Technology trends, Internet Applications and Possible Roadblocks

Information technology is improving at an accelerating rate. This opens the way for innovativeapplications, which make organizations and individuals more efficient and effective. This chapter outlineshardware progress, which has led to new forms of software and software development. Software evolutionhas brought us to the current era of Internet-based software. After describing some of the characteristics of Internet-based software, we ask whether the progress we have enjoyed will continue and conclude with adiscussion of some of the non-technical issues, which tend to impede that progress.I.Hardware progressII.Software progressIII.Internet based software

IV.

Will the progress continue?V.Bumps in the information technology road

I. Hardware progress

Technology is improving rapidly. It seems that a new cell phone or computer is outdated the day after you buy it. This is nothing new. Consider manned flight for example. The Wright Brothers first flight in 1903lasted only12 seconds and covered 37 meters.

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Once we understand the science underlying an invention,engineers make rapid improvements in the technology. Within 66 years of that historical first flight, Apollo11 landed on the moon.Would you guess that that information technology progress is slowing down, holding steady, or accelerating? It turns out that it is accelerating – the improvements this year were greater than those of lastyear, and those of next year will be still greater. We often use the term

exponential

to describe suchimprovement. Informally, it means that something is improving very rapidly. More precisely, it means thatthe improvement is taking place at a

constant rate

, like compound interest. In this section, we consider three technologies underlying IT – electronics, storage, and communication. Each of these technologies isimproving exponentially.

Sidebar: Exponential growth

Take, for example, a startup company with $1,000 sales during the first year. If sales double (100 percentgrowth rate) every year, the sales curve over the first twelve years will be:Exhibit 1: Exponential growth graphed with a linear scale.

Twelve years sales growth, linear scale

$0$500,000$1,000,000$1,500,000$2,000,000$2,500,0000 2 4 6 8 10 12 14

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http://www.nasm.si.edu/galleries/gal100/wright1903.html.

Sales are growing exponentially, but the curve is almost flat at the beginning and then shoots nearly straightup. Graphing the same data using a logarithmic scale on the Y axis gives us a better picture of the constantgrowth rate:Exhibit 2: Exponential growth graphed with a logarithmic scale.

Twelve years sales growth, logarithmic scale

$1$10$100$1,000$10,000$100,000$1,000,000$10,000,0000 2 4 6 8 10 12 14

Note that since the growth rate is constant (100 percent per year in this example), the graph is a straightline. You can experiment with differing growth rates using the attached spreadsheet.Of course, nothing, not even technology, improves exponentially for ever. At some point, exponentialimprovement hits limits, and slows down. Consider the following graph of world records in the 100 meter dash:

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Exhibit 3: Linear improvement.

100 dash world record for men (seconds)

9.79.89.91010.110.210.310.410.510.610.71900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

There is steady improvement, but it is at a roughly

linear

rate. The record improves by a constant

amount

,not at a constant

rate

.

Progress in electronic technology

Transistors are a key component in all electronic devices – cell phones, computers, portable music players,wrist watches, etc. A team of physicists at the Bell Telephone research laboratory in the United Statesinvented the first transistor, shown below.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Record_progression_100_m_men.

Exhibit 4: The first transistor.This prototype was about the size of a 25 cent coin, and, like the Wright brothers’ first plane, it had no practical value, but was a proof of concept. Engineers soon improved upon the design. In 1954, TexasInstruments began manufacturing transistors. They were about the size of a pencil eraser, and severalwould be wired together to make a circuit for a device like a transistor radio. In the late 1950s, engineers began making

integrated circuits

(

ICs

or

chips

) which combined several transistors and the connections between them on a small piece of silicon. Today, a single IC can contain millions of transistors and the cost per transistor is nearly zero.Consider the

central processing unit

(

CPU

) chip that executes the instructions in personal computers andother devices. Most personal computers use CPU chips manufactured by Intel Corporation, which offeredthe first commercial

microprocessor

(a complete CPU on a chip) in 1971. That microprocessor, the Intel4004, contained 2,300 transistors. As shown here, Intel CPU transistor density has grown exponentiallysince that time:

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Exhibit 5: Improvement in electronic technology.

Transistors on Intel CPU chips (millions)

0.0010.010.111010010001971 2005

With the packaging of multiple CPU cores on a single chip, transistor counts are now well over one billion.Intel co-founder Gordon Moore predicted this exponential growth in 1965. He formulated

Moore’s Law

, predicting that the number of transistors per chip that yields the minimum cost per transistor would increase

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http://www.intel.com/pressroom/kits/quickreffam.htm.