Computers and computing - the future

Electronic computers began their evolution as calculators and, for most science and engineering applications, are still primarily used for that purpose. When the word processor replaced the typewriter and graphics applications were created, the modern era of computing began.

Computers, however, are no longer just faster and more flexible replacements for existing tools. Only thirty years ago, computers were large and expensive boxes, in climate controlled rooms, with a "new priesthood" of IT specialists presiding over them and dictating the uses to which they may be put. Now, memory is cheap and processors are quick. Fast software to index and search documents is old news. Computers are available to all of us and have become the essential tools for storing, managing, and presenting information.

Paul Otlet, a Belgian bibliographer whose work was almost entirely ignored, came close to describing a version - albeit incomplete - of our modern computing environment. In the 'Treatise on Documentation', published in 1934, he wrote:

"The workspace is no longer cluttered with any books. In their place, a screen and a telephone within reach.

Over there, in an immense edifice, are all the books and information. From there the page to be read in order to know the answer to the question asked by telephone is made to appear on the screen.

A screen could be divided in half by four, or even by ten, if multiple texts and documents had to be consulted simultaneously. There would be a loud speaker if the image had to be complemented by oral data. This improvement could continue to the point of automating the call for onscreen data. Cinema, phonographs, radio, television, these instruments taken as substitutes for the book will in fact become the new book. The most powerful works for the diffusion of human thought. This will be the radiated library and a televised book."

Although M. Otlet did not foresee mobile computing, which includes smart phones and GPS devices as well as laptops, I do not believe that he would have been surprised. The important question, now, is to determine if there are any, among the legion of self promoting futurists, who can provide some insight into the next fifty years.

Seeing the future is always hard but one thing is certain: conventional wisdom is unlikely to provide many useful answers.