2008 Woodie Awards
Consumer electronics: the next step
Alex Matviychuk
Issue date: 1/15/04 Section: Opinion
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Over the last few years, consumers worldwide have experienced a revolution in the way they interact with and manage their media.
The VCR era has taken its last breath as people scurry to copy their favorite memories from a crumbling VHS tapes to long lasting, high definition DVDs.
Welcome to the new digital utopia: Your walkman has been replaced by mp3 players that can hold an unimaginable number of songs on a memory chip the size of your finger.
Your VCR has been put out of its eternal "12:00 blinking" misery by a TiVo that will automatically synchronize with the atomic clock and save your favorite shows to one neat, sorted, and central location (unlike those unlabeled VHS tapes scattered throughout your house).
Not even your trusty old phone is safe from the grasp of those crazy 1's and 0's. If you're not already chatting with your friends using VoIP(Voice Over Internet Protocol), you will be soon.
It seems rather interesting that all these fancy features and countless gigabytes of storage aren't actually what makes the digital revolution so significant. The real potential of all those gadgets will be realized with ubiquitous networking. After all, what's the use of having a million Britney spears remixes when you can't share them with your soon-to-be-former best friend?
And what's the point of taking a bunch of pictures of your dog wearing sunglasses if you'll be the only one to see them?
The simple fact sometimes overlooked by media and entertainment companies is that people love to share and experience media with their friends and relatives.
This is where networking comes in. One of the big decisions an engineer has to make when building a system is what topology to use, that is, should resources be centralized or distributed.
Both options offer potential advantages: centralized systems can be easily managed and provide a central location for different functions (like a website), whereas distributed systems are much more fault tolerant and far more scalable (think peer to peer file sharing).
The VCR era has taken its last breath as people scurry to copy their favorite memories from a crumbling VHS tapes to long lasting, high definition DVDs.
Welcome to the new digital utopia: Your walkman has been replaced by mp3 players that can hold an unimaginable number of songs on a memory chip the size of your finger.
Your VCR has been put out of its eternal "12:00 blinking" misery by a TiVo that will automatically synchronize with the atomic clock and save your favorite shows to one neat, sorted, and central location (unlike those unlabeled VHS tapes scattered throughout your house).
Not even your trusty old phone is safe from the grasp of those crazy 1's and 0's. If you're not already chatting with your friends using VoIP(Voice Over Internet Protocol), you will be soon.
It seems rather interesting that all these fancy features and countless gigabytes of storage aren't actually what makes the digital revolution so significant. The real potential of all those gadgets will be realized with ubiquitous networking. After all, what's the use of having a million Britney spears remixes when you can't share them with your soon-to-be-former best friend?
And what's the point of taking a bunch of pictures of your dog wearing sunglasses if you'll be the only one to see them?
The simple fact sometimes overlooked by media and entertainment companies is that people love to share and experience media with their friends and relatives.
This is where networking comes in. One of the big decisions an engineer has to make when building a system is what topology to use, that is, should resources be centralized or distributed.
Both options offer potential advantages: centralized systems can be easily managed and provide a central location for different functions (like a website), whereas distributed systems are much more fault tolerant and far more scalable (think peer to peer file sharing).