Ten years ago the word convergence was most often used when predicting the convergence of the television set and the computer. Granted there were things like PDAs that synched up to a computer, but the PDA could go into the pocket and the computer could not.  As we all know, it was the cell phone where convergence first showed up, combining phone, camera and PDA.  Then music was added as was connectivity to the Internet.

In the last year the excitement was the convergence in the home between the computer and the television.  This was accelerated because of the penetration of broadband into 50% (now) of US households and the advent of sites like YouTube.  Apple, with iTV and now a number of companies at the CES show are providing ways to connect these two primary institutions of the American home.

The other exciting convergence during this past year has been video viewing on phones, iPods, MP3 players and all forms of wireless devices.  This has brought about the interesting dichotomy of watching video on a two inch screen while out of the home and then watching video on a brand new 42” or larger flat screen television in the living room.  One thing to note is that at this CES show several companies are displaying ever larger flat screens, with several producing ones with 108” diagonal screens.

There are two new and interesting developments coming out of this CES convention.  As mentioned in the prior post, there are an increasing number …

A couple of months ago I made a post with this same  title.  I opened that post with the following language:

“Across the full spectrum of human endeavor, it is often hard to see what the future might be. Trend lines can be seen, and directions understood, but specific pictures of the future can be vague.  However, our future shows up most clearly in the area of technology.  Technology lets us see new potential.  It shows us new tools that may or may not become universally useful but provides us with possibilities to expect.”

Since I have an attraction to the ‘new’ and I consume a lot of media I often read about things that are interesting, but when combined with another news or product story point to a clear trend or possibility.  As I wrote in a recent post, part of being a futurist is pattern recognition and connecting the dots. Therefore I realized that, from time to time here at www.evolutionshift.com I will have posts like this one, hence the numbers.

We all know that in the past decade, the price for computer hard drive storage has dropped precipitously.  Then came flash drives that, in the past couple of years have also dropped dramatically in price.  You can now buy a flash drive with 1 gig of memory for less that the price of 256 MB two years ago.  The other dynamic is the miniaturization of memory.   Memory that fits in one’s shirt pocket

 There was a recent mention …

It was twenty-five years ago this month that the PC was born.  In August of 1981 IBM launched the Personal Computer.  This of course was five years after Jobs and Wozniak came out with the Apple 1, but it was the PC, and it’s rapid acceptance first in the corporate world and then in homes that ushered in the explosive growth of personal computing.  The importance of the introduction of the PC cannot be overstated from the vantage point of 2006.

Prior to 1981 computing basically was mainframe computing.  Corporations and universities had air conditioned rooms housing large computers that were operated by Computer Operators and run by Computer Programmers and Systems Analysts.  I actually knew a number of people who has these job titles.  Anybody reading this know someone who currently works as a Computer Operator?  It is now something we all do to open ‘mail’, surf, work and create.

The innovation that Apple brought to the computing industry was first basically embraced by geeks and computer hobbyists, but it did show the way to desk top computing.  When IBM launched the PC it targeted its corporate user base with the IBM 5150 launched on August 12th 1981.  The model has 16 kilobytes of memory – yes, kilobytes. It used cassette tapes and floppy disks to load and save data – seen any of those at a garage sale recently? The last time I saw a floppy disk it was being used as a coaster.

 IBM had tried to sell PCs before …

Earlier this week there was a report on the rapid growth of broadband high-speed internet hook-ups during the last year. The numbers are impressive and speak to the widening demographic and economic base of broadband users.

According to a survey from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, broadband adoption increased 59% among households with incomes between $30,000 - 50,000 from March 2005 to March 2006. It increased 40% in households earning less than $30,000 and increased 121% in black households. This is incredible growth in economic and demographic segments that had here to fore been lagging far behind more upscale homes and white households. One of the reasons for this is the drop in pricing for both DSL and cable. Middle and lower income households still lag behind more affluent ones with the $30-50k households at 43% compared to 68% penetration in households with more than $75,000 annual income. Overall, 42% of adult Americans have broadband at home, compared to 30% a year ago. This means that we can expect penetration to exceed the key 50% threshold in the next year.

To put these numbers in perspective, the only comparable periods of new media growth on a percentage basis were the early 1950s with TV and the late 1990s with dial-up Internet. When you factor in the fact that there are almost twice as many households in the US today as there were in 1950, the growth in actual number of households is …