IN THIS ISSUE: May 10, 2000 To Archive Index Business Week e-Networks Summit Coverage: Life After The Internet -- A True Visionary's View Customer Non-Service Stories From Our Readers

LIFE AFTER THE INTERNET: WAY BEYOND WIRELESS!

LIBERATED INFORMATION AND SINGING SALSA

This week in New York, Business Week Magazine held an "e-Networks Technology Summit" that covered a lot of the usual territory. This is not to say that the workshops about bandwidth, wireless technology, network security and so on weren't cutting edge or that the speakers weren't top of the line. They all were. And lunch was very good.

But it was the last half-hour of the conference that will be remembered for years to come. Because the topic was "Life After the Internet" and the speaker was visionary MIT Media Lab professor Michael Hawley.

Liberated Information

"Information will be liberated. The computer will be blown to bits," Hawley promised. "Out from its confining box, the information users need will flow to them - where they want it, when they want it and without them having to manage it."

Hawley sat down at the Steinway baby grand piano and gave the audience a brief musical tour of 300 years of pre-MP3 music history. He played tunes by Bach, Lizst, Gershwin and Art Tatum. "Bach's music still sounds good to us even though it was written 300 years ago," Hawley said. "One hundred and fifty years later, Lizst still provides music for piano lessons. How good will the software we write today sound 300 years from now?" he asked.

Our grasp of technology is in its very early adolescence, Hawley said. "The question is, what do we want technology to be when it grows up? What values will technology force us to face? What does technology have to do with being human?"

Heady questions, no doubt. And Hawley has even headier predictions. Technology as we know it will be unrecognizable in the near future, he told us. A lot of the change will take place in the home where technology will come to us instead of us going to a "butt ugly" computer to access technology.

Counter Intelligence

For instance, he said, we'll make dinner using talking and singing brands. "What happens in the kitchen has been of great importance throughout the ages. After all," he noted, "at the end of the day, we're always happiest when something is entering or leaving the body. We care more about that than we do about computer programs."

His MIT technology students, he said, did a project they called "Counter Intelligence." They pre-saged talking soap and singing tomato sauce; appliances that communicate with each other, and talking chickens who would tell you where they were born and brought up. In five years, they said, soap will talk to you while you do the dishes. (A nightmarish vision perhaps, but hey, it could help us save a lot of money on shrink bills.)

Hawley's work at MIT involves a lot of exploration, projecting and play. Play is important to invention, he said because play promotes ideas, choices and sharing. But of course his work is not all play. He is a Dreyfoos Professor of Media Technology at MIT, where some of the world's most respected companies, such as Federal Express and Microsoft, sponsor the research that Hawley and his 10 colleagues conduct. Hawley has helped Lucasfilms with its pioneering digital cinema technology and was an architect of Steve Jobs' NeXT computer. He has performed cutting edge research at AT&T Bell Labs, at Pierre Boulez ICRAM Institute of the Pompidou Center in Paris, at Lucasfilms and at NeXT Computer. He holds degrees in music and computer studies from Yale and conducted postgraduate studies at MIT under artificial intelligence pioneer Marvin Minsky.

In musings that reached a long way beyond the image of an army of code crunchers solemnly creating new email or accounting software, Hawley talked about the role of technology in the home of the future. In our kitchens, Hawley said, "counter intelligence" will be playful and enjoyable as well as helpful.

You'll take a jar of salsa out of the cabinet and boom! Up comes a salsa tune." You'll take spices and canned ingredients out to make dinner, he mused, and they'll be able to play the instrumental parts of a piece that fits what you are cooking for dinner. Make salad dressing, for example, and hear your spice jars play a Chamber music piece reminiscent of a summer afternoon.

R2D2 Redux

People don't care about computers, he said. They care about how to make their every day life better, easier, more fun. Conjuring up shades of Ray Bradbury, who predicted the completely computerized house 40 years ago, our homes will have not only central air but also a central nervous system. For example, said Hawley, our refrigerator and scale will be connected, as will all our appliances. As Dave Barry noted in a recent column, your scale will see you gained weight and lock off the area of the refrigerator that has fattening snacks until you lose the weight.

Blithely returning to MP3 files, Hawley quoted John Perry Barlow who said, "This is the end of the music business as we know it, but the beginning of the musician business because this technology will let any musician get his musical message out to millions of people." "Music and poetry," Hawley concluded, "are things other animals still haven't figured out." They are our past and our future. And they will still be an important part of our lives long after the Internet.

CUSTOMER NON-SERVICE STORIES FROM OUR READERS

No Answer at Southwestern Bell

You'd think phone companies, of all businesses, would not to put customers on hold for 30 minutes. Yet Daniel Kruczek of Austin, TX, who wrote, "I have a customer non-service story," can't get an answer from Southwestern Bell. He's been trying to purchase an ISDN line from them for at least a month.

"They do not have on-line ordering set up. I have called their order number, 1-800-SWB-ISDN, several times and have only been put on hold, sometimes in excess of 30 minutes. I emailed them and told them I thought their level of service was unacceptable. I have received no response.

At this point I don't believe that I want any services from Southwestern Bell For the time being I will have to suffer with my slow connection speed and hope somebody sets up wireless broadband in Austin soon."

Another Digital Work Check Problem

Everett Van Dorn read about DigitalWork's promotion for 500 FREE web cards in WNO issue 22. She ordered the larger size cards, for which she was willing to pay their charge of $86 (vs. the $14 charge for S&H of the smaller-size card). She gave them her VISA debit card number.

"They could not make it work in their setup. They claimed it was "declined." Well, my bank account is naturally always considerably higher than their card charge of $86, so of course my bank did not actually decline their charge. The same card worked fine the next day at a gas station.

I phoned DigitalWork, and asked them to try again. They tried, and failed again." Van Dorn asked DigitalWork if she could send them a check. Their response: "we are not set up to accept checks." So they have lost another sale and a chance at future orders from Van Dorn.

Addendum: After much email complaining on my part, a DigitalWork rep called me to say that they decided to waive the $14 charge for my cards and that they are looking into ways to accept checks at their site.

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