The STREAM TONE: The Future of Personal Computing?

by T. Gilling

Imagine... a world where your next personal computing device is the last one that you would ever need to buy. Where you would never need to worry about operating systems, software patches, or viruses. Where you always had enough processing power, memory, storage, and top-of-the-line graphics. Where you could access all of the very best software applications, regardless of their platform. Where you had a constant connection to all your favourite digital services, and your battery lasted for days, perhaps even weeks, of full-on use. Sounds good, doesn't it? Well, this is the world of the Stream Tone. A world that does not exist in some far off future; this could be, figuratively speaking, our world a mere five minutes from now. All that is needed to make it a reality is the creative convergence of certain technologies that are already available and in use today.

Personal computing is changing from an old world of local services, provided by local devices, to a new world of remote Web-based services, provided by cloud computing-based data centres. The STREAM TONE: The Future of Personal Computing? is a 408-page academically-oriented non-fiction book that explores, in some technical detail, what might be required to make a comprehensive move to this exciting new world, and the many benefits that move could bring. This book not only attempts to make a thorough evaluation of the technology ecosystem that will be required to create this future but also considers many of the implications of such a move. Along the way, it also discusses a wide range of currently-available technologies and how they could possibly be used to enable this future.

Genres: Nonfiction, Computer Science, Science, Technology

408 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2015

About the author

I am a forward-looking information technologist that wants to re-invent personal computing for the 21st century, and, by so doing, make the world a better, more equitable, place.

Reviews

[Louise L. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The STREAM TONE: The Future of Personal Computing? by T. Gilling (ISBN: 9781784620813) is a very interesting non-fiction book that presents a singular vision of the future in which all personal computing functionality has been moved to the data centre and all our personal computers have become thin clients (dumb terminals). This non-fiction book contains a LOT of technically-oriented information. The book's language is generally easy to understand but it is rather technical in places.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

The STREAM TONE: The Future of Personal Computing? (ISBN 9781784620813) is a book about techno-change that contains, in my opinion, some rather unconventional (radical/odd/different?) ideas about the future of personal computing that some people might find a little controversial, particularly those that are content with our current techno-world and really do not want to see it change in any significant way, shape or form. I think it is pretty much undeniable that cloud computing-based data centres are now the most resource-efficient places to perform nearly all of our data processing activities (certainly at scale), and that Fifth-Generation Mobile Communications (5G), and beyond, will permit us to remotely access pretty much all the digital functionalities that we currently obtain from our local personal computing devices (desktops, laptops, smartphones, tablets, etc) from those data centres at some point in the very near future (5-10 years). So, whilst the Stream Tone concept, described in this book, might seem, at first glance, to be rather odd, old-fashioned, and maybe even wrong-headed, it is actually not. In fact, very much not. Whether or not we will actually call this particular future technology the Stream Tone, as the author suggests, is debatable. What is not debatable, however, is that most, if not all, of the future described in this book is definitely coming, whether we like it or not. I think this book is way ahead of its time, and that the author has managed to mentally jump forward along our timeline to the point in the future when our personal computing devices are finally cheap, simple, standardised and unchanging tools. The point when we no longer need to buy a new device every 2 years, or have to be directly concerned with operating systems, applications, patches or viruses. This book describes the point in time when the personal computing devices in our hands and pockets are just unimportant tools for accessing our digital world. This is exactly where we need to get to, because ultimately it is not devices that are important, it is information and services that are important. Obviously, this line of thinking is going to be unpopular with the proponents of current personal computing devices, operating systems, and applications (i.e. the techno-establishment and the techno-fans). For such people, I would guess that the future is probably going to be a very unhappy place, because much, if not all, of the complexity associated with (localised) personal computing that they know and love is going to go away, or at the very least become someone else's problem (SEP). This book is not perfect, but then again which book is, hence the fact that I have given it 4 stars instead of the 5, which it probably deserves. It is a long book at 408 pages, and much like a techno-encyclopedia in places, which made it a somewhat laborious book to read all the way through. Although, having said that, the encyclopedia-like sections were, if I'm honest, generally interesting and educational, but, still, very long, at over 200 pages! On the whole I liked this book, a lot. I liked its message; a better techno-future for everyone, everywhere. It was hopeful, if not a little naive. For those interested in the future of personal computing I personally think it is an essential read that brings many interesting ideas to the table. You may not like or agree with all those ideas (I certainly didn't) but there is no denying that they are, on the whole, very interesting ideas. I strongly suspect that for many readers this book will be like Marmite, they will either love it or hate it, with nothing in between. This is an academically-oriented, non-fiction book; it is not light-reading.

[L.J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The STREAM TONE: The Future of Personal Computing? contains some radical concepts. This book could literally turn the business models of the established smart-device giants, like Apple and Samsung, on their very heads. The devices that such manufacturers currently use to differentiate their various business offerings will no longer be of any real importance. Only the on-line services that those devices are used to access will be of importance. The devices themselves will become greatly simplified, totally standardized, very durable, and incredibly cheap, such that they can be easily afforded by everyone, everywhere. Any differences that do exist between the offerings from the different device manufacturers will be subtle and cosmetic only, such as case color, shape, or construction materials, as all internals will be identical. Any manufacturer that is not able to make the switch from producing devices to providing on-line services is likely to face a most challenging future, because standardized devices are best produced in massive volumes by the innumerable nameless OEMs of Asia, and not the household names of today's technology giants. The on-line services that will be accessed by these new devices will be provided by a myriad of highly energy-efficient cloud computing-based digital services, often on a subscription basis. The telecommunications services that will be used to deliver such services will need to be "highly affordable, high bandwidth, low latency, highly reliable, and ubiquitously available", everything that fifth-generation mobile communications (5G) promises to offer over the coming years. What is very clear from this book is that the way personal computing is currently designed and operated is not necessarily the way that it will always be designed and operated. The world of personal computing is in constant flux and the future presented in this book is, in my opinion, a very real possibility, because in many ways this is a path that we are already on, even though most people will not have realized it yet. Better telecommunications and cloud computing are the two key enabling technologies that this future needs, the first is coming with 5G and the second is pretty much here already.

[JJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps it is just me, I am not what you would call a 'technology professional' but I do like my gadgets (DVD player, laptop, PlayStation, smartphone, tablet, etc), and I use a computer all day at work, but I really found this book to be very hard work. It is more like a technical reference book, something that you briefly refer to, to get answers, rather than something that you would read from start to finish, although maybe if you were a 'proper' technology professional you would read this, from cover to cover, with great enthusiasm. Maybe. It claims that it is not a requirements document nor a design document but it certainly seems that way to me. Like I said, I found it very technical in quite a few places. The author takes great care to explain things but I felt that I was definitely in-over-my-head at times and suffering from a bad case of information overload. The book seems to be well researched and it makes quite a few good points. The middle section of the book, which describes building blocks and precursors, is like an encyclopedia of technology. I found this section pretty interesting but a lot of the information was just not relevant to me. Still, I guess this book did what books are intended to do, which is open my eyes to new and different things, and make me think about those things. I liked that the author is trying to make the world a better place by making personal computing simpler and cheaper, and therefore more inclusive. If I am honest, I think this book is probably best for technology professionals and academics, rather than technology dabblers, such as myself.

[V · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book is mostly a long list of technology being used in modern consumer electronics. While the vision can be appealing, the book does not discuss the technical and societal challenge to deliver the "stream tone" which is quite disapointing.

[Roberto Klein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unusual, but very interesting.