CIO Web Musings

Technology Convergence -- 18 December 2005
Posted (ahemm...) a bit late


Today I want to make the case that we are starting to see the beginning of the creation of a secure, personal media device (SPMD) that will provide streaming media, secure services (including secure access to money and personal information), and reliable control of external devices. So what is the evidence that we are converging on an SPMD. Here are a few data points:

· In my Blackberry inbox the other day was an offer for a 40% discount on “pocket Phone Tools” which “puts [sic!] the world in your hand.” The tool, it says, connects your cell phone to your pocket PC so you can get online anywhere in the world, synchronizes your calendar, dials directly from your PDA, and more.
· The Sunday NY Times (Dec 18, 2005) has an article by David Carr, “Taken to a New Place, by a TV in the Palm.” Mr. Carr, who describes himself as a “print guy,” ruminates about how he has finally jumped onto the bandwagon of watching shows, both time- and space-shifted on his iPod, that he otherwise would never had had the opportunity to see.
· Various vendors have announced variants on a cell phone multimedia device that communicates and plays music or videos, augmenting the existing picture and video-sharing capability that students seem to enjoy playing with. While I’m personally not impressed yet, despite their success, they will get it right eventually. (That is, I am planning to be impressed by phone-media device combos soon).

A few weeks ago, when Apple announced its video iPod[i], I was really impressed. I had to be—I had been saying to Apple execs for a couple of years that the iPod would not be seriously useful for pedagogy (something I care a lot about) until there was a good mechanism for distributing and managing images (they did that a while back) and for streaming video (they’ve just done that). I still have one nit—the iPod and similar devices need some kind of wireless capability so you can use it to display on larger displays without a lot of hassle[ii]. I know there are challenges: battery life, authentication (you don’t want just anyone taking over your HDTV display), and so on.

All these developments are getting us tantalizingly close to some really interesting capabilities. Here is where I think we are heading:
· To a world where medical students can review surgical procedures on the fly on the small screen and share them in group sessions in a next-generation Starbucks (enjoying that cappuccino?);
· To hotel guestrooms and meeting rooms where I can prepare and show complex multimedia or do a video conference on a high-definition display and ergonomic input devices owned by the hotel with the session managed and authorized by a hand-held device that I own and that operates the way I expect it to with data I provide access to;
· To a university where students can review the story board for their upcoming “classumentary” (defined here[iii]) on ethics in genomic research on their way to a friend’s party and then have their fellow partiers critique it on the big screen, while sipping Shirley Temples (freshman class);
· To a society where I can interact with people from anywhere, sharing a rich range of information, from plain old voice and video, to secure information from a personal or work database, even to emergency information on my location or condition.


Since I brought up security, I might as well make my vision (nightmare) completely clear. I was at a conference on computer security this week with folks from national centers and research labs. Lest you think that this is a non-sequitur, please let me explain. I was in a session on authentication and we were all struggling with how to get better authentication (how to make sure you are who you say you are) without making things more complicated for the users. Two major national labs had put in place a “two factor” authentication scheme and everyone else was complaining that the costs were high and the schemes frustrated their researchers. (We also talked about the problems with fingerprints and retinal scans being too easy to steal, but that’s another story). Anyway, the discussion turned very specifically to cell phones and that’s where the connection is.

At the national lab/center security conference, we all agreed that your cell phone will become your secure authentication device, your alter ego—it will contain your certificates, you will use it to input your critical passwords (avoiding that keystroke sniffer someone installed on that conference computer or your own desktop), and so on. Just as folks in Japan are buying sodas using cell phones as debit devices and Smart Cards are becoming common elsewhere for buying bus or subway rides, we are rapidly moving to a world where your handheld device is you, or at least it’s the secure interface to you. My colleague, Lanny Arvan, points out that cell phones have reliability problems and these must be solved, but I’d also argue that both consumers and cell companies recognize reliability as a key differentiator and, at least in this space, Darwinism drives intelligent design.

I’ll use the term SPMD (secure, personal media device) to indicate any properly designed, handheld device that provides a range of secure, personal services: phone, video, multimedia streaming, 802.11 and cell wireless, Smart Card, security certificate, customization and directory services. There have been some really neat demos (aka, research) on the use of SPMDs for controlling the local environment. Why bother with a different remote control for all your household or office devices, when you can use your SPMD? Now that you stream music to your stereo from your computer, your stereo remote is useless, but do you want a different remote for each computer? No, why not use your SPMD?

When you go to class and the professor wants feedback on the number of electrons in the outer shell for kryptonite, you can take out your cell phone and type in 7 and the answer immediately pops up on the professor’s display. (The correct answer of course is that kryptonite doesn’t really exist). The professor knows that you are indeed in the classroom, since the phone system can locate you within 10 meters or less and you’ve authenticated to the phone. Not long from now, you will vote with your SPMD, perhaps at a polling site at first, but then from wherever you are. (Not such a stretch: even voting by mail is common today).

So, while SPMDs today can do email, IM, video, play music, and even carry conversations, soon we will all be carrying SPMDs that can:

- Reliably control devices, from stereos to computers to videos to garage doors
Provide real-time feedback in classrooms (and theatres and ...)
- Buy goods from vending machines, stores, and the Internet
- Ensure higher levels of security so you can avoid identity theft
- Locate where you are to within 10 meters and probably less for emergencies or during exams
- Become access and control devices for gaming, simulation, and collaborative learning
- Help create and share classumentaries and other approaches to educating and persuading others[iv]
- Help extend the use of classumentaries to broader student life—social action, family communications, reports from overseas, and so on
- Let you talk to Mom and Dad at a distance using 2-way streaming video
- Interact wirelessly with nearby HDTV screens and other output (and input) devices in the student union (or the hotel room), so you are not limited to your SPMD screen or keyboard
- Show you your favorite TV show without downloading
- Bring your localized computer environment anywhere you go (either on the device or as a Smart Card)
- Call 911, giving your location even before you speak
- Monitor your basic vital signs
- Get you through airport security
- Pay your bills (you didn’t think all these services were free, did you?)

With only a few exceptions (airport security and wireless TV shows?), all these capabilities can be demonstrated today here, in Europe, or in Asia. Sure, many such capabilities are in “demo mode,” and point out problems with reliability, interoperability, and even acceptable security, but those problems will be solved.

One final note, SPMDs represent one more step towards the integration of personal and professional devices—one more way we can blur our work and personal lives in both good and worrisome ways. Even today, some universities[v] are moving away from the notion of university-owned cell phones, but rather assume each individual has his or her own phone and compensate individuals for job-related use; this has happened because we are all very choosy about what we want and often buy “family” or other special plans or even link our cell and land phone services.

I have no doubt we will all have sophisticated desktop and laptop computers for some time to come, which will have overlapping capabilities with SPMDs; these computers will play the role of “mother ship” with all sorts of valuable intellectual property (music videos, lectures). Eventually, the SPMD will become an integrated and integrating device that will provide us access to both personal and community information, allow us access to people and services around the world or across the street, and help keep our electronic (and even real-world) interactions safe.

“So, let me introduce myself.”
“Hold on a second, while I authenticate to my SPMD.”



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Footnotes

[i] As an Apple exec explained it, all iPods from now on will be video-capable, so we can just say “iPod.” That said, I intend to imply innovative devices from any vendor, if and when they appear.
[ii] Of course, I’m told that not only does the new iPod connect up easily with a high-definition TV, but it can even display HDTV-quality pictures today. That’s cool, but it’s still wire-based. Another vendor just announced an 802.11-capable iPod-like device, but this is supposed to be my December blog and it wasn’t announced when I wrote the text this footnote refers to.
[iii] Classumentary: a multimedia presentation used in the classroom environment to communicate or advance knowledge, usually prepared by students using easy-to-use video creation and editing software.
[iv] Perhaps the SPMD will lead to the end of Powerpoint presentations, at least in their current tedious form. That would be enough.
[v] Indiana, for example.