Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!limbo!taylor
From: rjg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Bob Gautier)
Newsgroups: comp.society
Subject: Re: Age of the Hand Held
Message-ID: <1496@limbo.Intuitive.Com>
Date: 27 Nov 90 22:50:46 GMT
Sender: taylor@limbo.Intuitive.Com
Organization: UCW, Aberystwyth, WALES, UK
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Approved: taylor@Limbo.Intuitive.Com

I think the age of the handheld *computer* will be very short.  We are
just beginning to see reasonably powerful machines which can be hand held
(e.g. the PalmTop).  These will no doubt develop over the next few years.
But we are also beginning to see the introduction of very widespread and
fast digital communications, which I think will in the end remove the
necessity for local computation.

Over recent years, in moving from the single mainframe, to remote
timesharing, to the personal computer, and finally to the X terminal,
we have seen the balance between local and remote computing move.
Currently we are using machines enormously more powerful than the machines
we once used as standalone personal computers, simply as user interface
servers.

I think this will happen to the handheld too.  It will be little more than
a personal terminal -- a very intelligent cellular phone.  Perhaps it will
do voice recognition and synthesis locally -- this would allow remote
applications to be speaker and maybe even language independent.
Making the handheld the user interface, not the computer, will permit
better standardisation of its functions, allowing much of it to be
implemented in specially designed silicon (or whatever).

Bob Gautier