Televisions and computers? Not a pairing I like.

I have been e-mailing and instant messaging back and forth with Alan (in Sunny California) over the last year. We both are geeks and have webcams and such. The last few messages we have batted back and forth about are (sorta) television related in a sense. He said "Did you know that if you have a web cam on the same box as you have a WinTV card you can send your TV pic though the Web Cam?" As I replied to him, I try and keep television and computers separate. I go with the arguments......

Television is an electronic program or story, created and operated by people I do not know and in places I do not go (No pun intended),

Computers are capable of creating an electronic programs or stories, by me and for me (and my friends and family).

And, I have a prediction:

I estimate that television will die out by 2015. Or at least, TV as we know it now. Eventually, everyone will be able to make their own video stories and put them up as though they posted a want ad in the classified section of the newspaper. With the prevalence of data libraries in everyone's home (which will be a thing of the past also) being able to store and call up every "program" should be possible by 2015. My children will be able to see all the home movies we ever created at any time and with only a mouse click.

This also goes into the same thought that we go about our daily lives with hundreds of books on the shelves of our homes (or at least at our home) and no one nearly ever looks at them. This will happen to our kids when storage containers are capable of holding terabytes of data and are cheap enough to be a common shelf item. Except that they will probably have to go to a terminal to access their data where we now just pull off a book. On the other hand, I do take a laptop with a wireless connection all over the house (and even around the yard outside) to work, read, play games, surf the web, and all those other "visually stimulating" tasks I do. Now who ever said it isn't proper time management to play MechWarrior4 while in the bathroom? Seems like a good way to spend some normally idle time in a constructive manner (heh,heh,heh,)

Incidentally, IBM is just introducing a petabyte storage system for commercial use. Thought that was interesting to hear. Next comes a yottabyte.

For all those people who are betting on the way things will be in the not so distant future, there ya go. Anyone care to make a wager on if I am right?

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