Vassar Technology Today | In computing, opposites don’t attract—they integrate

Matthew Leung Managing Editor

Recent developments in mobile, wireless, and ad-supported products hint that the computing industry is undergoing major changes to phase out traditional laptops and desktops with store-bought, stand-alone software. These rapid changes require the industry to predict trends in order to develop products that will gain consumer acceptance. Making the most general claims about the direction of computing development requires “personal computing” to be treated and examined as a life of its own.

One way of doing this is to identify the components of personal computing and how they have been changing, and then to come to a conclusion about the general nature of personal computing that will allow us to think about its future course.

Major operational components of personal computing can be broken down into three opposing pairs: software vs. hardware, open-source vs. closed-source software codes, and online vs. offline use.

Software vs. hardware
The basic distinction between these two is that software is intangible and hardware is tangible. For example, Windows is considered software and the physical computer is considered hardware. Windows has been undergoing revisions such as upgrades to prevent vulnerabilities, independent of hardware development. Only when Windows underwent major changes, such as the development of Windows ME to XP, did the hardware need to be upgraded slightly. Since they are developed separately by different companies, standards agreed to by the companies usually ensure that the software will work on the hardware.

However, such universal standards did not exist for mobile devices such as the Personal Digital Assistant (PDA). For example, Windows Mobile, the operating system for many PDAs, is custom-adjusted by the manufacturer of each PDA model to work specifically for the PDA. Hence, Microsoft cannot issue general updates to Windows Mobile to fix bugs, because the operating system is slightly modified by each manufacturer. The development of personal computing shows that software must be integrated into the hardware and that they cannot be separately developed based on standards: Development of the software requires the hardware to be simultaneously developed as well.

Open-source vs. closed-source
The traditional division between closed-source and open-source software has been blurred by rapid changes in personal computing. Open-source software is free to the public and is developed by programmers who volunteer to write the program. Some examples of this are SquirrelMail, and Firefox. Closed-source software is the traditional stand-alone boxed software such as Microsoft Office and Windows XP. The difference between these two types of products is based on technical differences in the source codes and the implementation of the source codes in binary form.

The source code is like the secret recipe for making Coke or Pepsi, and the implementation of the code is like the retail bottles themselves. While it is possible to examine the implementation of the code (the retail bottles), it is almost impossible to discover the source code (the secret recipe). This is because this examination requires decoding the endless ones and zeros involved in the computer’s execution of the software. It would be like examining the chemical composition of Coke or Pepsi sold in stores in hopes of discovering their secret recipes and proportions of ingredients.

The purpose of open-source is to make the source code known to everyone. In theory, this would allow different developers to work on the source code so better programs could be written, compared to closed-source programs from private companies like Microsoft.

The current trend has been to move away from closed-source into open-source. In order for other companies to integrate software into their third-party products, companies such as Microsoft have had to share at least part of their source code. In the past, this would not make sense, since it would be like Coke sharing its recipe with Pepsi. However, with the need for different applications to integrate, these companies have needed to share and adjust, and have created policies to govern the sharing of source codes. Microsoft calls this partial sharing “share source.”

Online vs. offline
Since the introduction of the Internet, a division has existed not only between online and offline, but also between programs that run internally on the user’s computer and programs that run externally on a Web server. The notion of “offline” was made obsolete by broadband connections, which allow you to constantly stay connected to the Internet. Moreover, client applications such as Kazaa, AIM, and iTunes show that the internal and external division is effacing as well: these client applications have one foot on the user’s computer and one foot on the Web. In these applications, the local application and the Internet are blurred into one.

In the development of the personal computer, these three divisions disappear and are integrated into one system. The most general prediction for personal computing, then, is that as the computer becomes more complex, different components of it will become more integrated, and technology companies will find that collaboration will be the only way to advance in the computing market.