Dr. Dobb's Journal August 1999
After hearing yet another "my dog ate my homework (which just happened to be stored on my hard disk)" excuse, Les Moore -- resident teacher/writer/philosopher in Tom Batiuk's long-running "Funky Winkerbean" comic strip -- wearily proclaims "The classroom of the past...meets the excuse of the new millennium." Guess what Les, you're straddling (dare I say it?) a paradigm shift.
Others aren't as quick as Les when it comes to picking up on the obvious, however. Take the boys down at the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts (IATSE) labor union, for instance. Among other activities at this spring's Software Development Conference in San Francisco, DDJ's Philippe Lourier, Rich Bright, and Renee Hocking were taping interviews from the show floor and gathering audio/video footage of conference sessions for http://www.ddj.com/technetcast/. That is, until Local 16 of the IATSE showed up and demanded union members be used or they'd shut down the show. When questioned about their authority to do so, the union rep acknowledged there was a "threshold" below which we could operate, but he didn't know what that threshold was. In the meantime, it was shut down or the picket signs go up. Ever the diplomat, Philippe worked out a compromise that made it possible to wrap up the day's taping and go online.
After the conference, we tried finding out from both Local 16 and the international in New York exactly what the guidelines are and the union's position on the emerging generation of professional-quality digital audio/visual tools. Officials at neither office, however, would talk, instead directing us to submit questions in writing. Alas, that was the last we heard, as neither returned e-mail nor phone calls.
What IATSE officials have apparently missed is the availability of inexpensive and easy-to-use digital professional-quality audio/visual systems for nonexperts -- aka "nonunion members." More likely, of course, they are aware of such systems, but don't know what to do about them. So instead of working out a plan that both acknowledges these systems and protects the jobs of members, the IATSE resorts to threats more reminiscent of yesteryear's San Francisco waterfront, than today's Multimedia Gulch.
Another paradigm shift to keep your eyes on involves "hosted apps" -- services such as e-mail, document exchange, and the like that reside on servers outside your home or workplace. With your applications located on servers connected to the Internet, you don't have to lug around a laptop or fiddle with remote access to network servers while traveling, working off-site, or hanging out at an Internet cafe. And for some companies, hosted apps even make sense on-site, because they don't have to deal with the cost or hassle of buying, installing, troubleshooting, and upgrading software, or other infrastructure issues. The concept even ushers in a new acronym -- "ASP," short for "application service providers," which are similar to Internet service providers, but provide access to applications instead of (or in addition to) the Internet. As you might expect, consortiums such as the Cisco Host Applications Initiative (http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/ 779/smbiz/hostedapp/ index.html) have sprung up to develop standards and otherwise fuel hosted-app growth.
Bleary eyed and on the prowl for a cappuccino, I recently stumbled instead into an outgrowth of the hosted-app phenomena at the Cincinnati airport -- LaptopLane (http://www.laptoplane.com/). With storefronts also at Chicago O'Hare, Seattle/Tacoma, and Atlanta (with Philadelphia, LaGuardia, Dallas/Ft. Worth, and Denver due soon), LaptopLane provides T-1 Internet access, a private office, PCs, printers, fax, and phones -- all for about 38 cents per minute (and free direct-dial long-distance calls). For under $5.00, I was able to answer e-mail, check voice mail, and send a fax -- and, I didn't even have to unlimber my laptop. (Now, if they'd just start serving complementary coffee.) In the future, the norm will be more, not less, paradigm shifts, and the degree of your success will depend on your ability to adapt. And in the process, remember that it's always better to be the dog than the homework.
Jonathan Erickson
editor-in-chief
jerickson@ddj.com