Visualize This: Collaboration, Communication & Commerce in the 21st Century

Author: Joe Clabby List Price: $24.99 Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price ISBN: 0130662550 Publisher: Prentice Hall (15 December, 2001) Edition: Paperback Sales Rank: 681,123 Average Customer Rating: 3 out of 5

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Customer Reviews

The premise is simple but intriguing: How will current technology trends shape the evolution of the internet? Clabby's answer is the Sensory Virtual Internet. SVI is an environment where keyboard interface with computers has been replaced by voice recognition, coupled with the ability of users to receive both tactile and scent stimuli as well. SVI is driven by advances in these particular technologies, as well as infrastructure development ' advances in graphics, solution of last-mile problems, and back-end systems.

The subtitle of the book is 'Collaboration, communication, and commerce in the 21st century'. One of the main drawbacks of the book is that not enough attention is given to embellishing his vision of the SVI. Rather, the discussion of individual components ' immersive video, body suits, and so on ' is neither very original nor very detailed. So, while Clabby talks about revolutionizing e-learning or spatially dispersed teams, the discussion of how this will happen is very superficial.

Instead, Clabby spends much of his time describing how the core technologies needed for the SVI are advancing. As a result, much of the book is spent describing tech trends as they relate to AI, broadband penetration, network and server capabilities, and so on. I expect that Clabby's purpose is to convince the reader that these technologies needed for the SVI are not pie-in-the-sky. Unfortunately, the book is short on facts and figures, and much of these trends have been better described elsewhere. Clabby also has a tendency to pull occasional material from company websites to illustrate these trends. I checked a number of these at random, and a significant number have disappeared (e.g., virtualcharacters.com or snortal.com). Start-ups come and go, but this book has just been published, and many of the exemplars of tomorrow's technology are already defunct ' not an encouraging sign.

Two other issues are a cause for concern. First, Clabby focuses almost entirely on computers as the conduit to the internet. There are projections that non-PC devices will soon outnumber PCs, as the success of Pocket PCs and other handheld devices continues to grow. I have internet access on my iPAQ, and new cell phones offer similar capabilities. Tablet computers also lurk in the near-term future. I was hoping that Clabby would have discussed the implications of these type of appliance for the SVI, and vice versa.

The second limitation is his US-centric focus. There are many developments outside North America which are salient to the future of the internet. As one example, consider China. At one extreme, metropolitan Hong Kong has a residential broadband penetration rate well above that of the US. Concurrently, mainland China has surpassed Europe as the #2 market worldwide for residential internet users. In contrast to Hong Kong, these users typically rely on much slower connectivity and older infrastructure. As the geographic scope of the web expands, so will the variance of hardware and software profiles. What are the implications of this for broad SVI adoption? Separately, internet cafes and kiosks are springing up in many Third World nations. The pool of potential users would change substantially if literacy and keyboarding skills were no longer needed to access the web. Again, however, this interesting question is not addressed.

So, how realistic is Clabby's vision of the future? Ultimately, the question depends on the ability of these technologies to improve our lives. SVI could be the next big thing, or simply a passing fad ' does anyone remember the Three Stooges episodes in 3D, or the movies that were shown using 'Smell-O-Rama'?