Looking Back, Moving Forwards

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Before I sign off, some brief thoughts for the future.

I'm in no doubt that in four years time, SSDs will be commonplace (that 's Solid State Disks, not Super Star Destroyers, though obviously that would be very cool. "I'm just going out dear to the shops dear! Are you taking the car? No, the SSD. OK, careful how you park"). Currently SSDs are a ridiculously expensive option in notebooks - Apple wants £639 for one in the Macbook Air, but that's bound to change.

Another thing I've realised is that computers will mean England will never win the world cup. You see, Wigan manager, Steve Bruce has it right when he says that, "In my day there was a game going on at every street corner and on every park, but kids seem to have too much to do now, what with computers and everything else they have".

He's got a point - kids would join the game on the street corner to imagine themselves scoring the winning goal in the World Cup final. Michael Owen did growing up. But today, kids don't have to do that anymore, they can actually see themselves doing it on the latest Fifa game". No imagination necessary, see? Imagination is important, as this game creator knows who kept his polygon count deliberately miniscule in order to engage the imagination of the player more in order to stimulate an emotional response.

Certainly Windows Vista has proved to be a disappointment and already talk of the next version, Windows 7, has started. Let's hope Microsoft can get it right next time. That leads me to my final point - a word then on Bill Gates.

As this article in the Wall Street Journal discusses, Gates has put forward an idea of 'Creative Capitalsim', which involves companies working not just to create wealth but to help others and to narrow that gap between the world's richest and poorest. It's easy to be cynical a proposal such as this coming from the world's second richest man, but in this case, surely there's no benefit to cynicism for its own sake. Let's hope that Gates has his best days ahead of him, and that technology and the competitive spirit can be turned to helping others and saving lives.

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