Re: Found perfect convergence device. Its not a N8XX.
 

Troublemaker.

Re: Found perfect convergence device. Its not a N8XX.
 

Or he just types really fast.

Re: Found perfect convergence device. Its not a N8XX.
 

THE convergence device is the Nokia 9000.
Forever.
The rest is b*llsh*t.

Re: Found perfect convergence device. Its not a N8XX.
 

A GRAPHICAL LCD!!!!!!!!!!!!!111!!!1!!1!!11!11

Sign me up!

Re: Found perfect convergence device. Its not a N8XX.
 

johnkzin & Khertan: I may have mentioned before that I don't believe there is such a thing as a True Convergence Device yet. Why? I'll say it again: BAD INFRASTRUCTURE. We don't have everywhere Internet yet, and until we do, everything is a crummy hack job.

I was going to step through your arguments one at a time, until I realized that you're still not getting it; convergence hasn't happened as long as you can talk about voice, data and text messaging as different things.

Yes, in the future, we are going to become very very reliant on the Internet, and we are going to be fairly lost without it. I know I feel pretty lost without it already, and we aren't anywhere near everywhere Internet yet.

I think in a few years the concept of syncing will be very low priority. Occasionally someone will want to do it, if they're going to a boat-access-only cottage or something, but most of us will not even think about such a thing. Our handheld devices will be access points to our "application/data set," and everyone will have "a set", but most people won't be able to tell you where their data and applications are actually stored. Some geeks will still keep a home server to hold their data and serve their apps, but most people will just trust someone else, Google or whoever replaces them, to take care of that stuff for them.

Also, you should never keep the master copy of any data on your handheld (or laptop, for that matter). Not now, not in the future. Believe me now, or wish that you had later. ;)

Re: Found perfect convergence device. Its not a N8XX.
 

We'll never have what you're talking about. I live in Silicon Valley. I work on the coast. In the mountains in between there are tons of nooks and crannies where there will simply never be wireless coverage. And, yet, people live in those nooks and crannies (one of my IT coworkers, for example). What if you're stuck in one of those canyons, with one of the many luddite mountain folk, and you need to use your device? (like the example I gave, where you need to use a landline to make a call, and you have no connectivity options at all for your handset)

With _YOUR_ convergence device, you're screwed. No addressbook, no local notes store, etc.

With _MY_ convergence device, I'm fine. I can ask to use their landline real quick (just because they're luddites doesn't mean they're jerks), and everything is great.

Further, if your convergence device was even on the market, I wouldn't buy it. I'd keep using my convergence device. And, I bet you'll find people like me would at least continue to make enough of a niche market (if not bigger than a niche) that we'll always have our devices available to us. After all, X-terminals, Javastations, Thin-Clients, and their like have yet to displace low-end computers. The balance between these two perspectives is a constant ebb and flow, I'll give you that. But neither ever eliminates the other.


So, you're talking about idealistic pie in the sky theoretical convergence, and I'm talking about here-and-now practical convergence. (which isn't actually a criticism on my part, I often talk about that kind of "theoretical/idealistic/as-it-should-be" type of technology as well, but as Mahan pointed out wrt naval warfare, if you don't keep yourself fully immersed in both the theoretical and the practical, you're going to have problems .... practical beats theoretical, but the balance beats the pants off of both of them)

Re: Found perfect convergence device. Its not a N8XX.
 

I will say though that qole, while being a really smart guy and a real lover of the N8XX, has a really warped sense of what convergence means to 99% of the people.

His first criteria is his "always connected" proclamation.
His second is "infrastructure being seemless".

There nothing wrong with all this but its just not going to happen for 10 years.

Re: Found perfect convergence device. Its not a N8XX.
 

Qole is talking about the "perfect convergence device," the topic of this thread. His idea may seem weird now, but it makes perfect sense. In the future, there won't be any "dead spots," internet speed will be a thing of the past (aka everything will be instantaneous), etc. etc...

But more interesting to me is the real convergence device. In the future, I don't think it will even be called a device. Just an extension of the body. Probably some sort of implant so we become augmented with a computer inside our brain in a sense. (Bad example: Halo).

For example, if I look at a ice cream shop, a list of items sold will pop up in my head, a list of people who I know who recommend the shop will pop up, and anything else you wanted (maybe a list of the ingredients and nutrition facts, a 3d video of the inside of the store in real time, etc...). If I want to "call" my friend across the globe, I just think of his name and I can talk to him, video chat, play a game, etc...

That is the "perfect convergence device"

(Oh snap, its the LAST DAY of this thread. Get the bomb shelter ready)

Re: Found perfect convergence device. Its not a N8XX.
 

You don't need Internet everywhere in order to call a convergence device a convergence device. I don't give a rat if they have WiMAX in Antarctica or if they use penguins as carrier of information because I won't visit that place any time soon. For me, the same counts for the USA. For an American, the same might count for Japan or Europe. And I bet 100% of the ItT visitors don't care whether they'd have connectivity on the Moon or on the Sun or Pluto.

You need Internet to all the places you're usually visitting or are planning to visit. If connectivity isn't there it matters whether how important it is that you don't have Internet connectivity on that moment. This is for example related to how you use your NIT (or `convergence device').

For example, Amsterdam now has about 100%* WiMAX coverage while a flat free data plan costs IIRC 15 EUR a month. If you're in Amsterdam 90% of the time you wish to use the Internet this might be worth it, but if you're in Amsterdam a week of your whole life this probably won't be worth it although if you're on vacation in Amsterdam those 15 EUR a month might be worth the hassle you'd have otherwise.

(* Outdoor, indoor is a toss up for now, but soon this problem is solved.)

Re: Found perfect convergence device. Its not a N8XX.
 

Actually, I live in a very mountainous place, too. All the little "nook and cranny" 400-person towns have high speed Internet now (just in the last 5 years). A weird thing is happening; in nook-and-cranny places where you can't get cell phone reception, you can find open wi-fi APs. My co-worker told me of a story where he was camping and he couldn't get cell phone reception. He was walking the dog and he discovered that his N810 picked up an AP from a cottage nearby. The old guy in the cottage came out and asked him what he was doing, and he told him he was checking his e-mail on the guy's Internet. The guy said, "Ahh, so that's why people keep parking in front of my house and just sitting there."

Nah, thin clients were a bit of a dead end. You definitely want all the computing power you can stuff into your device.

Agreed.

As for here-and-now can-be-done convergence, I still want a little bluetooth module that ties my tablet to some kind of high-speed data network. It should be the size of my Holux M1000 and it should come as part of a $40/month unlimited data plan. Is that so hard?

Technologically, no. Politically, yes.