FOR all its many wonders, few would dispute that computing technology is still in its infancy. Despite the speed and power of today's PCs, they are tricky and capricious beasts. It is the silly boast of the industry that, if cars had advanced as quickly as the memory and processing power of computers in the past 25 years, they would travel at supersonic speed and cost just a few dollars. The analogy is better turned on its head. Today's PC is like the car of the early 1920s—prone to frequent and inexplicable breakdowns and hugely demanding of both time and skill if it is to give of its best.

It is, indeed, hard to think of any consumer product that inspires such low expectations. When a piece of software works as intended, it is time to open the champagne. In the office the liberating effect of placing individually controlled computers on all desks is often undone by productivity-destroying crashes, confusing system upgrades and the chaos caused by no PC being the same as another.

A better way

Until computing becomes as much a part of life as placing a telephone call or driving a car, it will continue to be treated by many with suspicion and, often, fear. But now a new generation of easy-to-use, highly capable devices should change that (see article). These thin client appliances—fixed-screen Web phones, smart mobile telephones, handheld computers, TV set-top boxes and network computers—are simple to set up, and they work with the reliability of the consumer-electronics products they resemble. The technologies they harness are powerful but energy-efficient new processors, the communications standards of the Internet and a looming explosion in bandwidth. The result will be pervasive computing—computing any time, anywhere.

The doubling of processing power every 18 months, predicted by Intel's co-founder, Gordon Moore, will continue relentlessly for at least the next five years. Blazingly fast but cheap chips will power an array of Internet access devices and create scope for simpler interfaces with users—above all, speech commands made in normal language. The technologies to make high-bandwidth connections to the Internet cheap and ubiquitous are establishing their own version of Moore's Law. Ample bandwidth allied to huge processing power will unlock the creativity of software developers and service providers. It will soon be possible to receive high-quality video on a cellular handset. And as routine transactions shift to the Internet, the cost of access—still a barrier—will be absorbed by competing retailers looking for new customers.

A side-effect of these developments will be to reduce the importance of the PC. The PC will not disappear, any more than IBM's mainframe computer did when computing shifted decisively towards the PC-based client/server model in the 1980s. Indeed, like the mainframe, the PC will go on improving and incorporating new technologies. But, again like the mainframe, it seems bound to cede its position at the centre of the computing world. The difference this time is that, unlike in the eras of the mainframe and the PC, no single machine—and no individual company—is poised to dominate the era of pervasive computing.

The new appliances and devices will mostly be cheap, simple and optimised for a small number of specific functions. Nearly all will provide Internet access and run a Web-browser on top of a small, customisable operating system. All will derive their power and usefulness from being linked by Internet-based protocols to networks run from powerful servers. As well as making computing more accessible for the majority of people who still do not have a PC at home, the new computing will also make life far easier for those who do, but are baffled by the complexity of a machine whose functions have grown like a high-tech Topsy.

Many companies will give thanks for a simpler and cheaper way to meet a large proportion of their computing needs. IT departments have been made painfully aware of the need to regain some control by the Year 2000 debacle and the difficulties of meeting the standards of reliability needed for the conduct of business on the Internet. Increasing numbers will try to wean users from costly-to-maintain PCs in favour of thin clients on the desktop.

Making technology predictions is a dangerous game. The effects of inertia and conservatism have to be reckoned with. It is hard too to imagine any threat to the ascendancy that Microsoft enjoys through its ownership of Windows, the dominant operating system for PCs. But it is difficult to find real dissenters. George Gilder, a technology guru, believes simply that Windows is about to be overtaken by events. Irving Wladawsky-Berger, who heads IBM's Internet division, argues that the forces in play are so strong that no single company, however mighty, can prevent the switch away from the PC. Even the high priest of Microsoft, Bill Gates, fears that computing devices could deliver “death by a thousand cuts”.

Not very PC

It is even possible that technology will render the American Justice Department's action against Microsoft ultimately unnecessary, just as its long-drawn-out case against IBM in the 1970s lost relevance thanks to the rise of the PC. Yet the Microsoft case remains justified in terms of today's software market. And—in yet another echo of the IBM case—action against Microsoft should have the beneficial effect of discouraging the firm from exploiting its present dominance to try to delay the next stage of the computer revolution.

What makes that revolution so promising is that it will be shaped and driven by many individuals and by many companies, large and small, and no longer by an IBM or a Microsoft. The PC era has, in its own, often infuriating way, been a miracle of productivity and creativity. But the next era, the era of pervasive computing, should be infinitely more so.