Byung Kyu Park's Personal Website

Some people on WSJ radio were talking about how Siri (i.e. reliable and usable voice command) might change the future of computing. One consequence I look forward to: reducing the size of computing devices.

Currently, computing devices are limited by their need to accept a tactile input—any general computing device needs to be large enough to allow a keyboard with keys at least one-fourth the area of a typical human fingertip. This might be a point of no contention if the device also needs to provide visual output (as touchscreen doubles as both input and output device as necessary), but for devices that do not need to provide visual information (such as a cellphone or any other device whose function is primarily to provide sound), this is a real limitation.

If voice command becomes reliable enough to be a primary input method for a general computing device, there will be no limit to the form and size of computing devices (other than that required by CPUs, communication devices such as antennas, and batteries). I currently have a Bluetooth headphone that remains tethered to my smartphone to be my MP3 player (music and podcasts) and phone. I’m imagining a future where a device the size of this headphone is the smartphone.

Well, I picked up an iMac G5 from the electronics discard area by 151 Le Conte. I am hoping that it’s a perfectly good machine (I see no visible damage and unit powers on) thrown away by someone who upgraded his computer.

I opened it up following the directions here (apparently they’ve made these iMacs really easy to open). But unfortunately, it’s apparently missing it’s SATA drive, and more importantly, RAM, which means I can’t quite test to see if it does actually work.

I don’t think I have any spare DDR rams, especially ones meeting the criteria for use with iMac G5. So, I am going to have to ask around tomorrow for one, and if not, I may have to take a chance (that this machine is working) and order one online.

It would be very nice if this works (it’s a nice, self-contained unit no larger than an LCD) … but we shall see.

Edit: It seems to start up O.K. with a DDR ram we had hanging around in the lab. I wouldn’t trust it … until an OS could be installed on a hard drive and successfully booted from that drive, but so far so good.