California garages again store cars and junk, not computer research labs as they did in the halcyon days of Woz and Jobs. Today, the myths may be tamer, but the pace of innovation hasn't changed. Here are the major technologies of the past 20 years.
Microkernel OSes
Proprietary OSes and closed hardware platforms were the reality when the goal was heterogeneous computing. Microkernel OSes burst these constraints with modern, modular OS cores that helped developers build applications faster and port software to a range of hosts without taking a performance hit. Programmers can build new functions into a system by mixing and matching code modules at run time. NextStep introduced these ideas to the commercial world with its
Mach-kernel variation
, which controlled memory and pro
cess management as well as interprocess communications. Carnegie Mellon University's Mach 3.0 now provides the underpinnings for IBM, the OSF, and Taligent's OS development. Microsoft's NT also borrows from the microkernel approach for smoother porting to Intel, Mips, and Alpha-based systems. Similarly, Apple's upcoming Copland release coalesces around a compact microkernel.
Structured Query Language (SQL)
How can telemarketers be sure they'll find your number the minute the dinner hour strikes? SQL is one essential tool, thanks to its ability to handle sets of data. SQL provided a way for interacting with relational databases, and it works with standard programming languages. For years, the burden for database management fell on individual users, until 1969, when E. F. Codd, then at IBM, developed his relational theory of data, which addressed data structure, integrity, and manipulation. However, it wasn't until the mid-1970s that elements of his theories gained industry acceptan
ce via SQL in Oracle and DB2.
Ethernet
We were so busy joking about when the Year of the LAN would finally come that we didn't realize when it had already happened. The key? Fast, easy-to-install Ethernet networks. Ethernet was visionary because it defined a network capable of 10-Mbps data rates before we needed that speed. Defined by Dr. Robert Metcalfe at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center), it took the combined efforts of Xerox, DEC, and Intel to turn Ethernet into a commercially viable standard. The version 1.0 specification arrived in September 1980. Two years later, version 2.0 addressed problems related to large networks, reliability, cost, and other issues. Changes to the specification included electrical signaling, cable types, connectors, packet formats,
CSMA/CD and back-off algorithms, CRC (cyclic-redundancy check) calculation, and system timing. Ethernet defined physical media and connections as well as how data, described as frames, is transferred across a L
AN. (Very slight differences in how frames are defined separate the official IEEE 802.3 specification from the de facto Ethernet standard.)
Client/Server Networks
It's the tie that binds our desktop computers to the processing power, data, and resources of entire organizations. The architecture is the foundation for keeping a business running even if one component crashes. Client/server computing is also the means for technical democratization: We can choose the hardware and software that's best for us rather than declaring allegiances to a particular vendor. Without it, the mobile workers would remain a step behind office-bound comrades in having access to company resources; collaborative workgroups would still be defined by geographical proximity.
DSPs
What makes an application really sing? Lurking somewhere under the covers of audio, video, voice, and other multimedia applications are DSPs (digital signal processors). Modern versions of this venerab
le technology benefit from new chips and multitasking software that let DSPs simultaneously handle two or more processes. Evolving standards will make DSP application development easier, while general-purpose OSes, including Windows 95, are expected to include DSP programming interfaces, which could push DSPs further into traditional markets. In the future, digital hard drives will likely rely on DSP-powered drive controllers to process signals from the disk.
Floppy Disks
Like the proverbial 2-cent bolt that can ground a 767, how could we have worked without the lowly floppy disk? It has given us an inexpensive way to distribute applications and data. Floppies also gave unconnected workgroups "sneakernets," inelegant but essential hacks in the prenetworked world. The Internet, WANs, and CD-ROMs may be cutting into the floppy's territory. And the world probably already has enough floppies in circulation--we just need to reformat all the disks stashed in desk drawers and file cabine
ts. But before you think floppies are obsolete, break the shrinkwrap on Microsoft's Office Professional 4.3: The collection of programs is still available on 31 disks.
Software Components
How do you implement custom applications quickly and not bust your operations budget? Plug in a component--those reusable, binary software objects that extend OSes by addressing specific needs. For Windows and the Mac, there are already OCXes (OLE controls); and components are also reshaping the various implementations of Unix and OS/2.
The Mouse
Like God and Man touching fingertips in Michelangelo's
Creation
, no other peripheral has done more to symbolically link computers with our humanness. Forget touch-typing or even hunt and peck; the mouse provided a way for computers to become accessible for millions of people. The original design dates back to the Stanford Research Institute and Douglas Engelbart's 1963 wooden prototype. In 1982, Mouse Systems introdu
ced the first commercial mouse (a three-button design) for the IBM PC. The Apple mouse, originally for the Lisa, and Microsoft's mouse, with two buttons, came a year later. Today, the basic structure of interacting with our computers, whether Macintosh, Windows, or Unix, hinges on the mechanical or optical strains of this peripheral.
GUIs
The second component in humanizing how we interact with computers, modern GUIs trace their roots to PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) research and the Xerox Star. GUI features introduced successfully in 1984 with Apple's Macintosh (e.g., windows, point-and-shoot menus, program and file icons, dialog boxes, and other now-familiar elements) let us manage our electronic desktops to suit our individual desires.
Hard Drives
The peripheral that taught us that too much is never enough. The fixed disk drive became a staple of microcomputers, thanks to its fast data access and transfer speeds. The technology never stood still.
We're now getting gigabytes of storage space in petite form factors. In recent years, hard drives have increased data densities at an annual rate of about 60 percent. Magnetoresistive heads are leading the next charge by providing greater areal density than thin film or ferrite-inductive heads. Lower seek times, caching optimizations, and higher spin rates push performance even more. In the future, the digital read channel may double the amount of information we can jam onto drive platters.
Laser Printers
These fast, trusty machines have done more to impede the paperless office than any other peripheral. Once laser beams began to transfer images into toner on a piece of paper, it became hard to resist producing hard-copy documents with as many fonts as we could lay our hands on. During the 1980s, high prices helped suppress our paper urge: 300-dpi laser printers sold for $3000 and up, while 600-dpi lasers started at $18,000 before going out of sight. Even so, the printers helped f
uel new applications like desktop publishing. Now, 300 dpi is under $1000.
LCDs
The feather weight, sleekness, and low power consumption of LCDs made mobile computing practical. As the technology advanced from the netherworld look of passive matrix to dual-scan and large-production-run active-matrix, we were able to travel with the same GUI-based applications we enjoyed on our desktop instead of packing stripped-down applications.
Software Agents
Finding data, organizing our schedules, teaching us to use new software applications, planning our vacations--software agents deliver what we've always wanted: an electronic guardian angel. These small but smart programs travel into the world to interact, extract information, or deliver data and messages to other systems. The promise is to get work done or to react to fast changes in our business lives while we're off doing other things. However, security fears of these "good" viruses need resolution by the Sa
fe-TCL (First Virtual Holdings) and Telescript (General Magic) developers of the world.
E-Mail
Jimmy Stewart in
The Philadelphia Story
called alcohol "the great leveler." The same could be said about E-mail.
E-mail has become more
than a mechanism for communication: It's given our ideas a forum for being presented to anyone in the organization, regardless of official chains of command. The Postal Service may go out of business.
Groupware
Work smarter. Collaborate. Meld the right people on a project-by-project basis. Break down the barriers among departments.
Lotus Notes
has been carrying this mantle since the late 1980s, and the payoff may be near, evidenced by the rising list of competitors. Groupware helps us tackle unstructured data in the form of text files, graphics, faxes, and E-mail that form the essence of our businesses. Once this data is organized into cohesive units, groupware helps us mov
e the information throughout organizations and provides a way for us to find it and pass it around quickly.
CD-ROMs
Turns out that the sum total of our business and cultural knowledge can be served up quite handily in 600-MB chunks. CD-ROMs have made video, audio, and text more accessible by letting us search for and randomly access information quickly and accurately. They have also become the medium of choice for companies needing to distribute proprietary information as well as service and training manuals.
PC Card (PCMCIA)
This technology survives in spite of itself.
PC Card turns portables
into customizable computing platforms that quickly connect to LANs, send and receive data files and faxes, and store information sensitive enough to require nighttime lock up. Developed by Neil Chandra for the Poquet computer, PC Card has grown to encompass much more than its original job as a memory card. However, diversity begat conflict
s among cards, hardware platforms, OSes, applications, and driver software. Card and Socket Services has helped smooth out incompatibilities, and the latest incarnations of PC Card include support for a 32-bit data path, bus mastering, and 3.3-V operation.
Visual Programming
Visual programming levels the elite and arcane aspects of programming to give tools for applications development, prototyping, and solving particular problems to a broader audience. HyperCard popularized the notion of visual prototyping and laid the ground-work for Visual Basic and Visual C++. Digitalk's Parts, PowerSoft's PowerBuilder, Oracle's PowerObjects, and Meta Software's Design/CPN are other descendants.
Parallel Processing
With the capability to perform a variety of operations simultaneously, parallel processing gives new punch to database servers and the evolving computational servers. Shared-memory machines pool memory resources so that each CPU dip
s from the same pool. This limits scalability, but systems built on this model can run software intended for single-processor PCs. They also use standard CPUs and OSes like NT and Unix. Message-passing systems retain private memory reserves and form the basis for massively parallel supercomputers. The result: superhigh performance for pennies.
Caching
New generations of CPUs grab the headlines, but MIPS alone won't make our applications run faster. By maximizing throughput from the CPU to system memory, memory caching helps memory chips keep pace with the needs of processors. Similarly, disk caching circumvents roadblocks between the CPU and slovenly hard and floppy drives by using a portion of system memory, in case chunks of data needed in the recent past are needed again. Slower CD-ROMs accrue similar performance benefits. Today, many types of CPUs have their own internal cache to squirrel away information important to the processor.
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People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms.
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Plain box, fancy parallel architecture.
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You can bend it, spindle it, and even mutilate it by applying rules and triggers. It's E-Mail, the epistolary tool for the 1990s.
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The mind of the corporation, the soul of reengineering: Groupware.
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Where will the innovations stop? Next Computer not only made Unix palatable, it built a Unix based on the Mach Microkernel Architecture. Too bad it didn't sell.
Top 20 Technologies
