9.3 Conclusion

Advances in technology will always influence society, but not merely in a positive or negative way. Me-centric computing offers huge opportunities for the world to concentrate on the important things in life and forget about the boring daily work that is done better by computers.

While technology advances, people should always think about how to simplify the use of technology and make the technology the slave and not the master. Operating a VCR today is often a very complicated mission, as is changing the time on the car stereo. Technology should enable everyone to use it, not just the highly educated specialists. A mobile phone is a good example of a simple-to-use technology that hides all the complexity from users. But furthermore, the technology ( intelligent agents , devices, and services) should do work on behalf of the people. This would be a major breakthrough in the history of technology, as until now technology has been an efficient tool, but was not considered a replacement for a manual task.

Technology in the past has replaced manual labor with mechanical power, for example. Most tools automate some previously mechanical work. But generally , responsibility for task performance (setting objectives, controlling the tools, monitoring progress, interceding to deal with exceptions, etc.) has remained 100 percent with the human. Thus, the real change is occurring in three dimensions, some quantitative, and collectively to a qualitative effect. First, the scope of what can be automated is growing to include everyday tasks , requiring a multi-step process, with needs for both knowledge of and controlled interactions with the environment and other actors/systems in the domain. Second, the control of the automatons is moving up to a level of intent, often conveyed in natural language or other high-level ways. Third, there is the transfer of responsibility for correctly interpreting intent, understanding values, and performing work to accomplish objectives. This includes transferring responsibility for monitoring behavior throughout the process, from a human to an intelligent assistant that is a computer-based agent. Robots like those in the Jetsons will become reality, maybe not so sophisticated in the near future, but we will see them.

From the perspective of a world where me-centric computing is pervasive, the introduction of the Internet will look like just a small piece of a mosaic that led to the revolution. But getting there will not happen overnight. We are still seeing the effects of the introduction of the Internet in many areas, and a me-centric computing world still requires some very creative inventions and designs over the next few years . Maybe even more important is that companies create successful businesses that are based on me-centric computing business plans, architectures, and technologies. Companies in the IT and telecommunications world are already working on such business plans. But to have a truly me-centric computing environment, all industries need to adopt this paradigm.

We hope that through this book we have provided you with some business ideas and architectural building blocks that will lead to some new insights about how the world may be tomorrow and how you can participate in forming the future.