Personal Computers: The Next 20 Years

Aug. 10 -- Look at almost any personal computer today and it’s not hard to see a lineage that dates back to that clunky box introduced by IBM 20 years ago.

Sure, some computers have broken away from the boring beige plastic cover. Models from Apple Computer, which produced a “personal computer” years before IBM’s original PC, are notable examples. But for the most part, PCs have remained pretty much the same — on the outside at least: a keyboard, a space-eating display monitor and a box that holds all the “guts” of the computer.

In the next 20 years, however, that will all change.

Instead of one clunky box, we’ll have a multitude of devices. Some of them will be as small as a pack of cards or even a wristwatch, making them easy to carry whereever we go. Eventually, they may be even small enough to be embedded in our clothes or perhaps even under our skin.

Connected to a “new” Internet, all these devices will be able to find information and share it among other devices. And instead of requiring a keyboard or even a pen for giving commands and information, these devices will respond to our voice or even a simple look, perhaps even get to know our preferences, and act before we bother to tell them what to do.

Not Far-Fetched or Far Off

Such an evolution may seem far-fetched — especially given how little PCs have changed over the past two decades. But many computer visionaries believe that we’ll soon see devices that will make “computing” much more “personal.”

Chief among the factors is the development of ever faster, smaller and cheaper computer chips.

Since the introduction of the humble IBM PC, the power of microprocessors has roughly doubled every 18-months — a phenomena noted by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in the 1970s. And software programmers took advantage of this so-called Moore’s Law to produce even more powerful programs and expand the capability of computers.