Ordering fried chicken with the TV remote. Part 1
Convergence. It’s a word that can strike terror into the heart of any technology person.
After all, it is the most over- used, overdone, overhyped phrase to come out of the Information Age.
I shudder every time I see yet another telecom, broadcast or entertainment executive talk about their vision of convergence. From their perspective, it is a world in which we become wired couch potatoes. We’ll watch their latest entertainment pap on TV, and as soon as something catches our eye — zap — we’ll click our way into consumer heaven, instantly using our remote control to buy the latest, greatest Chia-Pet.
Gosh, when are these people going to get a clue?
To many, convergence is more than warmed-over, stale, rehashed ideas that have little likelihood of succeeding. Indeed, the real concept of convergence is found in the fact that in the next 10 years, much of the Internet is going to disappear as the world of microprocessors becomes tightly linked to the Internet.
From my perspective, one of the most significant developments today is that the very essence of the computer revolution — the microprocessor — is about to become an integral part of our global Internet.
The emergence of the Internet chip, or what I call the “IP-chip” (for Internet-Protocol-Chip) is going to lead to some pretty fascinating developments through the next 20 years. It leads us into a world in which the various devices that surround us in our day-to-day lives, whether used for personal or business reasons, are about to become linked to the Internet. And to me, that’s convergence.
Let’s contrast the “old” model of convergence with the IP-chip model. In the old model, bandied about by those who don’t have a clue, one day we’ll buy an Internet fridge. They believe consumers will want a fridge with a Web screen, and we will stand there and surf the Web, buying our groceries. A bar code reader built into the fridge will “see” that we have just emptied a milk carton, and instruct the fridge to go off and buy a carton or two. As it does so, it will flash us some great coupon offers for yogurt and instant Pina Colada mix.
In their converged world, our fridge — heck, our kitchen — becomes yet another shrine to consumerism, a world in which we are all too willing to turn our homes into a non-stop, flashy-trashy advertising extravaganza.
As if.
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