Adventures In Utility Computing

The business of utility computing.

Thursday, June 01, 2006

Technology "Laws" driving the shift

There are a number of technology laws driving the shift in the economy from atoms to bits. Among these are Moore's Law, Metcalfe's Law and Gilder's Law. These three laws together drive the industry faster than any one of them on their own and were described at Sun Microsystems as the Net Effect. Graphically it would look like this:

The question is where will the processing be done? One perspective is that the net will do the processing. John McCarthy, noted Stanford computer science professor said in 1961:
"If computers of the kind I have advocated become the computers of the future, then computing may someday be organized as a public utility just as the telephone system is a public utility... The computer utility could become the basis of a new and important industry."
The shift as envisioned by McCarthy hasn't happened yet. I believe that McCarthy's vision of utility computing will enable Negroponte's transition from Atoms to Bits. In some respects this is happening. I will write more on this in upcoming posts.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home