Glimpses into the future of mobile devices, the internet, and more - updated 20091110

Glimpses into the future of mobile devices, the internet, and more Director Citrix Labs @michaelharries http://www.citrix.com A thought provoking talk on mobile device futures. (Originally given at Mobile Monday Sydney, 2 Nov 2009)

Citrix technology ranges from point to point desktop sharing like GoToMyPC and GoToMeeting through to sophisticated enterprise offerings that ...

... simplify the delivery of Windows desktops and applications, including remote sessions from Windows Server farms ...

... and full desktop images, hosted on a shared server and delivered over the internet. These technologies are complemented by ...

... application acceleration appliances, delivering web applications for both the dot com and the enterprise. All of these technologies can run “virtually” to enable the promise of cloud computing.

Indeed, the Citrix hypervisor is at the heart of the largest (IaaS) clouds, such as Amazon‟s EC2.

Citrix has a significant market presence through our ongoing technology leadership.

Citrix Labs is charged with maintaining the Citrix technology leadership.

Citrix Labs also tracks the intersection of technology, adoption dynamics and the Citrix business universe. The mobile device space is of interest – and this is one way to think about it.

The future of the Mobile Device is as an outcome of three major forces

Let‟s start with the consumer

The SmartPhone market is heavily contested ...

... and market shares will continue to rapidly change

... however market growth is assured given our demands for ever more person to person connection; be that voice, email, or social networking.

The many new technologies are interesting, but are secondary to connection oriented features.

The consumer force ensures that rapid-growth, competition, and rapid innovation will remain a feature of this space.

The next major force is “business”

Business IT lags consumer technology. Particularly with mobile devices.

Enterprise IT is used to dealing with laptops and desktops as computing end points.

... but these are now joined by mobile devices with many of the same capabilities. This has several implications.

The most obvious is that we will see the categories merge with the emergence of hybrid devices like Android laptops and the “NirvanaPhone SmartPhone”.

The NirvanaPhone is the notion that the laptop can be fully replaced adding keyboard, mouse and large display to the SmartPhone, in combination with technology like Citrix XenDesktop or XenApp.

“Cloud computing” is another major innovation driver. This affects all computing end points.

It also brings new opportunities to optimize data location for security, communication cost, and congestion.

For Citrix customers, the cloud also brings the ability to provide every enterprise computing desktop or application on every device.

Citrix Labs recently brought the Citrix Receiver to the iPhone and Android devices.

Here‟s a closer look. The iPhone Receiver is on the app store and the Android Receiver is near tech preview.

There are a range of implications for the mobile device. Use case blurring from the laptop/desktop space is the most interesting of these.

To this end, Citrix and Open Kernel Labs have been exploring dual image mobile devices. This is directly analogous to the Citrix XenClient providing dual images on the laptop computer.

We‟ve covered the consumer and the business, let‟s take a look at some longer term trends.

We are, in a sense, “Natural Born Cyborgs” Let me explain.

You may be familiar with the “Ambient Orb”, providing „glance-able‟ status about some web based information.

Or the Ambient Umbrella, glowing when rain is forecast. In both cases new information becomes something that we „just know‟.

Similar things can be achieved with sensory deficits.

This is a rig from the 60s enabling blind people to form a 3d representation of the world based on movie camera and a pad of 30 x 30 solenoids on their back.

Currently replaced by work using a tongue based pad to transmit sensory information.

In all these cases, new information becomes something that is continually, unconsciously available. Much as we carry our mobile devices, 24 by 7.

Furthermore, whereas specially made devices need to establish a distribution channel, the app store model removes this barrier for any software on our mobile devices. We are entering a new age of sensory enhancements.

Marshall McLuhan said it well. We now “Google” without a thought many times a day. Our technologies shape us as much as we shape them.

The philosopher Andy Clark takes it further. He makes the claim that what makes us human is our ability to literally add our tools to our minds. Hence “Natural Born Cyborgs”.

Every new technology literally creates new brain paths, new ways for our mind to think. The sheer continuity of presence of our (24 by 7) mobile devices make this ever more the case.

Not only do we build these technologies into our minds as tools, there are good reasons to believe we can‟t help but to build relationships with them.

We can be tricked into caring for „emotional‟ robots.

And with nurture comes emotional connection according to psychologist Sherry Turkle of MIT.

But trickery is not necessary. We unconsciously use rules from our person to person interactions in our interactions with computers! Reeves and Nass showed that this includes ideas like team spirit, face to face politeness, respect for specialization, and susceptibility to flattery.

We can‟t help but to treat the computer (in some ways) as another social actor.

I suspect that as our devices become smaller, and less transparent, this effect becomes more pronounced. For example, many people are frustrated by the iPhone as a phone, yet most of us continue to forgive it? Why?

I think it‟s much like some work from the 80s on believable agents, people are far more forgiving of errors from a speaking cartoon parrot than of exactly the same speech engine with a human face. (That the parrot speaks at all is impressive.) In the same way, some devices seem to cue into subconscious cues for nurturing, or at least reduced expectations.

Our subconscious is not good at distinguishing between people, and not people. Do you see a face in this picture?

The longer term future, and battleground for mobile devices and software is intimately tied with emotional appeal rather than usability alone.

The mobile device will be driven by these three driving forces. Hard And to places we can‟t yet see

"Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future." --Nils Bohr @michaelharries michael@technoist.com michael.harries@citrix.com

References • Citrix: http://citrix.com • Mobile Monday Sydney: http://www.mobilemondaysydney.com/ • UI Exploration – Sixth Sense: http://www.pranavmistry.com/projects/sixthsense/ http://www.ted.com/talks/pattie_maes_demos_the_sixth_sense.html • NirvanaPhone: http://nirvanaphone.com • Natural Born Cyborgs, Andy Clark: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195177517 • Ambient Orb, Ambient Umbrella: http://www.ambientdevices.com/cat/orb/orborder.html, http://www.ambientdevices.com/products/umbrella.html • Seeing with the back: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_substitution • Brain plasticity: http://www.normandoidge.com/normandoidge/MAIN.html • Marshall McLuhan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan • Andy Clark: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Clark • Reeves and Nass: http://www.amazon.com/Media-Equation-Computers-Television-Lecture/dp/1575860538

Glimpses into the future of mobile devices, the internet, and more - updated 20091110

by Michael Harries on Nov 10, 2009

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