Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!world!bzs From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) Newsgroups: comp.society.futures Subject: Re: Future of Computer Jobs Message-ID: Date: 16 Feb 91 18:11:56 GMT References: <9102131606.AA12900@world.std.com> Sender: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) Organization: The World Lines: 95 In-Reply-To: DAVISM@ATSUVAX1.BITNET's message of 13 Feb 91 15:04:00 GMT >So futurists, I'm interested in what you think the future holds for computer >people and what you might advise one who doesn't quite want to become >extinct yet. I will guess that throughout this decade networks become more and more invisible, analogous to phone systems. LANs will come to resemble in-house phone switches (which themselves will probably become less common as the phone system offers equivalent service from their central switches, this is happening already), and WAN/MAN* service will come from a modular jack in your wall. You'll unpack a computer, plug it into the power outlet, then the information outlet, and off you'll go. * WAN = Wide Area Network, MAN = Metropolitan Area Network Network management and servicing is quickly becoming analogous to other utility functions like electricity, you just want the plug, not the physical plant (generator etc.) These trends are already clear (ISDN, Frame-Relay, SMDS etc.), the only real question is whether the Telcos (PTTs) will get their acts together enough to cause people to give up on their own networks. The trend to twisted-pair media and fiber is also telling (that is, this is cheap stuff attractive to the sort of people who wire entire cities.) A driving force is the fact that you will come to expect more and more access to real information, and that information will be naturally elsewhere. The phone companies can make the economics work by providing customer billing services (analogous to 900 service.) I view CD/ROMs as important, but limited. Similar to the book collection you have at home, you will forever need to get that one thing you don't own, it will be a tiny subset of what could be a several hundred or several thousand dollar CD/ROM, so you'll be happy to pay a few cents to just look it up rather than own the whole thing. Note that I don't think that services "out there" will use CD/ROMs to hold information, it's ultimately a personal computer technology for the foreseeable future (which is fine.) So I suspect that corporate networks as a technical career may already be peaking as a possibility as this function moves more and more towards "outsourcing", just buying it as a service. One software development growth area I foreseee will be tying all these interfaces together. You will want a link in your spread-sheet to point to a piece of data in an information library somewhere far away. Same with document processing. A lot of the visions of Ted Nelson (see, for example, "Literary Machines") will come to fruition and you will create and manipulate documents which point all over the place, transparently. Consider all the formats etc out there! Navigators will become big business as corporations become frustrated with having to change gears between a zillion different lookup/query/format interfaces all over the place. Same for general network integration (tho that might be mostly done by the telcos, or enforced by their own standards for hook-up.) Software will be developed which enables real on-line business, RFP's will be posted electronically and vendors will return fulfillment bids electronically. Software to do this quickly and easily will become a powerful competitive tool. A lot of this is happening already in the EDI world. Also, expect growth in the network security area as this sort of thing grows. Another area of development I expect will be "retrofitting" of useful, big-computer applications as desktop power allows anyone to run them. What we today call high-end CAD/CAM systems will be re-used on the desktop for fairly mundane activities (moving the furniture around the office?) Fancy 3-D rendering and animation systems will be re-used for making notes, creating e-mail messages on how to get to the office christmas party, meeting presentations, on-line brainstorming by marketing types ("how about a flyer that looks like this, with the floppies in the pocket, it opens like so...") etc. Anything which automates the placing of information on-line and making it useful will become big business in the upcoming information gold-rush, people re-selling dusty folders they've had lying around for years, marketing surveys, service and user manuals, price lists, catalogues, etc. It's tedious to make indices, format the information, scan it in. It's 99% of the cost-of-entry into that business, anything to reduce up-front costs will be popular. Re-working, re-organizing and summarizing raw information will become a more and more major business as people get inundated and lost by what's available. -- -Barry Shein Software Tool & Die | bzs@world.std.com | uunet!world!bzs Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202 | Login: 617-739-WRLD