Closing down for the year...

Scratch as I might, I can`t seem to think of any significant new technologies that have appeared this year.

One of the things I`ve started thinking about in the past few days has been the sheer lack of any significant new technology during 1998. I guess it`s the festive season that makes one ponder the events of the past year, especially since - as one becomes older - the years seem to pass quicker and with less friction. Every year, I`m sure, will soon seem exactly the same. That`s another function of getting older they don`t tell you about until it`s too late.

Anyway, one of the things we were talking about at ITWeb`s annual Christmas party, held at a rather spiffy country getaway 45 minutes north of Johannesburg last Friday, was the lack of new technologies. At first, the editors, writers and PR people of my virtual hosts wouldn`t agree with my hypothesis that 1998 hadn`t seen a single significant new technology. I don`t blame them, of course. After all, it`s ITWeb`s primary function to be involved in the creation and especially the shunting of masses of "news" every hour of every day. It`s easy to forgive them for thinking that all news is significant, but of course, it isn`t really.

I think the significant newsy bits of the year relate to very respectable earnings and share price growth (as well as good recoveries from many IT companies after the stock market "crash" in the second half of the year). Another interesting bit is perhaps the slowing down of processor development.

"Slowing down?" I hear you say. Well, I`m pretty sure that Intel itself hasn`t actually slowed down its development of new and ever-faster processing technology, but in terms of availability in the market, newer and faster chips won`t be as forthcoming as they were even a year ago.

Right now, a Pentium-II processor running at 450MHz occupies the top-end of the market, while the 600MHz version will apparently only be available later in 1999. That throws a bit of a spanner in the works when it comes to Moore`s Law, or at least its commercial ramifications.

Where there haven`t been any significant developments at all has been on the new technology side. No new computing technologies, no new peripherals (whether actually useful or not), no new networking speeds or technologies.

Technology development and roll-out usually falls into three distinct phases:

1. the actual invention/development,
2. the marketing hype, and
3. the actual coming-of-age and delivery of a technology.

There are some technologies that were beginning to hit stages (2) and (3) during 1998, such as Gigabit Ethernet and ATM in the LAN context. But it`s not like those technologies were actually new in the marketplace. Fact is that my office is only rolling out 100base-T networking now, because it`s the first time it`s realistically become necessary. Gigabit Ethernet is a geek's dream and not much use to anyone in (most of) the real world.

Windows 98? Hah! More like an elaborate bug fix than a new technology, wasn`t it? I mean, it was a damn good bug fix and I`m very happy with my installation of it... but it looks, feels and smells the same as Windows 95. It just doesn`t crash as often; and I get the impression that it`s less "messy" than the previous version in that it doesn`t appear to keep as much debris from uninstalled applications. But then again, perhaps I`m merely learning how to implement better housekeeping in my Windows computer. That`s a possibility.

Microsoft SiteServer is merely a further development of NT, IIS and SQL Server. Nothing new there, though getting it all together in one package is practical. PalmPilots have been around for three years now or thereabouts - nothing new there either. A colleague tells me that Carnegie Mellon University has just released a software package that allows users to control a PowerPoint presentation from a PalmPilot using the infrared port. Cool idea, but it`s at best an extension of an existing technology, not a new one.

So scratch as I might, I can`t seem to think of any significant new technologies that have appeared this year. In terms of the Internet as such, there have been some mergers or acquisitions, some interesting large-scale deals (UUNET and M-Web) and those sort of things. E-commerce has begun to become more of a reality, no thanks to some rather more ill-fated products such as that commerce box thing from M-Web. The next year should see some really significant advances in terms of more ubiquitous back-end integration into the banking system. Again, this won`t be new technology, but simply stage (3) of something that`s been around for a long time.

If you can come up with any ideas as regards genuinely new technologies shipped in 1998, e-mail me. Otherwise, have a good festive season, and I`m sure I`ll see you all again in 1999.