Dinesh's photos with the keyword: Big Switch

Today, it's hard to imagine computer owners in the United States and other developed countries abandoning for thin clients. { www.igel.com/us/ } Many of us, after all, have dozens or even hundreds of gigabytes of date on our personal hard drives, including hefty music and video files. But once utility services mature, the idea of getting rid of your PC will become much more attractive. At that point, each of us will have access to virtually unlimited online storage as well as a rich array of software services. We'll also be tapping into the Net through many different devises, from mobile phones to televisions, and we'll want to have all of them share our data and applications. Having our files and software locked into our PC's hard drive will be an unnecessary nuisance. Companies like Google and Yahoo will likely be eager to supply with all-purpose utility services, possibly including thin-client devices, for free - in return for the privilege of showing us advertisements. We may find, twenty or so years from now, that the personal computer has become a museum piece, a reminder of a curious time when all of were forced to be amateur computer technicians. ~ Page 80 - 81 (BIG SWITCH)

One of man’s greatest inventions was also one of his most modest the wick. We don’t know who first realized, many thousand years ago, that fire could be isolated at the tip of a twisted piece of cloth and steadily fed, through capillary action, by a reservoir of wax or oil, but the discovery was, as Wolfgang Schivelbusch writes in “Disenchanted Night,” “as revolutionary in the development of artificial lighting as the wheel in the history of transport.” The wick tamed fire, allowing it to be used with a precision and an efficiency far beyond what was possible with a wooden torch or bundle of twigs. In the process it helped domesticate us as well. It’s hard to imagine civilization progressing to where it is today by torchlight. ~ Page 231 Epilogue (The Big Switch - Nicholas Carr)