Technological Lessons From 2003
We don't mean good advice learned the hard way by users of computers, cellphones, PDAs and other gizmos. (OK, if you insist: Back stuff up, don't mess with files e-mailed by people you don't know, and make sure you've packed your cellphone charger.) Rather, we mean lessons that the big stories and trends of 2003 taught technology's various captains of industry -- assuming they were listening.
None of these lessons is truly new, but the importance of each was underscored this year -- as it will be, no doubt, in 2004 as well.
1. Internet Time Remains a Potential Savior/Killer
Sure, "Internet time" is a cliché. But we're still struck by how often pundits and even companies that made their mark in technology fall back on old habits in making predictions and/or plans and get burned -- because they weren't thinking in terms of Internet time.
In 2003, the arena where this was proven again and again was digital music.
Digital music -- of the perfectly legal, record-industry-approved variety -- is a thriving, exciting business as 2003 comes to an end. (Whether it's a profitable one is another question, however.) Apple Computer's iTunes has grabbed the headlines for this, and with good reason: ITunes is a remarkable service, offering remarkable ease of use and a permissions policy that's reasonable for everyone except the Net's reflexively anticorporate digerati fringe. But the field extends beyond iTunes to include the likes of Napster 2.0, Musicmatch Downloads, Rhapsody and now Wal-Mart, making for a healthy ferment that's great news for consumers.
ALSO IN THIS COLUMN
o Spam of the Week
We were among the countless pundits who had concluded that the music industry was so blinkered and reactionary that it would be a long, long time before it accepted that the digital revolution was here to stay. It was a fair analysis at the time -- it just ignored the fact that online, "a long, long time" can mean "a couple of months."
Yet this can cut both ways: Today's leader can become tomorrow's also-ran before you can say "AltaVista." In February Jace wrote a series about his (mis)adventures in MP3Land and touted MusicMatch as his favorite jukebox software. Today, while he retains a certain affection for MusicMatch, he's an iTunes user and can't imagine going back: MusicMatch has become bloated and crash-ridden, and only a masochist would try using it over a home network. He's not quite sure when or how it happened, and he's sorry it did, but it has.
2. You Never Have Enough Storage
It wasn't so long ago that the 3.5-inch diskette was the workhorse of the tech world. Now for most folks it's a coaster or a shim for an uneven desk. What good is 1.44 megabytes these days? Heck, that's barely enough room for today's Windows Update patch warning of the 57,000th security vulnerability that could let money-laundering child-porn spammers take control of your PC remotely.
Both the gains in disk capacity and the demand for that capacity are jaw-dropping to think about: The iPod, the successor to the Walkman of a generation ago, has the same hard-disk capacity of a fair-sized office building during the mid-1980s. Jace's stocking suffer for family members this Christmas is a 256-megabyte "keychain drive" -- and he knows those drives will seem laughably primitive next Christmas.
Bill Gates, famously, once said that 640 kilobytes ought to be enough for anybody. In a world in which people want to fill drives with multi-megabyte pop songs and snapshots, we're never going to claim that any amount of bytes ought to be enough. Within a couple of years no one will blink at having a terabyte of storage hooked to their PC, or doubt that much capacity is headed for one's pocket or keychain.
2a. You Never Have Enough Bandwidth
People who have cable modems or DSL use the Internet more -- sometimes for byte-heavy things like videoclips and music, but mostly for boring stuff like surfing and e-mail. In a way, they're like TV addicts who upgrade from rabbit ears and snowy UHF to a 200-channel digital-cable package: They may watch Oxygen or the Golf Channel sometimes, but chances are they're watching the same old stuff. Except they're watching more of it because the experience is much better.
While more bandwidth can deliver services that are only now being cooked up in the lab, more bandwidth can also make the humdrum Web a better and more-reliable service, with fewer "Internet congestion" messages and mysterious slowdowns. Also, as more people upgrade to faster connections, marketers have upped the bandwidth ante for their pitches. Ads, annoying or not, seemed to have a new flair this year -- better colors, better messages -- but continued to suck up precious throughput. (Orbitz, that ubiquitous popper-upper, redeemed itself in 2003 by creating ads that were actually fun, such as "Dunk the Punk.") Also, sites will continue to try to amaze and impress users -- ESPN.com's ESPN Motion is one example -- further increasing the load.
3. The Problem With the Internet Is People
The dark side of progress in 2003 was watching the Internet seem to turn into a seething soup of viruses and spam -- is that your e-mail inbox, or a portal to Hell? Whatever it is, our only defense has been to become disturbingly jaded: Something is really wrong when it's relatively normal behavior for office workers to idly think, "Gee, I'm sure having to delete a lot of spam with bestiality pics today." And that's before even considering the exhausting business of keeping one's guard up against viruses flying around hijacking Outlook address books, Windows Messenger spam, fake patches, phishing scams and the fear that some spammer has decided to forge your address on an ad for generic Viagra.
It's hard to remember that such horrors aren't natural byproducts of some kind of Internet physics, but exist because of bad people doing the kind of rotten things bad people do. (If you're in a sloganeering frame of mind, think of it as "Computers don't spam people; people spam people.") Unfortunately, the Internet was created as a technological preserve for academics who didn't do those things and never imagined the Net would include people who would.
From our point of view, that trusting model is beginning to crack under the strain. We're guys who use technology instead of actual technologists, so we don't know what it would take to rebuild some of the underpinnings of the Net to make it a less-trusting and a safer place. Nor do we know what the effects of such a change would be. But we do wonder if real consideration for such steps is in the Net's near-future.
4. Mobile Gets a Little More Mobile
Wireless number portability was the one big victory for consumers this year, showing that government can sometimes be a helpful force in bringing technological change. Portability didn't cause the mob scene that some predicted, and the carriers handled it just well enough to keep the government at bay. Shoddy service is still a problem, as are junky phones that can't even last the contract extension you bartered to get them. But portability should help push carriers to improve service -- and set off a string of mergers -- by making consumers' accounts more mobile.
Closer to home, Tim discovered the reason for his buggier-than-usual cellphone service: While checking the time on vacation, the backlight revealed three blue-hued ants under the glass, crawling across the words "No Service Available." Before he could show anyone, they managed to short out the phone. (After much shaking and disassembling, and more shaking, still no sizzled ant carcasses to offer as proof.)
5. Convenience Is the Killer App
In the Net's headiest days we met with all sorts of bright young things who assured us they were poised for multibillion-dollar market caps as soon as everyone adopted their digital service/software/system, a small matter of millions of people completely changing the way they sent e-mail, paid bills, or entered into a contract, with the only tangible benefits coming if everyone else changed their habits at the same time. (This is what PR people of the time would tut-tut was a "negative angle.")
Today the only evidence that most of those companies existed is a scattering of Koosh balls and logo'd Post-It Notes. But the lesson we've drawn from those days is that people won't change their behavior to improve a process that already works well enough, or that's a chore they feel is imposed on them by others.
They will, however, do more and pay more than you might think if the result eases life's daily annoyances and frees up their time. Take three of 2003's successful "digitals" -- digital video recorders, digital music and digital pictures -- as proof. All three have been hits because they get rid of an annoying, inefficient process. Every time we run across a half-rewound, unlabeled videocassette, a CD with one good song or a listing pile of old double prints, we think that the time and effort needed for TiVo, MP3s and digital photography was worth every hour and dollar. The same wasn't true for 1999's endless digital-signature and digital-payment schemes. But at least we got some Post-Its out of them.
What do you think were the technological lessons of 2003? Feel free to include business trends that caught your eye, or lessons of a more personal nature that will stay with you. Write to
realtime@wsj.com, and we'll post selected comments this Thursday. If you want to share your thoughts but don't want your letter published, please make that clear.
SPAM OF THE WEEK: Spam come-hithers for video of Paris Hilton and her ex-boyfriend indulging in what are normally private acts started showing up in our e-mail shortly before Thanksgiving. We dutifully noted this back then, confident that the Internet's fast-forward nature all but guaranteed a peaceful, Paris-free Christmas.
Guess again: Paris keeps burning. And it's making us crazy.
First off, with the light bouncing creepily off the back of her eyes and the fact that she doesn't seem even aware of the poor boyfriend, it's very "Blade Runner." By comparison, Pamela and Tommy look like a Harlequin romance.
Second, we keep forgetting the video is not, in fact, a Fox promo for "The Simple Life." (At least not an official one.) And that frightens us. Since Ms. Hilton's equally fast-living co-star, Nicole Richie, pleaded guilty to heroin possession, what kind of spam will show up with Nicole's name on it?
2003年科技行业启示录
2003年即将进入尾声，那么这一年给科技爱好者们带来了哪些收获呢？
我们所说的收获，并非指从使用电脑、手机、个人数字助理(简称PDA)以及其他灵巧的机器中所得到的具体经验，而是那些重大事件和潮流能给科技界领袖人物带来的启示，希望他们愿意对此加以关注。
其实，这些启示对大家来说并非是全新的理念，只是它们的重要性在今年得到了彰扬。毫无疑问，明年依然是这样。
1. 成也互联网，败也互联网
不错，"互联网时代"的说法大家已耳熟能详。但令我们吃惊的是，科技业许多大名鼎鼎的专家学者，甚至企业，仍然旧习不改，喜欢按照老一套去做预测和定计划，结果弄得一团糟。出现这种现象的原因就是他们没有意识到如今是互联网时代。 对于2003年，这种现象在数字音乐领域得到了集中体现。
数字音乐今年非常红火。（而该行业是否赚钱就是另一回是事了。）苹果电脑公司(Apple Computer)的iTunes点唱机软件出尽了风头，这倒也情有可原：iTunes实在是太棒了，它使用方便，而且下载音乐的许可政策基本为大家所接受。除此之外，类似的软件还包括Napster 2.0，Musicmatch Downloads, Rhapsody以及时下流行的Wal-Mart，这对消费者来说可是好消息。
许多专家学者们曾表示，音乐界保守落后，因此它需要很长很长时间才会认识到数字革命已经到来。这种分析是正确的，只是他们没有意识到在网络时代，"很长很长的时间"可能就是"几个月"。
当然，网络时代是把双刃剑：今天是领袖，明天可能一名不文。例如，名噪一时的全功能搜索引擎AltaVista如今已被Google所取代。在今年2月，贾斯(Jace)曾叙述了使用MP3L的一段惨痛遭遇，并赞扬MusicMatch是自己最喜爱的自动唱片点唱机软件。如今，虽然贾斯对MusicMatch仍抱有好感，但他已经是iTunes的忠实追随者了，而MusicMatch过于自大，危机四伏，只有自虐狂才会在家中用它来听音乐。贾斯不太清楚事情怎么会变成这样，并对此感到遗憾，但事实就是如此。
2. 内存永远不够
不久前，人们还都在使用3.5寸软盘。现在，大多数人把它用作桌子不稳当时的杯垫或桌垫。是啊，1.44兆字节的内存在如今能干什么呢？它甚至都装不下一个Windows Updata补丁软件，提醒你电脑有安全漏洞，防止那些垃圾邮件发送者遥控你的电脑。
磁盘内存应人们的要求而不断扩大，其增长速度真令人吃惊：作为Walkman的升级产品，数码随身听iPod的容量与八十年代中期一座中等办公楼的硬盘容量相当。贾斯在今年圣诞节送给家人的礼物是一个256兆字节的新型电脑存储器keychain drive，他知道这些存储器在下一个圣诞节时就会显得非常原始可笑了。
比尔?盖茨(Bill Gates)曾说过，640千字节的内存对任何人来说都是绰绰有余了。可如今，对于想把容量为几兆字节的流行音乐和照片放进电脑的人们而言，多少字节似乎都不够。几年之内，没人会对万亿字节的内存眨一下眼，或是怀疑这么多内存不能放在口袋里。
3. 带宽永远不够
拥有有线调制解调器或DSL的人们上网比较频繁，有时是为了下载很占内存的录像或音乐，但大多数情况下只是上网冲浪或收发邮件。在某种程度上，他们就像电视迷，从使用室内天线到超高频电线到拥有200个频道的数字有线电视服务，产品不断升级。他们有时会看Oxygen或Golf Channel，但通常是看老一套，除非他们看的多了。
虽然许多宽带服务只是实验性的，但宽带会提供更好的、更可靠的服务，减少互联网的拥堵和莫名其妙的减速现象。此外，随著越来越多的人选择快速的上网方式，运营商们对宽带下了更大的赌注。那些广告，无论讨厌与否，今年都气象一新：颜色和信息都更上一层楼，但它们占据了宝贵的空间。此外，有些网站仍想方设法让用户感到耳目一新，ESPN.com的ESPN Motion就是例子，这进一步增加了网络的负担。
4. 人在网上作怪
在2003年，伴随著不断的进步，病毒和垃圾邮件也充斥著互联网。你的电子邮箱和网站出过问题吗？无论如何，我们的防范措施似乎过于单调乏味。上班族常常会想："我今天得删掉许多乱七八糟的垃圾邮件。"这种现象是不正常的。更令人疲惫不堪的是，人们得时时保持警惕，以免病毒进入Outlook邮箱，还有Windows Messenger里的垃圾邮件，虚假的补丁程序、伪装的圈套。此外，人们还要担心，那些垃圾邮件制造者会不会把自己的邮件地址放在兜售伟哥的广告上。
人们不禁会觉得这是互联网先天的副产品，但事实上，这是一些坏人在网上捣蛋。电脑并没有过错；扰乱人们生活的是人们自己。互联网的产生是要服务于那些不会做这些坏事的人，谁能想到网络也会成为捣蛋鬼的乐园？
我们只是技术的使用者，并不是技术专家，因此我们不知道怎样做才能重建网络的一些基础构架，使之变得更安全；我们也不知道这种变化会带来什么后果。但我们想知道，那些技术专家们在不远的将来是否考虑采取切实的措施加强网络安全。
5. 移动更加便捷
今年，无线区域号码可携带性(WLNP，Wireless Local Number Portability)法规的生效，是消费者的一大胜利，它表明政府有时也能促进技术变革。但低劣的服务依然是个问题，例如劣质电话甚至无法接通你租用的线路。但WLNP会迫使运营商们改善服务，并引发一连串的并购活动，使消费者拥有更多的选择。
6. 方便是宗旨
在网络最风光的日子里，我们碰到各种各样的美好新事物，人们还信誓旦旦地说，这些新发明会带来数十亿美元的市场价值，前提是只要大家接受他们的数字服务、软件和电脑系统，就像上百万人已经改变了他们收发电子邮件、支付帐单，或签合同的方式，而只要其他人也跟著同时改变，可观的效益就会显露出来。
如今，这些公司存在的唯一证据就是宣传Koosh球以及那些给企业设计标志的广告。但我们从中获得的教训是，人们不会改变自己的行为，精益求精，把事情做得更好，或是做那些让他们感到是别人强加给自己的事。
但是，如果这些变革能使生活变得更加舒适，并节省人们的时间，它们起的作用以及带来的回报会比你想象得还要大。今年数码领域的三个成功事例就是证明，即数码摄像机、数字音乐和数码照片。这三样产品受到了人们的热烈欢迎，因为它们去除了那些烦人而低效的程序。每次我们碰到那些绕带的、没有标签的录像带，或是只有一首好歌，但其余的都是过时的翻版歌曲的CD时，我们就会感到播放TiVo和MP3或进行数码摄影所需的精力和时间是值得的。而1999年推出的数码签字和支付系统就遭遇了失败，但我们至少从中获得了一些启示。 你认为2003年科技领域有哪些收获？请把你捕捉到的商业潮流或个人体验写信给
realtime@wsj.com，我们会有选择的刊登其中的一些内容。如果你想与他人分享自己的想法，但不想把自己的信公之众，请在信中说明。
