Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Dr Hermann Hauser & the 5 Waves of Computing



I was lucky enough to see Dr Hermann Hauser CBE give the Perutz Lecture at the Friends of Peterhouse theatre in Cambridge last month, and since seeing it I've come across so many things that have reminded me of it.

Hauser, one of the founders of Acorn and involved in the spinning out of ARM, believes that there have been five waves of computing:

Mainframe, minicomputer, workstation, PCs and now mobile plus cloud computing

In each wave companies have come to dominate, but then have failed to become important players in the next one.  For example Microsoft were very dominant in PCs, but have so far failed to have a similar role in mobile.

After the lecture someone asked the obvious question:  What is the sixth wave?

The sixth wave, came the reply, is computers built into devices, for example houses, appliances and cars.  This of course then makes interfaces (like voice recognition) very important.

& from the BBC Technology site today, a report into computing in cars 'Every new car' to be connected to the web in 2014

"The connected car is already the third fastest growing technological device after phones and tablets, Intel believes"

Try to find time to watch the presentation above if you can.

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