesses or firms, for entities emphasizing the World Wide Web, for cultural groups and for recreational or entertainment activities.

The six current domain names are for commercial businesses, for non-profit organizations, for networks, for educational institutions, -for governmental bodies or for the military. NETSCAPE PREVIEW To sample Netscape Navigator 4.0 and the new Netscape Communicator, visit www.iMtseapc.com. For tips on using it, visit CNET at www.cnat.com. Dut your music-selection service has long experience with your preferences and a good track record of finding what vnii lilfo Once inside the house vmi finri fresh groceries in a small rpfriaor. ated storage area, where they have been waiting since being delivered this afternoon.

In a few minutes time, you put them away and start thinking of dinner. A flashing light on the refrigerator shows there's a message from your friend Ashley in San Francisco. She's reminding you of your appointment to play chess over the Internet at 9 p.m. "Good," you think, "I can watch the soccer game from Brazil over the satellite at the same time and still get a good night's sleep." computer's forms able to build what we want in any way that we want. And that will represent a true revolution as function finally dictates form.

"It's gotten to the point that the computer itself is disappearing," said Selker. "We've gotten to the point where all the machinery is gone." The trend has already begun with the latest generation of palm-top computers. These devices, which fit easily in a pocket, are capable of running a version of the Windows 95 operating system and various full-fledged software programs as well. The power of these devices and the new freedom of mobility that they offer foreshadow vast changes in how we work and where. No longer need we be chained to desks at home or at work.

Instead, we work wherever we find ourselves. "We're going to just reduce the time and concentration that it takes to keep track of our lives," Selker said. What's more, he said, tomorrow's computing devices are likely to be far tougher and more reliable than today's fragile PCs, with their delicate software and crashing hard drives. "You want the quality. You don't want it to be brittle technically," he said.

"You want this stuff to be robust." computer will spread out through the home, through the workplace and through public spaces. Consider, for example, the telephone. Daugherity said that many towns once only had one public phone at the local general store. Then people got phones in their homes. Today, there is a phone in practically every room.

A similar trend occurred in television. Once there was perhaps one in every neighborhood, then one in every home and finally one in nearly every room. But also like the telephone and the television, computers are destined to become vastly more reliable and easier to use, Daugherity said. "We will know computer technology has arrived when it gets to the point where you can use it as a means of accomplishing your end without any attention or concern to what's inside the box," he said. report that you browse by giving voice commands to your desktop computer.

Here's a video e-mail message from your colleague Charlie in Hong Kong, reporting to you on some early activity on the London stock market. Must j. 4 be hectic there; Charlie's looking a bit tired today. You can't get over the resemblence between these recorded video messages and the opening to the old "Mission: Impossible" TV series. "Good morning, Mr.

Phelps. Your mission, should you choose to accept it. Your reverie is broken by the sound of the phone ringing. A glance at the computer screen shows the incoming call is from your mom. "Answer it," you say to the computer, and realtime video of your mother fills the giant display screen.

"Good morning," Mom says cheerily. "I'm calling to remind you not to forget your father's birthday tomorrow." "I haven't forgotten for years," you reply, sneaking a peek to make sure the automatic gift purchase and greeting card deliv- trie" computers that help us com municate, calculate, process and remember. These devices will manage our calendars, our phone calls, our e-mail and our personal data, such as medical history, financial records, etc. Many of these devices will be wearable and able to communicate with each other, creating a personal computer network that Dertouzos calls a "body net." The other category will be "environment-centric" computers that manage our home and run the entertainment centers in our living rooms. That's because, in the future, we won't be living all that much differently than we are today, Dertouzos said.

"We're not going into cyberspace," he said. "We're going to stay right here." remain accessible. In effect, the technology becomes part of the woodwork. Or, as Goldsmith describes it: "It's on our bodies; it's in the walls; it's embedded in the infrastructure. Its transparent; it's easy access.

It's as easy as turning a knob or flipping a switch. It's as easy as talking." The final phase, the science-fiction era, starts in another decade and runs for 20 years after that. At this point, said Goldsmith, life gets a lot more like "Star Trek." Computers become simple extensions of human powers, providing artificial intelligence and virtual-reality-style experiences. Some chips might even connect directly to human sensory organs or the brain fr" itself, he said. It sK Life will be a lot more like 'Star Trek' Everything will be more interconnected Walter Daugherity predicts the biggest change that the future of computing holds is that more computers will be talking to each other.

That may seem odd, given that connecting computers via the Internet is already the rage. But in fact, computers have only begun to communicate, said Daugherity, a senior lecturer in computer science at Texas University. "There will be an increase in connectivity between these things as more of them get networked, and also maybe some consolidation," he said. "Some years down the road, you'll be able to call your PC from your office and tell it to turn on the air-conditioning. And conversely, when an alarm is tnpped, besides calling the police, your PC will call you by buzzing your pager." Like earlier forms of technology, the ,9 Neal M.

Goldsmith sees a future where computers don't look like computers. Instead, a computer will be anything that gets a job done using software and processing power, said Goldsmith, publisher of New York City-based Business Tech, an on-line magazine at http:www.butiness.com. "You can see the trends in the technology already things like the old truism, which was smaller, cheaper, faster, better," Goldsmith said. "While that's still true, it's gotten to the point now that the processors have gotten so tiny that we're able to distribute them, sort of scatter them to the winds." And we can't even begin to imagine all the different forms these computing devices will take in the future, in part because we don't know what the people of the future will need to do. Over the next 30 years, Goldsmith sees a three-part evolution in the use of computing power.

The first part he calls the Web World, and it's already well under way. In this phase, which extends for perhaps another decade, there is a merger of all the various information streams computer networks, television, print news media, radio and more. As a result, the world becomes more connected, and every display device, be it a TV or a PC, can show any and all of the different information streams. The second phase, which Goldsmith dubs the Information Utility World, starts in perhaps five to seven years. During this period, computer hardware begins to recede into the background.

Only the input and output devices such as display screens, remote controls, speakers and microphones A GUIDED BY TV There are 816 TVs for every 1,000 Americans, the highest rate in the world. Nearest rivals: Japan and Canada, each with 618 sets for every 1,000 people. 121 million American adults have cable TV; 68 million don't. Americans typically watch 1,600 hours of TV a year or more than four hours a day and spend 344 hours reading, 323 hours listening to music and 56 hours watching movies on the VCR. Sources: U.S.

Census Bureau, A.C. Nielsen KEVIN HUNT.