Talk Outline
Personal Computing in the 21st Century
By Gary K. Starkweather
Consultant
Ever since the dawn of the digital computer,
invention, innovation, and creativity have been
a hallmark of the industry. The mainframe
computer seemed for a while to be the real
player with experts or at least highly trained
professionals operating these large and
expensive machines. Most users were allowed to
see them through glass windows but “hands on”
was a rare opportunity. In 1972, the Xerox Palo
Alto Research Center (PARC), built a remarkable
personal computer named the ALTO. Except for the
visionaries at PARC and a few others, most
people considered the personal computer a mere
curiosity in this early period. Today, the
personal computer has become a tool that very
few imagined. What might be yet to come?
While prognosticating about the future is a
risky endeavor at best, perhaps we can obtain a
look ahead with a straightforward review of the
current status of personal computing. We will
look at operating systems, application software
and peripherals, however, the real goal of this
talk is to see what the user interface, tools
and interactions with this future computing
environment might be or perhaps even should be.
Will we still be using continuing variations of
Doug Englebart’s mouse in 2020 or might
something new and much more advanced emerge? How
might users seamlessly deal with terabytes of
storage? How might multi-user environments be
used and could multi-OS machines be an economic
and generally available personal computing
environment? Are there user experience issues
that are critical in multi-OS environments? How
might the user’s display be different from
today? Will tomorrow’s displays be larger, have
a significantly higher pixel density, be much
more paper-like, etc.? Might electronic printers
and their requisite paper output still be with
us by 2025, for example? Will home and
neighborhood network resources finally be a
powerful ally of the computing environment? Many
exciting opportunities and questions beg for
answers and industry insight.
This talk will attempt to peer into the near
future to see what we might expect of the
personal computing environment based on what we
can extrapolate from current experience and
technology directions. While the exactitude of
such projections may be limited, taken as a
whole, there is perhaps much that can be learned
from such an exercise. Why do this? Charles
Kettering, the great automotive inventor was
asked why he spent so much time planning and
thinking about the future. He wisely replied,
“Because I am going to spend the rest of my life
there.” Thirty years ago, very few could have
imagined all the wonderful things that personal
computing has enabled. Perhaps we have just
begun our exciting journey.
Biography
Gary received his B.S. in
Physics from Michigan State University in 1960.
He subsequently moved to Rochester, New York and
began his graduate studies in Optics at the
University of Rochester. He graduated from the
University of Rochester in 1966 with a Masters
Degree in Optics.
He has spent over 43 years
in the imaging sciences and holds over 44
patents in the fields of imaging, color and
hardcopy devices. From 1962 to 1964, he worked
for Bausch & Lomb Inc. in Rochester, NY. From
1964 until 1988 he was employed by Xerox
Corporation where he became a Senior Research
Fellow. In 1971 he transferred to the newly
formed Xerox research center in Palo Alto,
California. While at the Xerox Palo Alto
Research Center or PARC, he invented the laser
printer. He has received a number of awards for
this work. In 1977, Xerox presented him with the
Xerox President’s Achievement Award. In 1987, he
received the Johann Gutenberg Prize from the
Society for Information Display and in 1991 he
received the David Richardson medal from the
Optical Society of America and in 1992, he
received the Engineering Excellence Award also
from the optical society of America. From March
of 1988 until May of 1997, he was employed by
Apple Computer as an Apple Fellow involved in
Publishing and Color Imaging products and
research. In May of 1997 he joined Microsoft
Corporation in Redmond, Washington and became an
Architect in Microsoft Research working on novel
information hardware such as large displays,
high resolution displays. While at Microsoft he
authored several papers on displays and
Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems or MEMS
technology. He also worked on optical security
technology with other technology groups a
Microsoft.
In March of 1994 he
received a Technical Academy Award for his
consulting work with Lucasfilm and Pixar on
color film scanning. In November of 2002, he was
inducted into the Technology Hall of Fame at
COMDEX. He has published many papers and has
written a book chapter entitled “High Speed
Laser Printers” for Academic Press. He has
served on several technical committees involved
in display and color related imaging issues and
has lectured at both Stanford University and
UCLA. He is a Fellow of the IS&T as well an
Honorary Member and is also a fellow of the
Society for Information Display. Most recently,
in October of 2004, he became a member of the
National Academy of Engineering.
He has now retired from
Microsoft, and has moved with his wife Joyce to
DeBary, Florida. His hobbies are astronomy,
music and model railroading. |
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