The Digital Decade
December 28, 2009 5:30 PM   Subscribe

One way to look at the decade from 2000-2009 is as the digital decade. In this decade the world has gone from having about 300 million to 1.6 billion users . The number of mobile phone subscriptions has gone from about 750 million to 4.5 billion. The decade even started out being called the digital decade by none other than Bill Gates.

Computers went from $2000 hundred megahertz machine to $500 multi-core laptops with dedicated 3D graphics accelerators and inbuilt wi-fi.

At the start of the decade a mobile phone looked something like the nokia 6100. The push Blackberry phone came out in 2002. The iphone came out in 2007. Through the decade phones went from tiny black and white LCDs to having mega pixel cameras, GPSs, push email, net access and gigabytes of storage.

On the net, from the first article linked:
During the decade the Internet has become accessible to all in the years since, giving birth to sites such as Wikipedia in 2001, MySpace in 2003, Facebook in 2004, YouTube in 2005 and Twitter in 2006.
The combination of ever cheaper electronics and the networking of the planet has been a notable feature of the decade. It will be interesting to see if the changes are as great over the next 10 years.
posted by sien (47 comments total) 10 users marked this as a favorite
 
If the figures above indeed indicate that more than half of the world's people have cellphones, when exactly are we going to pull together to stop the cellphone companies from gouging us for service? Aren't we at the point where market competition should be pushing fees down, not up? And if not, can someone help me understand why not?
posted by limeonaire at 5:57 PM on December 28, 2009 [1 favorite]


The Quickening.
posted by uncanny hengeman at 6:05 PM on December 28, 2009 [3 favorites]


And yet somehow we still have NetZero asking us to switch to dialup.

I swear I saw that ad on national tv today.
posted by jourman2 at 6:06 PM on December 28, 2009 [1 favorite]


Don't knock the 6100/6200 series. I had mine for five frickin' years. It's a goddamn tank is what it is.
posted by infinitewindow at 6:13 PM on December 28, 2009 [1 favorite]


mobile companies have been fighting price wars to bring prices down - In India its per second billing for prepaid accounts at one paise per second (its unconvertible to any hard currency since one rupee is 100 paise and one USD is somewhere around 47 rupees), the latest is Telenor's local JV which has brought in half paise per second

GSM phone networks are the norm across the 'developing' world and prepaid (vouchers, load, airtime) are the preferred choice for the majority of those at the 'base of the pyramid', many of whom manage on irregular income streams from a variety of sources. for eg, across sub Saharan Africa (SSA), prepaid accounts constitute more than 90% of the subscriber base

now they tend to suffer from price gouging, as the business models for most African telcoms are still based on the high margin/low volume frame of reference, here's a link to the post that started Fair Mobile initiative, with a database of SMS and voice call costs for many SSA countries

Indian operators have definitely taken the lead in disrupting service pricing - though they're taking a hit on ARPU - it can't be denied that the local users are benefiting from these price wars and mobile uptake every month is in the tens of millions if not 100s - Bharti Airtel for eg has changed the way they consider profitability to suit the usage patterns prevalent in INdia rather than stick to the ARPU calculations derived from richer regions and may not be appropriate or relevant to local conditions and operating environment

the mobile world outside the 'OECD' nations is innovating its way into a whole new communications paradigm (excuse the cliches) even as they address the challenge of extremely demanding customers with shallower wallets managing with wide variations in infrastructure and environmental conditions

ref limeonaire: as to why not, I'd have to know which region you're referring to
posted by infini at 6:14 PM on December 28, 2009 [4 favorites]


ref limeonaire: as to why not, I'd have to know which region you're referring to

Ahh, sorry. My initial response to this post included a parenthetical apology re: the fact that I'm looking at this from a U.S. perspective, and don't necessarily know the details re: cellphone usage/billing in other countries. (I kept getting a glitch when I tried to respond, then a 500 server error for a couple minutes, and when I ultimately was able to post, I neglected to copy and paste that part.)
posted by limeonaire at 6:21 PM on December 28, 2009


ref limeonaire: as to why not, I'd have to know which region you're referring to

He's probably talking about the US. I've noticed that the current wireless plans available are almost all the same (starting at $35-40/month for 400 anytime minutes or so) regardless of brand. Data plans are almost all ridiculous ($35-50/month for 1GB/month and we get to decide what kind of content you will be downloading), an extra $5-$10/month for unlimited texting and so forth.
posted by Avenger at 6:24 PM on December 28, 2009


You just know that the guys who paid top dollar to have the first 100 MHz processors felt like hot shit there for a while.
posted by Joe Beese at 6:29 PM on December 28, 2009


As a side note, CricKet has some good (relative context) pricing plans in the US imho

and to go off on a tanget, with all due respect limeonaire, sometimes the US centric perspective of the media and analysis is what tends to skew perception of the global mobile market and its attendant potential, challenges and opportunities for innovation

CK Prahalad referred to it as the 'tyranny of dominant logic' - one which imho maybe acting as blinkers to the potential for learnings and thus perhaps a fresh perspective on what constitutes 'success' or 'growth'

and this isn't just for mobiles either, look at stuff like the Tata Nano - not just the cheap car aspect but the fact that the entire business model, distribution and supply chain et al underwent a complete redesign simply because companies were willing question that dominant logic of "the way things should be"

/end derail :) and back to the digital decade now...
posted by infini at 6:32 PM on December 28, 2009


Don't knock the 6100/6200 series. I had mine for five frickin' years. It's a goddamn tank is what it is.

Too true. Plus, it has Snakes. This was my first mobile, in 1999. Of course then, I thought I was behind the times, because I was still using a Mac SE from 1986. And the only reason why I stopped using that machine was because any documents I saved on the floppy were unreadable by newer machines. It still ran fine. I've since moved on to using HP laptops, and the two I bought a few years ago have the same sort of durability that will probably deter me from buying the latest comps. That's the lesson I've learned from this decade, whatever it's called - "ooh shiny" is not a good enough reason to replace a working machine.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 6:34 PM on December 28, 2009 [1 favorite]


re: why aren't fees going down, i'd say telco oligopolies...

Telcos to FCC: give us billions, but don't make us share lines
AT&T and Verizon are up in arms about a "slanted" survey of global broadband practices done for the FCC which concludes that mandatory line-sharing rules produce better Internet speeds and penetration rates. Is it possible the US could (again) force ISPs to open their networks?

"Bandwidth hogs" join unicorns in realm of mythical creatures
One analyst has had it with Internet data caps. Bandwidth hogs are a myth, he says, and caps simply penalize heavy users who cause no problems for others. Now, he's throwing down the gauntlet and challenging ISPs to turn over some data for analysis.

Big wireless unveils plan to reduce TV spectrum use
Big wireless has been complaining for a while about an impending shortage of spectrum licenses. Now they've submitted a plan to free some up. The proposal involves reorganizing the television bands by replacing high-power transmitters with networks of low-power towers. No word yet on what the TV broadcasters think of this scheme.

Forget DTV; FCC now planning "all-IP" phone transition
The writing is on the wall for old school circuit-switched phone networks, and the world is going all-IP. Now, the FCC is gathering data to guide the next major transition of the country's communications network.

btw, cstross sez:
"Becoming a pure bandwidth provider is every cellco's nightmare: it levels the playing field and puts them in direct competition with their peers, a competition that can only be won by throwing huge amounts of capital infrastructure at their backbone network. So for the past five years or more, they've been doing their best not to get dragged into a game of beggar-my-neighbor, by expedients such as exclusive handset deals... [Google intends] to turn 3G data service (and subsequently, LTE) into a commodity, like Wi-Fi hotspot service only more widespread and cheaper to get at. They want to get consumers to buy unlocked SIM-free handsets and pick cheap data SIMs. They'd love to move everyone to cheap data SIMs rather than the hideously convoluted legacy voice stacks maintained by the telcos; then they could piggyback Google Voice on it, and ultimately do the Google thing to all your voice messages as well as your email and web access. (This is, needless to say, going to bring them into conflict with Apple. ... Apple are an implicit threat to Google because Google can't slap their ads all over [the App and iTunes stores]. So it's going to end in handbags at dawn... eventually.)"
The future is Amish?
posted by kliuless at 6:54 PM on December 28, 2009 [6 favorites]


infini: That's a big part of what the changes of the past decade are about. Cell phones have arguably had more impact in the developing world than the developed.

With luck the next decade will see Africa rise and start to do better. Better communications are an important part of what can change things.

The book Africa Rising talks about something similar to your link. It's by an Indian who points out that the doomsters of the 1960s and early 1970s thought that India was beyond rescuing and instead turned out to become an economic power. Hopefully Africa will follow a similar path.
posted by sien at 6:59 PM on December 28, 2009


btw, nice roundup in the Times of India on the digital decade from their perspective
posted by infini at 7:01 PM on December 28, 2009


sien - agree on Africa's future but re: the book you mention, my cynical take on its reviews and surrounding articles were that it was a way to create a buzz for investing in the African market aimed at Indian big co's (i'm not complaining btw just sayin' ;p)
posted by infini at 7:05 PM on December 28, 2009 [1 favorite]


In this decade the world has gone from having about 300 million to 1.6 billion users.

It's a world of laughter,
A world of tears.
It's a world of hopes,
And a world of fears.
There's so much that we share,
That it's time we're aware,
It's a small world after all!
posted by swift at 7:11 PM on December 28, 2009 [3 favorites]


$500 multi-core laptops with dedicated 3D graphics accelerators and inbuilt wi-fi

Please let me know where I can buy one. And a netbook doesn't count!
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 7:59 PM on December 28, 2009




meh, its Vista - i'm shopping for Windows 7 home premium cos I hate Vista. Acer Timeline is looking good
posted by infini at 8:22 PM on December 28, 2009


( The 3100 has shared memory - but the accelerator is dedicated, but kinda cheating )
posted by sien at 8:31 PM on December 28, 2009 [1 favorite]


In a post like this it seems ridiculous not to point out that this is the decade in which Moore's Law ended.
As mentioned in the article, Moore's Law still seems to work, because transistor counts are still doubling. However, the amount of useful work those transistors can do today is greatly reduced. Not only because multiple cores aren't as good as one faster core, but because the absolute highest clock rate achievable has plateaued.
posted by Chuckles at 9:16 PM on December 28, 2009 [2 favorites]


Now that the digital decade is coming to an end, I assume we must be switching back to analog.
posted by UbuRoivas at 9:25 PM on December 28, 2009


The digital decade? Fer reals? Jesus, no. "Digital Decade" brings to mind Dynatacs, Ataris and calculator wristwatches. Technology as an end in itself, and as an aspirational thing, well, that was a clearer trend in the 1980s. The 00s have been more like the decade when ordinary people started taking huge amounts of technology for granted, like they do their refrigerators. The tech is just background noise now, an appliance like your toaster, but for interconnectedness. And that's what's really been novel about the last ten years.
posted by killdevil at 10:27 PM on December 28, 2009 [1 favorite]


The Pentium 3 came out in 1999 and according to wikipedia the slowest p3 was 450Mhz. There was even a 100mhz 486 in 1994. I'm not sure where you got this 100mhz number, maybe you were thinking about bus speeds (which still seems low)?
posted by aspo at 11:18 PM on December 28, 2009


In a post like this it seems ridiculous not to point out that this is the decade in which Moore's Law ended.
As mentioned in the article, Moore's Law still seems to work, because transistor counts are still doubling. However, the amount of useful work those transistors can do today is greatly reduced. Not only because multiple cores aren't as good as one faster core, but because the absolute highest clock rate achievable has plateaued.


Good point. The challenge for the next decade is to see how we can take advantage of massively parallel systems. It’s expected to be really hard. Hard to the point where Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, CMU and the rest are getting hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from Intel and friends to work on the problem of parallel programming for these things. It’s one thing to write a number-cruncher for a physics lab that takes advantage of having 1024 processing cores available, but that takes a lot of time from a lot of experienced programmers. We need to write compilers and operating systems that can automatically break everyday tasks into parallelizable chunks and then schedule those chunks across hundreds of cores.

As a current undergrad at Berkeley in CS, this is all really exciting. Seeing renovation and construction to install new labs dedicated to this research at a public university in a recession really makes it hit home how very interested some very rich people and companies are in seeing solutions to these new problems.
posted by spitefulcrow at 11:40 PM on December 28, 2009 [2 favorites]


aspo: Sorry, that was meant to be multiple of hundred megahertz.
posted by sien at 1:03 AM on December 29, 2009


I wonder what the next decade will be...
posted by townster at 2:19 AM on December 29, 2009


However, the amount of useful work those transistors can do today is greatly reduced. Not only because multiple cores aren't as good as one faster core, but because the absolute highest clock rate achievable has plateaued.

Huh? Okay first of all when Moore's law started we didn't see a huge increase in clock speed the same way you saw during the 80s/90s. I don't think. They stayed in the kHz range mostly.

But the amount of 'work' that the transistors can do is the same at the same clock speed. Nothing is getting reduced. It's true that it can be difficult to split some programs into multiple threads, but for most normal computer tasks it's possible, if challenging.
posted by delmoi at 3:14 AM on December 29, 2009


I wonder what the next decade will be...

/start ramble

here are some dots (trends?) I've been seeing - very broadly, very rough, could be wrong:

1. open source options, creative commons IP, freemium models

2. transition towns, preference for local clothing, food, goods, economy, 3D printers (reprap), fablabs

3. focus on inclusive development, the "bottom of the pyramid", the other 90%, design for social impact, frugal engineering, jugaad, "rest of the world"

4. shifting global balance of power and wealth, prosperity finding its own level (through recession? economic shift? influence?), equalization of voices

5. information network grid, digital decade per this post, social networks on global scale, --> more globally aware local consciousness

what do all of these taken together add up to? do they add up at all? will they converge into some kind of post abundant society? redesign of ecosystems?

/end ramble
posted by infini at 3:22 AM on December 29, 2009 [1 favorite]


Digit has more than one meaning. This is the decade we were asked to bend over and receive the all five digits of the Invisible Hand.
posted by Eideteker at 3:24 AM on December 29, 2009 [2 favorites]


>: One way to look at the decade from 2000-2009 is as the digital decade.

You mean the decade where we used our grasping hands?
posted by dunkadunc at 3:29 AM on December 29, 2009


The 00s have been more like the decade when ordinary people started taking huge amounts of technology for granted, like they do their refrigerators.

Are the naughties the best decade ever?
Some people are saying they're the worst decade ever, but that's more true for the global relations of the United States than for the level of human well-being in the world as a whole. Even in the U.S., a lot of social indicators improved. Elsewhere Chinese growth continued, Indian growth moved into the big time (in the gross reckoning we're already at well over two billion people), a lot of Eastern Europe was successfully absorbed into the EU, Indonesia made slow but steady progress. Brazil may have turned a corner, and Africa had a better-than-lately decade in terms of economic growth... For a lot of you it feels bad, but it's not obvious that the naughties have been such a terrible decade overall.
I wonder what the next decade will be...

i'm hopeful for all the reasons infini mentions but i'm reminded of a quote from near the end of the last decade:
Moglen's Metaphorical Corollary to Faraday's Law says that if you wrap the Internet around every person on the planet and spin the planet, software flows in the network. It's an emergent property of connected human minds that they create things for one another's pleasure and to conquer their uneasy sense of being too alone. The only question to ask is, what's the resistance of the network?
so like in an era of upheaval, esp of the means (and ownership) of production, i wonder whether the political system is capable of "addressing large-scale objective problems."

We need to write compilers and operating systems that can automatically break everyday tasks into parallelizable chunks and then schedule those chunks across hundreds of cores.

grand central dispatch should help with the scheduling at least :P

cheers!
posted by kliuless at 4:45 AM on December 29, 2009


> I wonder what the next decade will be...

I'm taking odds it'll be called the "digital decade".
posted by fcummins at 4:53 AM on December 29, 2009


kliuless - re: your last point here's something
posted by infini at 6:06 AM on December 29, 2009


The internet decade? The food revolution (in America) decade? The green decade? The decade of Universal Design..?
posted by marimeko at 6:19 AM on December 29, 2009


I call it the The Decade of Virulent Incompetence. Nicer tech is just a tease, before we slide back into the stone age and literally use these umpteen million cell phones as bricks.
posted by Ella Fynoe at 6:35 AM on December 29, 2009


I'm curious to see how major software and hardware makers fare over the next decade, since software and computers are essentially done for the vast majority of people. Programs like Word and Photoshop have been complete for years, and Adobe and Microsoft keep adding features most people won't use. Personal computers are faster and more powerful than almost anyone needs. I have a 2.66 dual-core Intel Mac, and even if I wanted to edit major motion pictures I wouldn't need a new computer.
posted by kirkaracha at 7:46 AM on December 29, 2009 [1 favorite]


I had been planning to make an FPP about the BlackBerry's 10th anniversary, but was concerned the content was a little thin. Happily, those links will fit right in here. :)

Forbes: A Brief History of the Blackberry: The author of ''BlackBerry Planet'' discusses RIM's early days, court battles and the influence of ''Star Trek.'

Engadget: Ten Years of Blackberry

Berry Review: The History of RIM & the BlackBerry Smartphone: Part 1: The Origins, Part 2: The Black and White Years, Part 3: The Evolution of Color

Also see: Crackberry.com, the self-proclaimed "#1 Site for BlackBerry Users (& Abusers!)"

Previously on MeFi: George, the first BlackBerry
posted by zarq at 8:06 AM on December 29, 2009


Aren't we at the point where market competition should be pushing fees down, not up?

In Europe, charges have been coming down, but due to directives by those lefty bureacrats, rather than the magic of free market competition fairies.
posted by kersplunk at 9:41 AM on December 29, 2009


This post is sort of just Moore's Law with specifics, as though that made this decade special.
posted by shakespeherian at 10:26 AM on December 29, 2009


yea, no doubt crowdsourcing or whatever (coasian inversion?) is on deck to challenge the traditional institutions of political-economy -- i particularly like romer's attempt to distinguish between technology and rules -- and that disaggregation (hopefully unlike disintermediation) can create novel and self-sustaining forms of organisation :P shirky, fer instance, has become quite an astute chronicler of the zeitgeist!

i guess i'm just worried/doubtful(?) the ancien régime can go quietly and gracefully into the night, as wolf sez in that 'era of upheaval' link:
So where should we go in the next decade? For all its difficulties, the US is not the UK of 1910. Its economy remains the world's most productive and innovative and its military capacity remains unmatched. The western world, as a whole, remains potent, with about 40 per cent of global output, at purchasing power parity. But other countries and forces are now on the rise, while the challenges ahead are also more complex and global than ever before.

"We must all hang together or assuredly we shall hang separately." All countries – above all, incumbent and rising great powers – must recognise this truth, enunciated by Benjamin Franklin at the signing of the US declaration of independence. History has hardly been dominated by the benign spirits of co-operation, foresight and self-restraint. I would at least give Barack Obama credit for trying to provide the right sort of leadership. But will the world produce sufficient followers, at home or abroad? Alas, I rather doubt it.
and echoed here:
We tend to view China as posing an alternative and threatening model for the future, one that's by turns seductive and repulsive, the source of envy and contempt. But after a while I wondered if we aren't in some way converging with our supposed rival. China has managed the transition from a repressive, authoritarian, impoverished country to an industrial, corporatist oligarchy by allowing a loud and raucous debate while also holding tightly onto power. Perhaps we are moving toward the same end from a democratic direction, the roiling public debate and political polarization obscuring the fact that power and money continue to collect and pool among an elite that increasingly views itself as besieged on all sides by a restive and ungrateful populace... I may be going out on a limb, but I don't think either country is going to be able to make this system work.
the way i see it, things seem to be evolving towards state capitalism and/or corporatism; it's the path of least resistance, and yet we're 'Still lost in the old Bretton Woods':
Great changes in the way that the economy was regulated and managed were often provoked by cataclysmic upheaval. It was to finance military expeditions in Europe that the English invented central banking in 1694; it was to fund the Napoleonic wars that Britain invented the modern income tax.

And it was the Great Depression, followed by the second world war, that produced the framework we broadly have today... During the past 10 years, the shortcomings of that set-up in dealing with the problems of the modern economy became all too apparent... as global economic imbalances continued to build up... little reform has happened... The decade shows that political problems cannot be solved with technocratic solutions. No amount of shuffling the pack to include the emerging markets will make any difference unless they, and the rich countries, are aware what tough decisions have to be made, and are willing to face their domestic constituencies. The crisis has not produced a new world order. Only political will can do that.
so the question remains (as always) can we ever adapt with enough foresight to avoid 'cataclysmic upheaval' or is that what it takes?
posted by kliuless at 10:40 AM on December 29, 2009 [1 favorite]


Awesome. Everything is awesome. I'mso glad I was born in the 70s.
posted by Elmore at 11:35 AM on December 29, 2009


It's true that it can be difficult to split some programs into multiple threads, but for most normal computer tasks it's possible, if challenging.

The Landscape of Parallel Computing Research was started a few years ago by some of the leading researchers at Berkeley working on this area; it lists the main challenges in transitioning our computing schemes from serial and small-scale parallel execution to massively-parallel (thousands of cores) execution.

The biggest problem is the amount parallel programming adds to the programmer’s workload. Parallelization of general computing tasks is not easy: every time there is a potential interaction between separate threads of execution, the possible orderings of data access need to be worked out and made safe. In most (read: all current widely-used) programming languages and environments, either this has to be done explicitly by the programmer or the programmer must make very careful choices in data structures and algorithms to let the compiler and runtime handle implicit parallelism. Writing a compiler that automatically parallelizes is hard because most programming languages allow for multiple references to the same data, indirect jumps into functions, and other nasty things that make it extremely difficult to trace all possible paths through the code.

Essentially, we’re at a point where keeping up with the gains our hardware is making available will require much greater effort from programmers (not all of whom, frankly, are up to the task) or a radical shift in how we think about computation. As I mentioned above, this is why Berkeley, Stanford, and other major CS research institutions are throwing millions of dollars around to establish new labs focused on accomplishing this shift.
posted by spitefulcrow at 12:19 PM on December 29, 2009 [1 favorite]


kirkaracha: I'm curious to see how major software and hardware makers fare over the next decade, since software and computers are essentially done for the vast majority of people. Programs like Word and Photoshop have been complete for years, and Adobe and Microsoft keep adding features most people won't use.

Software is a gas - Software always expands to fit whatever container it is stored in.
People always want stuff to run faster and have cool features, features that you probably can't even imagine right now, but will be seen as important when the time comes.
posted by memebake at 5:37 PM on December 29, 2009


Posterity will most likely remember the decade for the on-going war in the Middle East, particularly the war in Iraq and the one million casualties. But Bill Gates was right, it was also the digital decade - more so for the ordinary guy in the street than the geek (I had the Internet and a mobile phone and listened to MP3s in 1999 - but few of my friends had).

The development of digital technologies will continue but we need to think more about how to use them. For example, education has hardly changed at all in the last 20 (50?) years. Health too. That will be the real challenge for the next decade. How to use these technologies.
posted by bobbyelliott at 1:03 PM on December 30, 2009






Google: We'll run a white spaces database (for free!)
To spur adoption of broadband through white space devices, Google has offered to run an instance of the key geolocation database needed to make the scheme work. And it won't charge for access. :P
posted by kliuless at 1:11 PM on January 7, 2010


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