Avram’s first mobil phone Just to prove I have always been a head of my time check out the photo below. Remember this is 1946 folks.
Archive for January, 2007
My first Mobile Phone
January 28, 2007My life in quarter notes
January 27, 2007In case you did not notice, today is my birthday. I am 62. On Jan. 27th, 1945 Auschwitz was liberated. It is hard for me to imagine that when I was born, Hitler was still leading Germany, the world had yet to see an atomic bomb and the computer was not yet born. Segregation was the norm in the south. The world’s population was just a third of what it is now and most of those that were alive when I was born are gone. Just twenty years later, we were fighting an awful and wrong war in Vietnam (some things do not change), the 60’s generation was young and expressing their creativity and political position. I had already had the privilege of going to jail for the civil right movement, had my heart broken and was programming computers and doing medical research and playing piano and writing music. Twenty years later, I had lived in Holland and Israel, become a husband and a father of three wonderful children and was an executive at Intel and about to start what became Intel Capital. And now, I am semi retired, married again to a wonderful woman and a grandfather of three. It has been ten years since I was treated for prostate cancer and while there were some difficult times, I seem to be fine. Still in love with technology and playing piano better than ever, I am excited about the future, grateful for the past and rejoice in the present.
The PC is it (Not)
January 24, 2007The Interactive Device for the Information Age I was just reading an article I published in the New Telecom Quarterly in 1996. The paper is worth reading in my opinion. It has to do with the government’s role in creating what was at that time called the National Information Infrastructure or as Al Gore called it, the Information Highway. At that time, most people thought that the interactive device in the home would be the TV. I was arguing that it would be the PC (which as not that obvious at the time). In fact, at Intel we had a slogan, “The PC is it”.
Well I think you will find that my prognosis was correct. The PC became the interactive device in the home and only now more than ten years later do we see any other forms of connected interactivity emerging. However, it will not be the PC that is IT in the next ten years. There will be no IT. Rather, we will see that the interactive device in the home will actually be the home. With more and more devices being connected to the net.
The information Furnace
January 11, 2007
SET-TOP BOX WARS THE BATTLE FOR THE INFOBAHN IS ABOUT TO START — RIGHT IN YOUR LIVING ROOM The household device that receives and decodes digital data could decide who wins control of the information highway.
Is user created content the next CB Radio
January 10, 2007Check wikipedia for an interesting history of Citizen Band radio. It was an amazing phenomenon in which consumers chatted with each other. Even “chat rooms” developed. But it was not the CB radio but the cellular phone that survived and transformed all our lives (about a billion cell phones are sold a year).
Now a lot of people know (what some of us knew over ten years ago) that the media industry as we know it is dead. I guess dying would be more accurate. And many people think that the new world order of media is user generated content. And while I believe user generated content is a big driver of change (was it not email that was the early driver of the net), it is just one component of a 21st century media company. I am not sure what form new media companies will take and I think it is good to keep an open mind. Many people mistake a transition for a new phase. And frankly I think we are in a transition. Over the next five years there will be major changes in how and when consumers interact with media and definitely user involvement will play a major role as it should. But I think we will see branded content. Some individuals who have the talent and drive to consistently produce “products” that many people want to see. Eventually they will get “agents”J.
War on Cancer: Mission Not Accomplished
January 6, 2007On January 3, 2006 Garry Betty, the CEO of Earthlink died from adrenal cortical cancer at the age of 49, this announcement hit me hard as does every announcement of the death of someone in the prime of their life from cancer. It was in the state of the union speech of Richard Nixon that the War on Cancer was declared. Here is what he said:“I will also ask for an appropriation of an extra $100 million to launch an intensive campaign to find a cure for cancer, and I will ask later for whatever additional funds can effectively be used. The time has come in
America when the same kind of concentrated effort that split the atom and took man to the moon should be turned toward conquering this dread disease. Let us make a total national commitment to achieve this goal.
America has long been the wealthiest nation in the world. Now it is time we became the healthiest nation in the world.–-President Richard M. Nixon in his 1971 State of the Union address.And how have we done? You guessed it! We have failed to make significant improvement in the mortality of most cancers. Instead we spend billions of dollars a day on “defending our country for terrorists by sending our young people to
Iraq is they can get killed and maimed there. So almost half of us will get cancer once in our life time (something I know personally) and many of us will die from it. But don’t worry, there terrorists will not get you because “we are fighting them over there so we do not have to fight them here”.
The End of the PC Era
January 4, 2007We are entering the fourth era of computing. The fist was the main frame lead by IBM; the second was the mini computer lead by Digital Equipment (where I worked) and the third was the PC which was lead by the combination of Microsoft and Intel.
I am afraid the run Intel and Microsoft had is over. The PC market is basically a replacement market at least in the developed world. There may be a bit of growth in homes as consumers add PC’s but eventually it will all be replacement like the TV market until flat panels came along. Frankly it did not have to be this way. The PC could have played a key role in how consumer electronics evolved, providing an integrated solution. But unfortunately, Microsoft was in the lead here with the Media Center and it failed. As I like to say, if Microsoft made paint we would all be waiting for the walls to dry. Now the action has moved to the net proving Scot McNealy right after ten years. The network is the computer. Right now we see the movement to applications to the net with web 2.0. And we will see that data storage will move more and more to the net. The PC will become just a network terminal and consumers will understand that they do not really need a pc. I have made an experiment to see if I could live on the net (all applications and data on the net and just lived in my browser.) The only application I could not find was an equivalent to Quicken. And I am sure someone (maybe quicken) will create that as well. I also did this with a cheap Linux box. As this all happens the client function will be integrated into game machines (check at Wii), set to boxes and other devices. The pc is no longer the king in the home.
The notebook computer is the new RV
January 4, 2007My wife and I travel about three months a year. We are members of Exclusive Resorts which is company controlled by Steve Case former CEO of AOL. My main reason for joining was to sunny places to go to in the winter where I could be assured of comfort and connectivity. There are added benefits such as apartments New York, London and
Paris. But when you travel this much to resorts you can not really just be on vacation so my wife and I try to maintain most of the activities that we would do if we were home.
