Amazon Floods the Information Commons

Amazon is bringing cloud computing to the masses. Any individual with access to a browser now has access to almost unlimited computing power and storage. This may be the moment that marks the official beginning of the end of the desktop computer, which was already on a downward slide because of the rise of notebooks, netbooks, tablets, and smartphones.

For managers of computer labs, this technology eliminates a slew of nitty gritty management problems without good solutions. When a shared computer is idle, do you take action after 5, 10, or 15 minutes? If you wait too long, you annoy users who are waiting for their turn, and you invite unauthorized users to sneak into someone else's session. If you act too soon, you ruin the experience for the current user. Should you immediately log off an idle user or do you lock the screen for a while before logging off? Again, you balance the interests of the current user against those of the next user. Which software do you install where? Installing all software on every computer is usually too expensive. But if each computer in the lab has its own configuration, how do you communicate those differences to the users? The ultimate challenge of the shared computer is how to let students install software that they themselves are developing while keeping the computer relatively secure, usable to others, and free from pirated software.

Amazon has solved all of this and more. With cloud-based computers, there is no such thing as an idle computer, only idle screens. Shutting down a screen and turning it over to another user does not ruin a session in progress. It is more like turning over a printer. The cloud-based personal computer is configured for one user according to his or her requirements. Students and faculty can install whatever software they need, including their own research software. As to the usual suite of standard applications, cloud services like Adobe Creative Cloud, Google Apps, and Windows Azure have eliminated software installation and maintenance entirely.

The potential of cloud computing in the Information Commons is more than substituting one technology with another. Students and faculty suddenly have their own custom computing laboratory with an unlimited number of computers over which they have complete control. One can imagine projects in which cloud-based computers harvest measurements from sensors across the globe (weather-related, for example), read and analyze the news, and data mine social networks. All of this data can then be fed to high-performance servers running research software for analysis and visualization.

Currently, retail pricing for a cloud-based personal computer starts at $35 per month. This is already a very good price point, considering that it eliminates the hardware replacement cycle, software maintenance, security issues, etc. One can also add and drop computers as needed. Moreover, this is a price point established before competitors have even entered the market. 

When computing and storage become relatively inexpensive on-demand commodity services, computing labs are no longer in the business of sharing computing devices, storage, and software; they are in the business of sharing visualization devices. Currently, Information Commons provide large-screen high-resolution monitors attached to a computer. As large-scale, high-performance, big-data projects grow in popularity across many disciplines, there will be increasing demand for more advanced equipment to visualize and render the results. Today's computing labs will morph into advanced visualization labs. They will provide the capacity to use multiple large high-resolution screens. They may provide access to CAVEs (CAVE Automatic Virtual Environment) and/or additive-manufacturing equipment (which includes 3-D printing). The support requirements for such equipment are radically different from those for current computer labs. CAVEs need large rooms with no windows, multiple projectors, and a sound system. Additive manufacturing may be loud and may require specialized venting systems.

For managers of Information Commons, it is not too early to start planning for this transition. They may look forward to getting rid of the nitty-gritty unsolvable problems mentioned above, but integrating these technologies into the real estate currently used for computing labs and libraries will require all of the organizational and management skills they can muster.

The End of Stuff

Ever since the industrial revolution, the world economy has grown by producing more, better, and cheaper goods and services. Because we produce more efficiently, we spend fewer resources on need-to-haves and are able to buy more nice-to-haves. The current recession, or depression, interrupted the increase in material prosperity for many, but the long-term trend of increasing efficiency continued and, perhaps, accelerated.

The major driver of efficiency in the industrial and service economy was information technology. In the last fifty years, we streamlined production, warehouses, transportation, logistics, retailing, marketing, accounting, and management. Travel agents were replaced by web sites. Telephone operators all but disappeared. Even financial management, tax preparation, and legal advice were partially automated. Lately, this efficiency evolution has shifted into hyperdrive with a new phenomenon: information technology replacing physical goods. Instead of producing goods more efficiently, we are not producing them at all and replacing them with lines of code.

It started with music, where bit streams replaced CDs. Photography, video, and books followed. Smartphone apps have replaced or may replace alarm clocks, watches, timers, cameras, voice recorders, road maps, agendas, planners, handheld game devices, etc. Before long, apps will replace keys to our houses and cars. They will replace ID cards, driver licenses, credit cards, and membership cards. As our smart phones replace everything in our wallet and the wallet itself, they will also replace ATMs. Tablet computers are replacing the briefcase and its contents. Soon, Google Glass may improve upon phone and tablet functionality and replace both. If not Google Glass, another product will. Desk phones and the analog phone network are on their unavoidable decline into oblivion.

The paperless office has been imminent since the seventies, always just out of reach. But technology and people's attitudes have now converged to a point where the paperless office is practical and feasible, even desirable. We may never eliminate print entirely, but the number of printers will eventually start declining. As printers go, so will copiers. Electronic receipts will, eventually, kill the small thermal printers deployed in stores and restaurants everywhere. Inexplicably, faxes still exist, but their days are numbered.

New generations of managers will be more comfortable with the distributed office and telecommuting. Video conferencing is steadily growing. Distance teaching is poised to explode with Massive Open Online Courses. All of these trends will reduce our need for transportation, particularly mass transportation used for daily commuting, and for offices and classrooms.

Self-driving cars are about to hit the market in a few years. Initially, self-driving will be a nice-to-have add-on option to a traditional car. The far more interesting prospect is the development of a new form of mass transit. Order a car from your smartphone, and it shows up wherever and whenever you need it. Suddenly, car sharing is easy. It may even be more convenient than a personal car: never look for (and pay for) a parking space again.

When this technology kicks in, it will reduce our need for personal cars. Imagine the multiplier effect of two- and three-car households reducing their number of cars by one: fewer car dealerships, car mechanics, gas stations, parking garages, etc. With fewer accidents, we need fewer body shops. Self-driving cars do not need traffic signs, perhaps not even traffic lights.

Brick-and-mortar stores already find it difficult to compete with online retailers. How will they fare when door-to-door mail and package delivery is fully automated without a driver? (The thought of self-driving trucks barreling down the highway scares me, but they may turn out to be the safer alternative.) With fewer stores and malls, how will the construction industry and building-maintenance services sector fare?

Cloud computing makes it easy and convenient to share computers. Xbox consoles will not be replaced by another must-have box, but by multiplayer games that run in the cloud. When companies move their enterprise systems to the cloud, they immediately reduce the number of servers through sharing. Over time, cloud computing will drastically reduce the number of company-owned desktop, notebook, and tablet computers. Instead, employees will use their personal access devices to access corporate information stored and protected in the cloud.

Perhaps, a new class of physical products that will change the manufacturing equation is about to be discovered. Perhaps, we will hang on to obsolete technology like faxes longer than expected. But right now, the overall trend seems inescapable: we are getting rid of a lot of products, and we are dis-intermediating a lot of services.

For the skeptical, it is easy to dismiss these examples are mere speculative anecdotes that will not amount to anything substantial. Yet, these new technologies are not pie-in-the-sky. They already exist now and will be operational soon. Moreover, the affected industries represent large segments of the economy and have a significant multiplier effect on the rest of the economy.

From an environmental point of view, this is all good news. Economically, we may become poorer in a material sense, yet improve our standard of living. Disruption like this always produces collateral damage. To reduce the severity of the transition problems, our best course of action may be to help others. Developing nations desperately need to grow their material wealth. They need more goods and services. Investing in these nations now and expanding their prosperity could be our best strategy to survive the transition.