Bob Bishop, Chairman and CEO, SGI

Technology--Where Is It Taking Us? By Bob Bishop, Chairman and CEO, SGI

At the recent WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) conference on Electronic Commerce and Intellectual Property held in Geneva, Switzerland, Bob Bishop, chairman and CEO of SGI, outlined his vision for the future of technology. Here's what he had to say.

First of all I'd like to talk a little about what we mean by "technology." Basically, technology includes everything that's been invented since you and I were born, so once upon a time even a simple nail was considered to be technology! And this makes an important point, which is that technology cannot be "disinvented." Once it's out there, it's out there--whether it's harnessed for good or for bad.

If good use is made of technology, it can underpin national and economic power. Technology changes the very fabric of society, its look and its feel. And, especially in transportation and communication, technology gives us individual sovereignty, because it enables us to choose between countless different products and services.

The pace of technological development continues to accelerate. If business is evolving at three times the speed of government and law, and e-business at three times the speed of normal business, then e-business is accelerating at nine times the speed of government! There are also more technologists working today than ever lived before, and just one example of the impact of this is that SGI shipped more compute power in 1999 than in all its previous 18 years combined.

Furthermore (and hardly surprisingly!), technology has become the engine of globalization. Whereas the Concorde and the TGV got us half way there, satellite TV, GSM phones and now the Internet have made the "global village" a reality. E-commerce and 24x7 markets are both enabled by technology, and we are rapidly heading toward a borderless, boundaryless world.

But who is in charge? Who sets the rules? Who provides the governance? And who owns what? While many such questions still have yet to be answered, what certainly isn't in doubt is that technology will play an increasingly important role in our 21st century life--sustaining it on the one hand, complicating it on the other; disturbing all our social paradigms, and driving us inevitably forward.

So what does the technology road map for the first couple of decades of the 21st century actually look like?

One Planet, One Network

So what will this do for us 20 years out? Zero-cost computing and telecommunications will result in a world bathed in information. One planet. One network. The "infosphere"!

Second, and as a consequence of this, most services--including government, health, education, entertainment, and commerce--will go online and digital, as will most content such as books, films, music, and video. We can expect that most historical content will be converted into this new digital format. Radio, TV, phone, fax, and the PC will probably converge into a single digital device. Printing, publishing, cinema, and photography will converge into a single, integrated industry. And libraries, art galleries, and museums will converge into a single organization.

It's also likely that we will each have a single ID number that will allow us to roam the world and still receive a single itemized monthly statement listing all the charges for content and services that we have accessed along the way. And while many people may not like this newly emerging digital world--the world of teleworkers, teleconsumers, and televoters--the trends are there for all to see.

Third, intelligent software will do most of the work for us. Modular, componentized, and object-oriented; user-oriented, tolerant, and idiot-proof; voice-driven, visually intensive, personal, and friendly software will give technology a human face.

Finally, a vast array of consumer-oriented, Internet-based, digital products will emerge, incorporating digital cameras, local wireless links, GSM, and GPS. Countless digital chips will be in every house, automobile, and appliance, and in clothing too--flexible, washable and even dryable.

And it's this million-times improvement in price/performance that will take us there--precisely as it got us to where we are over the previous 20 years, from 1979 to 1999.

The New Currency--Intellectual Property

On top of all this, technology is generally multiplicative, not simply additive--creating an exponential effect as each new technology spawns other new technologies and resulting in higher-level effects. Just some examples where this is becoming increasingly apparent are the new product design processes, the Internet business model, and new e-marketing methods.

The product design process, for example, is now both digital and paperless--a new virtual process encompassing digital prototyping, testing, and simulation; customized manufacturing; build-to-order; and a zero-inventory business model.

The Internet business model, meanwhile, is all about chat rooms, bulletin boards, and Web sites; hit rates, eyeballs, and click-throughs; portals, ISPs, ASPs, auction sites, and banner ads; and the enormous market valuations of ".com" companies.

New e-marketing methods pitch transnational versus national marketing; one-on-one versus mass marketing; direct versus indirect marketing; and the removal of the need for traditional middlemen and their replacement by the new infomediaries.

In each of these, content is king, resulting in whole new generations of media and digital intellectual property (digital IP) entrepreneurs. As bandwidth is being upgraded from narrow to broadband, content will be upgraded from text through audio to video streaming. In fact, content and bandwidth are developing at such a pace that the "holy grail" of live, interactive, full-motion, color videoconferencing around the world at very low cost will soon become an achievable reality.

As a natural consequence of these developments, digital IP will take center stage as the main "currency" of the 21st century. Already, intellectual property accounts for 20% of world trade (amounting to U.S. $740 billion)--a figure that's likely to increase to 50% by the middle of the 21st century.

According to leading copyright/new media lawyer and author Lesley Ellen Harris, the value of digital IP is that it can be perfectly replicated countless times, and so a single copy has much essential value in its own right. By comparison, analog IP invokes a high value for the original, but much lower value for the less-than-perfect duplicates--especially if they are fully distinguishable--whereas for the exact same reasons, stealing digital IP is very easy.

Brave New World?

Such materials will ultimately contain both structural and computing elements: rigid rectilinear designs will become fluid and dynamic when in motion; car tires will change shape as they round corners; and houses will change color with sunshine, flex with the wind, and perhaps even rotate like a sunflower. We will have created an intelligent landscape.

Second, smart materials and IT will ultimately be applied to the human body itself, with major implications for cosmetic surgery, cavity-free teeth, and computer-designed prostheses; the elimination of physical handicaps; organ replacements; and the entire aging process.

Third, genetic engineering may well become the most visible of technologies in the 21st century. Already, genetically modified (GM) foods are with us and are indeed causing a tremendous uproar around the world, as witnessed by recent antitrust actions in 30 countries. We also have significant cloning capabilities (as demonstrated by Dolly the sheep). We'll soon have a complete map of the human genome, including all three billion basepairs. And gene therapy is very likely to follow, curing thousands of known diseases (although the politics of who gets access to gene therapy will be hotly contested).

However (and as I touched on at the beginning), who owns all the intellectual property related to all this is a question that is yet to be settled. Does it belong to the individual researcher or jointly to the vast number of researchers who are working on these developments around the world and sharing their knowledge by means of the all-pervasive Internet? Does it belong to corporations, or should it all simply belong to the public domain, as part of nature itself?

The political and economic ramifications of IP ownership are enormous, because IP seeks to restrict the use of products and content to those who are willing and able to pay for it. This exclusivity may unfortunately exacerbate the gap between the rich and the poor, creating, for example, agricultural control by a few global chemical companies; unaffordable AIDS treatment in Africa; and a digital divide between the haves and have-nots.

Ostensibly, today's IP protection system is meant to be an economic incentive for the author, the creator, and the developer. But the system may also have unintended negative consequences and, in addition, encroach too much upon the scientific, intellectual, and artistic commons.

The Millennium of the Mind

Will it survive? Yes. In fact, it will become stronger and more important in the 21st century. Nevertheless, adjustments will be necessary; otherwise the industrialized countries will be accused of overcontrolling IP at the expense of the lesser-developed nations. So is it a question of horses nearest the trough drink all the water? Or did we climb the ladder and then kick it off the wall so that no one else could follow?

Finally, by the close of the 21st century, science and technology will be heavily focused on the brain. Today, all six billion of us on the planet Earth are walking around with a brain of similar capacity. So releasing the full potential of the human brain is indeed the greatest challenge of the next 100 years.

We will eventually understand how the brain works at the individual neuron level and be able to treat the brain as a complex electrical circuit, instead of a soup into which we pour more chemicals. We all know that the human species is more intelligent than any individual member. We are all climbing the same path from information through knowledge to wisdom. And we all have the responsibility of increasing the world's mental literacy and creative skills.

Fortunately, we're beginning the new century with brand new, very powerful tools: the Internet, for networking people with complementary knowledge; machine intelligence, to assist and even challenge human thinking; and virtual reality, a new branch of knowledge, a bridge between theory and practice, between analytical and empirical, and a form of "being there" but without the danger.