John C E Ellis

My thoughts and ideas

  • The Technology

    The technology available today allows us all to interface with websites, each other via text and images. FaceBook and other social media have brought the human race into so much more contact with each other than anyone could really imagine. Online video via YouTube or TED allows people to convey ideas and hopes for the future to a world audience.
    My current premise is that whatever comes in the future will use a lot of existing underlying technology, for example, the Internet, Wifi and Networks, Bluetooth, PC’s, Tablets, Mobile Phones and Server PC’s. The difference is how we will communicate with these. For example, if you could implant a device into a person that removes the requirement for an input and output device, then we only need the underlying WiFi, Network, and Internet technologies. I am getting ahead of myself though.
    The basic premise of the current technology is
    Input/Output device – WiFi/Network – Internet – Hosted Server Farm
    Image to be added
    So let’s look at the technologies so far.
    Input/Output Devices
    Your Desktop PC, with a keyboard and mouse
    Your Laptop with a keyboard and touch mouse.
    Tablet device (iPad, Android device) with a touch screen
    Mobile phone, either with clunky key shifts or now more commonly with a touch screen.
     
    WiFi/Network/Modems
    This area of technology has changed so much from the days you took your telephone receiver and plugged it into an acoustic coupler and 300 Baud (30 characters a second).
    This progressed from 300, 1200, 2400
    Now a card plugged into your PC and direct cable connection to a phone socket meant it was easier to connect and speeds continued to increase, 9600, 19200, 38400, 57600.
    The above all had that distinctive tone as they tried to connect and often did not, also your phone line was tied up for the duration you were online.
    Next came ISDN which allowed 60K but also possible 2 channels so you could get 120K. A more stable signal also and almost always connected first time.
    Then came Broadband a new technology that allowed voice and data to come down a single line, a splitter allowed the phone signal to work while the data came through as well. this still had a modem but could now provide differing types of access and allow more than one person to connect at the same time.
    The speeds here have increased dramatically as well from 1MB (100,000 characters a second) to upwards of 200MB/S.
    A typical Modem now includes a Router as well, this allows more that one person to connect, and usually provides a WiFi access point. Most people for convenience use the WiFi for all their access. However a word to the wise, always ensure you have a password on your WiFi so others cannot hack you, but this comes at a price. The data being sent and received by the WiFi is encrypted and this takes time. If you have a desktop PC or Laptop then we recommend you connect it via a cable, its faster and more secure.
    Add Images and Sound
    Internet
     
    Hosted Server Farm
    I am not going to dwell on this too much here, but basically, we are talking about a stack of PC’s in a rack, with no screens or keyboards, hosting websites and mail servers allowing the Internet to function. Giant data stores exist with images, video, and music plus your personal information. This is FaceBook, Google, Microsoft and many others domain, but you can create your own website and have it hosted quite cheaply on one of these servers. For example, this website is hosted on a server, I do not know where it is in the world and as long as it works, to be honest, I do not really care.
    Some companies may host their own web servers, but these are cut down versions of the above. For example most banks and financial companies do.
    You can even turn your own device (subject to certain criteria) into  a web server, which is great for those of us developing websites as we can do it offline and upload the completed site to a suitable server later.
    Obviously, if your PC is shut down then the website is unavailable, hence why people use hosted servers.
    Appearing now are Cloud computing servers. These are just server farms as above, but offer differing levels of service and services. For example, Microsoft offer Office 365, Google have Google Drive and Docs, Apple ICloud for your Music and Photos, Amazon have a similar offering. Some of these services are free others may have a small subscription fee. It all depends on the provider and the service they are offering.
    What you should be getting is peace of mind as they will do all your backup’s. If there is a hardware problem they just cope with it, software updates are dealt with.
     
    Notes