February 2002 ISSN 1534-0937 Walt Crawford

Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large Volume 2, Number 3: February 2002 ISSN 1534-0937 Walt Crawford The Year Ahead We Interrupt the Technology Parade… …to bring you predictions from “industry movers (and Behind), II and shakers” in the so-called information industry. I didn’t note Information Today’s 2001 predictions until ast issue I discussed Bill Howard’s predictions the end of the year; this time, the Daring Dozen get for 2001. The January 15, 2002 PC Magazine their licks in early. “What’s ahead for 2002?” (Janu- includes “What to expect in 2002,” his new ary 2002 Information Today) includes the following L brief excerpts from a long set of predictions from “12 predictions. He does not expect watershed PC or notebook changes to make you wait before buying; information industry gurus.” he does expect widespread adoption of 802.11b— ¾ Without commenting on Stephen Abram’s set but not U.S. wide-area wireless, citing the “all-round of predictions (Micromedia, Ltd.) I’ll quote one uselessness of cell-phone browsers.” USB 2.0 may appropriately guruvian sentence: “We’ve spent hurt FireWire in the PC arena; cheap desktop PCs the past 5 years adapting to the Web jugger- pretty much wipe out Internet appliances; flash naut and the sad part is the Web is just an memory takes off; we get some “in-car computing” acorn from which the oak will grow.” (I can hardly wait for even more distracted drivers!); ¾ Stephen Arnold (Arnold Information Tech- and the Palm OS and Pocket PC devices will coexist. nologies) thinks the big money in 2002 will be Finally, he doesn’t expect big success for the new selling content via mobile devices and provid- tablet PCs (see “Trends & Quick Takes” this issue)— ing “actionable, high-value content where and “I fear tablets are the answer to a question not when it is needed” without searching. “2002 enough people are asking”—and suggests waiting to marks the year when the financial chickens be- midyear to switch to an LCD display, when he ex- gin to come home to roost for some traditional pects 17" units for $500. No more comments just information companies.” Note that “begin”— yet (although I’ll guess he’s right on almost all you can’t be wrong with the right qualifiers. counts); we’ll look back in another year. Inside This Issue 2001: A Failure Odyssey Copyright Currents ............................................................ 3 Following Up ...................................................................... 6 That’s the head on Joanna Glasner’s brief roundup Text-e: Monophone Comments…Trilingual Conference ... 6 at Wired News, posted January 2, 2002. She looks Trends and Quick Takes ................................................... 12 back exactly a year. Joe Geek is finishing another The Good Stuff ................................................................ 13 day coding at home, connected by Excite@Home; PC Group Reviews............................................................ 15 the doorbell rings, with the Webvan man delivering ¾ Matt Dunie of CSA (Cambridge Scientific) of- groceries; Geek clicks over to Napster to grab some fers a sales pitch for CSA’s pricing model and tunes, then checks the stock market. Well, Enron’s few real predictions (“increased linking from down to only $80 and both Lucent and JDS Uni- bibliographic databases to information sources phase went down a bit—but we all know that Re- at the object and data level” is one—and that’s publican presidents are good for the economy, so it a pretty safe projection!). should be fine soon. Geek goes back online, check- ¾ Susan Feldman (IDC) assures us “We are end- ing CyberRebate.com. Then he leafs through The lessly connected” and that we’re converging on Industry Standard and, finding the TV schedule bor- “enterprise information systems.” ing, calls Kozmo to deliver a video. ¾ Jay Jordan (OCLC) predicts consolidation on Need I say more? the Web, more use of Dublin Core (“the lead- Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large February 2002 1 ing standard for resource description on the than working nonprofit digitization projects. Web”), a “serious rethinking of cataloging,” “Go figure.” He expects continued reduction in and more digitization projects. storage costs along with increased demand for ¾ Allan McLaughlin (LexisNexis) touts XML and personal storage space and—I believe cor- Web services, “sure to quickly penetrate the rectly—increased but “slow and incremental” business enterprise.” Here’s an interesting sen- adoption of XML. While I hope that Karen is tence, but note that McLaughlin prefaces it right in projecting public rejection of filtering with an indirection: “It has been said that cor- and privacy intrusions, I hope Roy’s wrong in porate portals will eventually become the new his expectation that today’s unbalanced intel- desktop, replacing the Windows start button lectual property laws will be unassailable and a variety of commonly used applications.” thanks to political contributions and conserva- ¾ Allen Paschal (Gale) stresses the importance of tive judges—but I suspect he’s right. Here’s one sound business plans and “delivering what the where I can pretty much guarantee that Roy’s customer wants from us.” right (based on experience, an understanding of ¾ Karen Schneider (Librarians’ Index to the Z39.50 limitations, and observation): As librar- Internet) steps away from the corporate drum- ies look toward broader online collaboration, beat. She’s optimistic, sure of more battles over “they will discover that seemingly small prob- free speech and filtering but believing that “a lems such as local variations in cataloging prac- savvier public…will ignore pleas from Internet tice will create large difficulties in creating the filtering software companies to purchase their kinds of seamless user services they wish to simplistic programs, and will remain skeptical provide.” I might add that cataloging variations of the claim that pervasive weakening of our are nothing compared to database indexing- privacy will strengthen a democratic society.” and-retrieval variations! She dreams of seeing “the first truly intuitive content-recognition software,” expects the col- IDG’s “8 Hot Technologies” lapse of the ebook industry to continue (and This Christopher Lindquist article showed up on an hopes for a true open-source ebook standard Excite news list, pointing to a CNN site. “These that seamlessly translates text to audio), pre- apps seem headed for the big time sooner rather dicts that “the Handspring Treo will take off than later.” Security; electronic collaboration; peer- like a rocket” (in a wonderfully amusing para- to-peer tools; fancy storage options; voice over IP; graph) and considers the possibility of a single speech recognition; wireless LANs (802.11b), and government-funded Web presence “with the XML. That’s the short list, and the slightly longer potential to create a public information infra- set of arguments for these technologies (there’s not structure not seen since Carnegie built public one “app” in the list, but jargon has a life of its own) libraries all over America.” isn’t hard to find. ¾ David Seuss (Northern Light) offers another set of jokes—but, given Northern Light an- PC World Predicts? nouncements a few days later, one may not be The January 2002 PC World includes a longer-than- such a joke. “In a shocking announcement late usual story by Daniel Tynan, “20 products, trends, in the summer, consumer advocates will pro- and technologies that will change PCs in 2002—and nounce, ‘Information no longer wants to be beyond.” The assertion is that these products “will free.’” Tried using the free Northern Light Web change how you work—and possibly even how you search engine lately, as opposed to the paid live” (emphasis added). That’s a big assertion, par- corporate search service? ticularly lacking “some of you” or other qualifiers, ¾ Anthea C. Stratigos (Outsell) sees convergence but there’s a copout: “most of them will hit the everywhere. scene within the next two years.” In other words, as ¾ Roy Tennant (California Digital Library), the long as 10 of these 20 have any market presence by second “library person” in this corporate the end of 2003, PC World’s right. lineup, expects to see more “dot-bombs” in- The big 20 include 400GB hard disks next year cluding Yahoo! He sees that ebook appliances thanks to antiferromagnetically coupled media using “continue to under-deliver on content and util- ruthenium and 1GHz Palmtops “to handle the high- ity while over-delivering on expense and hassle” speed cellular, Bluetooth, and other wireless tech- and notes that nonprofit publishing projects do nologies that will soon be standard on handhelds.” just the opposite—but the press would rather These superhandhelds “should soon become power- write about the “stillborn e-book industry” Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large February 2002 2 ful enough to handle natural-language speech in- Thank heavens for Stephen Manes and his end-of- put.” OLEDs (organic light emitting diodes, thinner issue “Full Disclosure” column, “2002: what will not than LCDs and making their own light without be.” His “seven astounding predictions that won’t backlighting) could replace LCDs—but not for years come true anytime soon”: new computers will usher yet. “Next-generation instant messaging” will be- in an era of incredible productivity, downloading come “the mass-communication tool for the 21st cen- movies at home will become a national craze, spam tury.” [Emphasis added, but note the claim here, will disappear, cell phones will sound better than particularly since “mass communication” seems anti- wired phones, customer service will reach new thetical to IM.] Naturally, 802.11 everywhere. heights, privacy will matter more than mundane Add XML everywhere, “hyper-threading” on business matters, and Microsoft will stop overhyping Pentium-4 CPUs, the Arapahoe bus to replace PCI products and misrepresenting its behavior. Read the and AGP, mobile phones that “access the Internet at whole column: it’s only a page.

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