Search Results For Post PC | 38 Results

Google Chrome Overtakes IE as top Browser–Moving Toward the Cloud in the Post-PC Era

Dwayne Harapnuik — May 22, 2012 — Leave a comment

Top 5 Browsers from W20 2011 to W20 2012 | StatCounter Global Stats via kwout

The browser is just one more area Microsoft is loosing market share. I use Chrome and Firefox so I am not surprised by this change. This just one more sign pointing to our move into the Post-PC era.

In the article Four Ways the Post-PC Era Differs From Today in Forbes, Maribel Lopez makes the argument that the Post-PC era is not just a shift to mobile devices it is a shift in computing as we know it. Lopez points to four unique attributes that will characterize this era:

Computing is no longer a destination.
Cloud enables meaningful mobility.
The Post PC era destroys and rebuilds the software industry.
Mobile and the Internet of Things enable contextual-intelligence.

We really shouldn’t be surprised by the impact of the cloud. The Gartner Group, in their Top 10 Technologies for 2011 and the New Media Consortium in the Horizon Reports have been predicting this for several years.

In Technology & Culture cloud, post-PC era

Is the Post-PC Age a Catalyst for the Start of the Digital Information Age?

Dwayne Harapnuik — January 17, 2012 — 1 Comment

(PC-Sale image Source Twitpic)

In the Business Insider post Proof that the PC is dying a slow painful death Steve Kovach makes the argument that PC sales are flat-lining and are on the start of a decline. The chart does show a flattening or even a decline in PC sales and when one factors in the explosive growth of the iPhone, iPad and Android it is clear we are seeing a disruptive innovation begin to overtake an established technology. On June 1, 2010 at the All Things Digital Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, Steve Jobs made the claim we are living in Post PC era. When asked if tablet will eventually replace the laptop, Jobs replied:

When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks because that’s what you needed on the farms.” Cars became more popular as cities rose, and things like power steering and automatic transmission became popular.

PCs are going to be like trucks

They are still going to be around…they are going to be one out of x people.”

This transformation is going to make some people uneasy…because the PC has taken us a long ways. It’s brilliant. We like to talk about the post-PC era, but when it really starts to happen, it’s uncomfortable.

A great deal has been written about the post-PC era since Jobs interview in 2010. Many people agree with Jobs and as many disagree. Regardless, the sales data regarding the PC does point to the flattening and decline and does show Tablets and other mobile devices in a disruptive growth pattern–so something is happening. In a Forbes article The Post-PC Era Starts To Make Sense, Todd Hixon a long time technology innovator, leader and investor who also writes about entrepreneurs and how they can help reboot complex industries suggests that the post-PC world starts to make sense if we look at how we now use mobile devices to manage our lives. Hixon suggests the post-PC era means three things:

1. Your life is in your Device.

2. Your media and your information are always there, wherever there is.

3. Boundaries between work, home, and friends vanish.

We now have near ubiquitous access to all the world’s information through our Device–access to information all the time everywhere. From an educational perspective the challenge of getting content to our learners can now be solved. I have been cautious to state that we have “near ubiquitous access” because the devices that we currently use are very immature as are the information ecosystems that are emerging. But with the exponential growth of the Internet and now mobile devices the technology piece of the move into the information age can finally be realized.

Technology is the easy part of this transition and we will see it evolve over the next few years.. Moving our society and societal structures is still our biggest challenge. We have spent hundreds of years and immeasurable resources on building our education systems to bring people to the information. It started with the building of libraries and then building of schools and universities around those libraries. Teachers and professors have grown into the information or content experts within our system and students traditionally go to the location of the information to get access to the information and hopefully to learn. Our educational system has focused primarily on the acquisition, management and the delivery of information. In an era when information was scarce or difficult to access this model worked very well. Accessing information is no longer a challenge–our new challenge is assessing information.

Consider the following:

When I searched the term post-PC era in 0.19 seconds I received 42,200,000 results from Google. I knew that I was looking for the interview with Steve Jobs so I was able to quickly move through the results and find what I was looking for. My ability to use Google search effectively and accurately was dependent on my prior knowledge and understanding of the information that I was looking for. Because I am well read and have an extensive background in this subject I was able to quickly and easily discern what was valuable information and what was not. But if one didn’t have the ability to assess what information was valuable and had to look at all the 42 million results it would take a person over 60 years to look at all the results if they spent just 5 seconds on each and reading for 16 hours a day, 365 days a year. This is more information than a person would have encountered in an entire career 50 years ago and more information that people would have encountered in a lifetime just a few hundred years ago. My friend and colleague, Bill Rankin the Director of Educational Innovation at Abilene Christian University offers the following train of thought regarding the role of educators in this age of digital information:

If I imagine my primary job as a teacher is to serve information, am I helping solve the current informational problem or make it worse?

And given the vast complexity of the informational network, if I insist on my centrality, does that establish or harm my credibility as a teacher?

If assessing information – and the wisdom & experience that requires – is the central challenge of the current informational age, are teachers more or less necessary?

I would argue that teachers, professors and all educators are more important than ever before. Learners need their expertise to help them to learn how to assess the overwhelming flow of information. We are well into the Digital Information Age and our learners need help navigating and assessing the flood of information that they have access to in the palms of their hands. I don’t see this as a challenge but as an opportunity to help prepare our learner for a future that is uncertain. We need to equip our learners with the tools and ability to discern what information is accurate and valuable and to ultimately solve problems that, presently, don’t even exist. What an opportunity!

In mLearning Disruptive innovation, PC, post-PC era, tablets

The Potential of the Post-PC Era – Part 1

Dwayne Harapnuik — August 11, 2011 — Leave a comment

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/hiner/utopian-convergence-of-pc-and-mobile-how-far-away-is-it/8825?tag=nl.e019

Utopian convergence of PC and mobile: How far away is it? | TechRepublic via kwout

Ever since Jason Hiner posted his speculations on the convergence of the PC and mobile in Utopian convergence of PC and mobile: How far away is it? I have been thinking about how that applies to my new situation at Concordia. The questions of convergence of the PC and mobile is really only significant to those who have fully committed to using laptops and now mobile devices. For those who are still anchored to a desktop PC and only use a cell phone or even a smart phone as a phone this is a moot point. Let me explain…

In meetings at the Adams Center at Abilene Christian University (ACU) most people brought their laptops to meetings and more recently we started to see tablets replace the laptops. Everyone had a device and at minimum people fell back on their smartphones. During the meeting you would hear the steady tapping of keys and the regular beeping or buzzing of smart phone or iPad signalling incoming emails and text messages. All meetings rooms had either a projector or in the case of the Adams Center a flat screen TV that people would use to show agenda items, videos, and work out task lists, action items and much more.

The meeting were more of a collaborative work session then they were traditional meetings because everyone was able to immediately do something related to what was being discussed. Many action items were immediately taken care of, files were immediately shared and many decisions were made on the spot. It was also not uncommon for people to pull up a google doc and collaboratively generate a plan or other document immediately rather than waiting to go back to their respective offices to do the work that was discussed.

If one was not used to working in this type of setting one could assume these meetings were too unruly and that most people were not paying attention because they were spending more time looking at their laptops or tablets then the one who was chairing the meeting. For the most part you would have a hard time telling who was chairing the meeting because there was so much peripheral activity. The traditional worker would be right–not much traditional work happened in those meetings because we were not working on business processes, we were working on the innovations that we hope could transform education and the world. We were dreaming of building the most effective learning environment.

I am not the only one who is working this way or who is noticing these significant changes. Mark Dean, Chief Technology Officer IBM Middle East and Africa, is one of a dozen IBM engineers who designed the first PC and who is now part of the IBM leadership that is moving IBM toward the Post-PC Era. Not only has Mark moved away from the PC to a Tablet as his primary computing device but he is predicting an even further move away from and emphasis on devices to what people do with devices. He states in his blog post IBM Leads the way in the Post-PC Era:

PCs are being replaced at the center of computing not by another type of device—though there’s plenty of excitement about smart phones and tablets—but by new ideas about the role that computing can play in progress. These days, it’s becoming clear that innovation flourishes best not on devices but in the social spaces between them, where people and ideas meet and interact. It is there that computing can have the most powerful impact on economy, society and people’s lives.

The best technology is the technology that has disappears or that no one even knows is there. It is not the technology that is important it is what you can do with it. Those noisy, rambunctious social interactions at the Adams Center at ACU that most traditional business people or academics would hesitate to call meetings are really just the cutting edge of where we need to go to really start making changes to our systems, our institutions and our society. Innovation will flourish when you bring people together and equip them to scheme and dream. If the technology is good enough that you don’t need to focus on it but you can use it to help you build those dreams then the sky is the limit.

Unfortunately, there is not much dreaming that goes on when people are tethered to their desktop PCs. Not much dreaming goes on when people scurry from their offices or cubicles with steno pads into media-less conference rooms and shuffle paper and check off processes and then scurry back to their offices or cubicles to transpose the meeting notes. Not much dreaming goes on when you only use computing technology to serve the administrative process of an institution.

Fortunately, we can start to change all this because the technology has matured to the point where it can really be used to help fill in those spaces between the social interactions. Our use of technology must also mature to the point where we take advantage of all this potential. This will be the subject of part 2.

In 21st century learning, Innovation, Technology & Culture

Revenues and Profits of Tech Giants – Classic Disruptive Innovation

Dwayne Harapnuik — March 21, 2013 — Leave a comment

As we can see from the infographic from Staff.com, Apple’s introduction of the iPhone 3GS in 2008 corresponds to the explosive growth of their revenue, profit and market capitalization. In late 2010 and early 2011 we also see a drop in Microsoft’s profit which corrisponds with the release of the iPad and what many are referring to as the beginning of the Post PC era (review several post on this topic). With the lack of success in the release of Windows 8 and poor sales of Microsoft’s Surface tablet we may see and even greater decline in the future for Microsoft.

Unfortunately, the infographic does not include the most disrupted company Research in Motion (RIM), which is now called Blackberry. Back in 2007 Blackberry dominated the smartphone market and just six years later many are wondering if the company will survive despite the release of their long awaited new OS and phones. Another perspective that the infographic doesn’t reveal is the way that Android is now beginning to disrupt Apple. It will be exciting to watch how the whole mobile industry which didn’t even exist six years ago will evolve over the next few years.