Microsoft in 2019

When Microsoft was established in 1975, hardly anyone believed that it would be a dominating company. But even though the enterprise is considered "evil" by some, its owner, philanthropist Bill Gates, wants to donate 95% of his wealth to charity. This fact wouldn't come as a surprise to those who will see the following video:

Presented at the 2009 Wharton Business Technology Conference by Microsoft's Business Division president Stephen Elop

Note how the video starts with the next generation, the kids that still haven't been born. The emphasis is on imagination, not only at home but in the classroom. What the company suggests we should expect is an intelligent computer, a superior touch-screen that will be of great value in school. The idea of Microsoft's future operating system is what Google Translate stands for today - quick automated translations from one language to another, of course such that are taken to another level.

A teacher is presented in the following scene. She is checking her schedule ('Firehouse Field Trip') and in a quick second we can see the students who have signed up for it.

Learning new things is made easier for business people, too. The graphics flexibility helps an architect with his new projects and the computer estimates the needed data. We are also shown how we can be guided during a flight, at the airport, etc.

The interaction between people shouldn't come as a surprise either - this futuristic Bluetooth use can even check previous communication history between people.

But... if you get too excited about this, maybe you shouldn't. A quite sceptical article by Fast Company (the world's leading progressive business media brand, with a unique editorial focus on innovation in technology, ethonomics (ethical economics), leadership, and design) - "Why Microsoft's Vision of 2009 Just Doesn't Cut The Mustard" - calls the idea "uninspiring". The authors basically accuse the company of plagiarism ("Minority Report") and state that these technologies are already in development: "All of these technologies are under current development. And nearly every application of the tech shown in the video is already dreamed-up: Multi-touch gestures have been catapulted into the public's eye by Apple--it's why the iPhone is so very snazzy (and the iPhone's not much "dumber" than the device in the video.) E-paper is already in the best-selling Kindle, Fujitsu's trialing a color e-book, and touch-screen e-paper has recently been demonstrated. Ubiquitous "touch controls everywhere" have been foreseen often, and location-based tech--with cellphone widgets like NRU-- is just beginning to get off the ground.

So the video is set ten years hence, by which time all of this technology will have matured and be in common use. It seems all Microsoft has done is bunch it all up and applied the same--very "conventional" Flash-like--user interface to it all. And though, as Boutin notes, Microsoft's been careful to not smear everything with a Window's logo, that's the clear message of the video: "Microsoft will run everything."

However, even though it is impossible to predict what the future will bring, one person's ideas from decades ago might actually happen. Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" talks about how people have three walls in the living rooms that are actually TVs. Of course, at the time of writing (1953) computers weren't part of people's lives but maybe the author was on to something. Judge for yourselves:

(the video is from 2011)

Where does all of this lead education and its development? Hopefully people will pay more attention to countries from the Third World where technology would make life easier. Given the right amount of time and the possible interaction between people in the future, helping countries in need must be a priority. Unless, a fourth wall is turned into a screen in our rooms.