Punched paper tape was the main form of data input, and the operator console was an electric typewriter. No screens, no cursor. The CPU (central processing unit) ran at a speed of about 0.1MHz.
Despite its primitive nature, this early computer was much more pleasant to use than the monster mainframe I was subjected to a few years later, when I started at the university. The early, simple computer couldn't do much, though I did design a few text-based games for it. Still, it was a single-user computer--basically a PC the size of a room. When you used it, you had total control of the machine and knew everything it did, down to the spinning and whirring of the punched tape.
Although the bigger, newer mainframe had an actual CRT (cathode ray tube) screen, it also had obscure commands and horrible usability. Worst of all, it was highly alienating, because you had no idea what was going on. You'd issue commands, and some time later, you might get the desired result. There was no feeling of mastery of the machine. You were basically a supplicant to a magic oracle functioning beyond the ken of humankind.
People who started using computers after the PC revolution have no idea about the miserable user experience that centralised computers imposed. Even the worst PC designs today feel positively liberating by comparison.
For me, the experience of moving from a small, relatively transparent computer to an oppressively large and opaque one marked the start of my passion for usability. I knew that it could feel good to use computers, and I wanted to recapture that sense of empowerment and put humans back in control of the machines.
For the field in general, it's worth remembering the downsides to centralised computing. We must take steps to keep users in control, as we grow the power of the network. It's essential that we keep a strong front end to balance out improved back-end features.
What 2034 will bring
If I keep up my exercise schedule, I stand a good chance of experiencing computers 30 years from now. According to Moore's Law, computer power doubles every 18 months, meaning that computers will be a million times more powerful by 2034. According to Nielsen's Law of Internet bandwidth, connectivity to the home grows by 50 percent per year; by 2034, we'll have 200,000 times more bandwidth. That same year, I'll own a computer that runs at 3PHz CPU speed, has a petabyte (a thousand terabytes) of memory, half an exabyte (a billion gigabytes) of hard disk-equivalent storage and connects to the Internet with a bandwidth of a quarter terabit (a trillion binary digits) per second.
The specifics may vary: Instead of following current Moore's Law trajectories to speed up a single CPU, it's likely that we'll see multiprocessors, smart dust and other ways of getting the equivalent power through a more advanced computer architecture. But users shouldn't have to care about such implementation details.
By 2034, we'll finally get decent computer displays, with a resolution of about 20,000 pixels by 10,000 pixels (as opposed to the miserly 2048 pixels by 1536 pixels on my current monitor). Although welcomed, my predicted improvement factor of 200 here is relatively small; history shows that display technology has the most dismal improvement curve of any computer technology, except possibly batteries.
How could anyone use petabytes of memory and terabits of bandwidth for personal needs? Hard to imagine now, but I don't think we'll have any trouble putting the coming hardware cornucopia to good use. We'll use half the storage space to index all our information so that we can search it instantly. Good riddance, snoozy Outlook search.
We'll also spend a big percentage of the computer power on defense mechanisms such as self-healing software (to root out bugs and adapt to changing environments) and aggressively defensive virus antibodies. We'll need such software to protect against "social engineering" attacks, such as e-mail that purports to come from your boss and asks you to open an attachment.
Computer games in 2034 are likely to offer simulated worlds and interactive storytelling that's more engaging than linear presentations such as those in most movies today. For this new entertainment, the simplest accomplishment we need is artificial actors rendered in real time in high-definition animation. Adapting stories to individual users will be much harder. Once solved, the resulting user interfaces will be much more appealing to a broad market than current computer games, which typically feature convoluted game play and simplified worlds.
Even without full artificial intelligence, computers will exhibit more signs of agency and work to defend their owner's online interests rather than sitting passively, waiting for commands. Richer interaction styles are also likely, both in terms of gestures, physical interfaces, multidevice interfaces and the long-awaited decent high-resolution flat screen.
Certainly, our personal computer will remember anything we've ever seen or done online. A complete HDTV record of every waking hour of your life will consume 2 percent of your hard disk.
Science fiction authors do a better job than I do of speculating on future advances and the implications for human existence. However, one thing is certain: The transition from punched tape to the Web and megapixel displays is merely the first and smallest part of the evolution of user interfaces. If we keep human needs in mind and harness the increased computer power appropriately, there will be great and exciting things ahead in our field.
biography
Jakob Nielsen is co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group and a specialist in Web usability.
1
Russell Freshwater - 28/05/04
Great article Jakob, but you've got it all wrong.
Within 30 years at least one artificial intellegence computing project will have gone horribly wrong and the computers will have us all out there digging holes looking for organisms to improve their CPU's.
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2
Morpheus - 29/05/04
> THE MATRIX HAS YOU
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3
Adam Zey - 29/05/04
Good... Maybe we'll finally have good voice recognition and synthesis.
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4
David Miller - 29/05/04
You misused Moore's Law, which you stated 'computer power doubles every 18 months.' Actually, Moore's Law states the number of transistors double every 18 months, NOT computer power. I doubt we will have anything close to 3PHz for home PC's in 2034.
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5
R. Dale Thomas - 29/05/04
I think that you should have evaluated your data a little more. The typical 'fast' computer today is about 3GHz, thirty years ago they were considerably more than 3KHz. In fact in 1971, a computer that I designed as an engineer that was built by Lockheed used clock cycles under 200ns - more than 5MHz. Thats not even a factor of 1000 in over 33 years. Take memory and you get 1GB now as compared to 1MB then - again about 1000 to 1. So try maybe 1000:1 and you get maybe 3THz for your processor speed.
Dale.
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6
asdf asdfstein - 29/05/04
I think the projections made are not realistic. The author is not accounting for physical limitations not yet encountered or even conceived.
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7
Ron - 29/05/04
"The typical 'fast' computer today is about 3GHz, thirty years ago they were considerably more than 3KHz. In fact in 1971, a computer that I designed as an engineer that was built by Lockheed used clock cycles under 200ns - more than 5MHz."
Sure, for the military, and it cost $10,000 in 1971 dollars. Civilian CPUs, though, in the early 1970s, were definitely sub-MHz. The 1st Apples and TRS-80s ran at 1MHz in the late 1970s.
"Take memory and you get 1GB now as compared to 1MB then - again about 1000 to 1."
Oh, puh-leez. No machine in civilian usage in 1975 had 1MB RAM.
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8
X - 29/05/04
"Even without full artificial intelligence, computers will exhibit more signs of agency and work to defend their owner's online interests rather than sitting passively, waiting for commands"
So, once again, we'll be at the mainframe? We won't be in control, we won't feel in control. Great.
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9
hac - 29/05/04
actually, moore's law states (and i quote): "
The observation made in 1965 by Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits had doubled every year since the integrated circuit was invented."
the pace did slow down a bit, but it has held to the 18 months, which Gordon Moore himself agrees to. This law is expected to hold true for at least another 2 decades.
So..... using moore's law, and going off the fastest processor i could think of in terms of chip speed (P4 3.4GHz)... by 2025, we should be running at 55705.6GHz, or 55.7THz.
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10
Phil Ronzone - 29/05/04
Uh, the comment of:
"Oh, puh-leez. No machine in civilian usage in 1975 had 1MB RAM."
is dead wrong. A good many 360/65's and 370/158's
has 1MB and more main RAM in 1975.
A good number of 360/65's had 1MB in 1973.
Since I worked on such, I know.
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11
Anonymous - 29/05/04
Jakob,
There might be hope for you if you show some maturity in what you are talking about.
Usually a good simple idea gets complicated by people who feel they need to add their say in. Your numbers, thoughts and comments are all wrong. Take a break will ya...
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12
amanda - 29/05/04
there won't be pcs by 2034, our cellphones would do everything.
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13
James Thiele - 29/05/04
You write:
"By 2034, we'll finally get decent computer displays, with a resolution of about 20,000 pixels by 10,000 pixels (as opposed to the miserly 2048 pixels by 1536 pixels on my current monitor). Although welcomed, my predicted improvement factor of 200 here is relatively small; history shows that display technology has the most dismal improvement curve of any computer technology, except possibly batteries."
You may be wrong on this one. By writing directly on the retina (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/pacificnw/2004/0411/cover.html has a non technical intro, you'll find terms to Google in the article) we may be using up to the entire field of vision.
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14
James Thiele - 29/05/04
You write:
"By 2034, we'll finally get decent computer displays, with a resolution of about 20,000 pixels by 10,000 pixels (as opposed to the miserly 2048 pixels by 1536 pixels on my current monitor). Although welcomed, my predicted improvement factor of 200 here is relatively small; history shows that display technology has the most dismal improvement curve of any computer technology, except possibly batteries."
You may be wrong on this one. By writing directly on the retina (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/pacificnw/2004/0411/cover.html has a non technical intro, you'll find terms to Google in the article) we may be using up to the entire field of vision.
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15
Ray Konig - 29/05/04
I find it amusing that Jakob's article is being displayed on a site that follows hardly ANY of Mr. Nielsen's user-interface design rules, such as using drop-down menus, different colors for links on the same page, links that don't provide visual feedback when you mouseover, a large amount of screen space dedicated NOT to content, news ticker, etc.
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16
Dave - 29/05/04
I see a more BORG-like existence in our future. Bio-implants and such. No more monitors or external interface devices. Computers will not supplant us, they will complement us. Synthesis, baby!
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17
irrelevant - 29/05/04
this Jakob guy is so hilarious. This guy can't be real.
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18
oppman - 29/05/04
Unfortunately with faster computers come faster weapons, I really doubt we will be around another 30 years before some idiot decides to nuke us!
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19
Chris Davies - 29/05/04
It would seem that Jakob has been spending some time at www.kurzweilAI.net of recent times. Pretty much all of what he says is detailed on Ray Kurzweil's site, except in more detail, and with the explanation of WHY he is correct.
One thing we can be sure of is that the PC form factor will be long gone by 2034. By that time I expect to have a computer inside my head, or at the very least, an in-head Wi-Fi connection to massively powerful processing capability, full 3D-sound and full 3D visual immersion via the appropriate nerves.
This will appear as magic - being a sufficiently advanced technology. "Telephathic" communication will finally be achieved. People will spend a large proprtion of their lives living in a completely virtual world. Thoughts, and experiences, will be shared over the 'net.
The alternative to this is that nano, or IDDs (Insanely Destructive Devices) will have already reduced the world to a place where humans are either gone, or do not wish to live.
Now, all you neo-luddites, go take a long rest, because the future is no place for you!
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20
oppman - 29/05/04
Kind of cool what posting and article in Slahdot does.... LOTS of comments
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21
Dave - 29/05/04
I think another area of - expansion - will be the area of interaction and control - what will be the mouse and keyboard of the future.
I'm looking forward to talking with my computer and using a glasses mounted pointer and eye-position detecting/pointing
device. These are here in limited form now
but by the time thirty years go by we will be
able to have total voice command of everything we interact with today. Imagine
a VCR that 99% of the people can control.
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22
Dave - 29/05/04
I think another area of - expansion - will be the area of interaction and control - what will be the mouse and keyboard of the future.
I'm looking forward to talking with my computer and using a glasses mounted pointer and eye-position detecting/pointing
device. These are here in limited form now
but by the time thirty years go by we will be
able to have total voice command of everything we interact with today. Imagine
a VCR that 99% of the people can control.
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23
Wayne - 29/05/04
Well his whole story is based on speculation and opinion based on past trends of improvment on computers, so there is no wrong or right. Despite his ignorance in a few things.
Some of you people here need to chill. Also using adolecent language isn't giving you any more street credit than the writer of this article.
Either way as long as i can search the internet/play online as fast as I can my own computer right now, I'll be happy. That looks indefinate to happen in 30 years.
I'll also be glad to not have to use a mouse in 30 years cuz I'll have some hand malfunction in hand movement from using my mouse from texureing games/movie environments.
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24
Jordan - 29/05/04
I think it's ridiculous that some of you people are bickering over who's concept of the future is correct and who's is bogus. The truth is, none of us know what the future has in store. We'll just have to wait and see.
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25
Daniel - 29/05/04
I've done some thinking about this as I'm working on a background for a book. Moore is a lucky statistic that got a prediction right. His law will collapse within a year. The interesting part in my view is the pathetic MMI we live with today. If we don't have a visual/audio interface implant within 30 years time, then I'm seriously concerned. Computer power will be limited, what we'll see is distrubuted computing with resource island that are avaialable to whoever pays for it. Bandwith will be the key factor in what we can experience. To make this kick off, I've introduced IQIT (Instant Quantum Information Transfer) in the ideas that will lay the foundation for my writing. It all comes down to distrubuted computing the next 50 years. Biological computng and then quantum computing will cover the other 80 years. I'm quite convinced that memory, storage and CPU power will be nothing compared to representation and MMI. Well, highly fictional, but still, I started when I was 9 years old and I'm now 32 years old. And yes, I've been down to CPU level design.
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26
Richard Sexton - 29/05/04
Paper tape on a high school computer in 1974? We had punched cards on out high school computer in 1970. Did you take a short bus to school or something?
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27
Steve Peltz - 30/05/04
Paper tape was quite common in 1974. You could produce it and read it on an ASR-33 teletype, still quite common as a console device (although "glass TTYs" were becoming much more common, we still used DECwriters into 1977). Paper tape punch and reader were a lot cheaper than card keypunch and card readers.
Large mainframes had 2-8MB of memory, 85MB removeable hard disk drives were relatively high-end. Consumer-level machines weren't. They didn't exist. By 1978 or so, 1MHz or so 8-bit processors with 32K-64K memory, 256K floppy disks were "consumer level".
Using a different base, from 1984 -> now -> 2024, my prediction is:
64GB main memory, 6TB permanent storage, 256x8GHz 64-bit SMP array on a chip, 8Gbps network connection to the home, Windows will take 5 minutes to boot, it will take 75 days to copy your entire hard drive to backup, display will be a 25" screen 3200x2560, with 48-bit color (or, alternatively, 3D goggles with 36-bit color), the average TV will be 40" HDTV, with 6-8 channels of surround sound. People will still be trading MP3s, and the RIAA will sue their 1 millionth "customer".
As for the engineer who worked on a 200ns machine, irrelevant. Typical "fast" minicomputer or mainframe had instruction execution times in the 800ns to 4 microsecond time, fast memory was 500-800 ns access time, core memory was still in use with 1-2 microsecond cycle time. Look at specs for CDC Cyber or IBM S/360 machines of the time. Anything faster than that was custom-designed one-off research; you might as well be using Deep Blue or Blue Gene as your reference point for 2004.
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28
Garry Page - 18/06/04
Old technologies like batteries and TVs are not following your projections. Digital displays for cinemas will push the number of pixels up and there is an opportunity for home movies to increase pixels in the domestic environment. Catch is the pixel densities will be driven by commercial pressures which will not deliver your projected pixels for the home or office worker. The screen resolution of TV was stable for many decades until HDTV delivered its modest increase. Majority of people will be restricted by price to the number of pixels they need to comfortably work on the desk (say three or four times current pixels of a PC screen) or for comfortable projection on a wall (give you three or four times current pixels on a HDTV). Current technology allows multiple displays to be built into video walls so the final pixel count is determined by cost not the technology limits. So forget technology density limits with the meaningless count of pixels and try pixels per dollar in your prediction.
No doubt processing power for the consumer will grow but I doubt you will see your projections in reality. Should send you back to watch HAL in 2001 or the earlier Robbie the robot. Look how the automobile has matured over the last 30 years and apply the same rate of change to PCs. No doubt there is always a market for a Ferrari but this is insignificant when compared to Ford/GM/Chrysler/VW. There will be those with their Cray/CDC6600/Whirlwind on the desktop but usability and cost will pull users back from the your projected technology growth. We can't even roll out IPv6 in a sensible time frame let alone your pervasive technology. Appologies, don't have time now to cover all the fairy tale story.
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29
Daniel - 20/06/04
Well its all well and good predicting what we will have in 2034.But ...whoever would have thought only back in the 70s we would all have a personal mobile, make our own music records/cds and be playing high graphics games whilst waiting waiting for the train..whilst drinking out of our bought water priced at $4 with no bins on stations (to avoid bombs/security threats)
Its great to try and predict trends but only the next five years is guessable
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30
Tom - 04/02/05
I think, as with most things, predictions about the future will be over-optimistic. Sure, we've made huge advances in 30 years, but I've never seen such trends as Moore's law as infinite. More likely, it is like any other growth curve (logistic curve): it starts out slow, grows exponentially, and then becomes limited and slows down its growth. Where's the limit? Hard to say, but things simply cannot continue to get smaller and cheaper forever. An early bottleneck will likely be things like batteries, as mentioned in the article, and increasing effects from the "quantum" forces, and of course costs of materials and manufacturing. Until we create robotic bacteria that can mine silicon and plastics and metal directly out of the environment (hopefully in a non-destructive manner -- see first comment), these things don't come free. The final limit would be a computer capable of modelling the entire universe, variable for variable, since the only such computer is the universe itself. Therefore, there is a limit. Likely far short of that particular case, but at least it proves that Moore's law is a simplification.
I think that in 30 years, we will look back on today and think, "there's no way we could have predicted this at that time", just as we do when thinking about 1930's and 1950's future predictions of today. Back then, aviation was the big deal which was progressing exponentially. And sure, we've progressed quite a bit since then, but it trailed off. It became less important as other things, like computers, became more important in the improvement of our lives. Within the next 30 years, something else will be invented, probably on the health front, which is much more worthwhile and interesting. Computers will still have improvements, but they will be relegated to the status of a tool, their growth slowed, and more integrated into our lives like electricity is now. Electricity used to be a fad. Electric things were oddities and gadgets for amusement. We don't talk about great advances in electricity today, even though they happen. Like compact fluorescent light bulbs and LEDs. Computer advances will be like this. Our p****ions will be elsewhere.
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