by 
Every year here, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), I hear milling crowds of multicultural geeks talking about “spectrum.” I've written entire CES dispatches about “spectrum” without knowing what it really is. I mean, I have a sense of what it is. I know it's everywhere, like God's grace, or karma.
Sometimes, I envision spectrum as a sci-fi device, a miasma or force field that secretly twists and turns the affairs of hapless humans. Other times, it appears to me as a mist, a fog, or as a global chain of rainbows, unseen but spreading in all directions, linked together like a medieval suit of armor — a sort of meteorological magic trick tinged with mysticism but sullied by greed.
The greed nudges its way in because spectrum is the medium that carries — I have no idea how — wireless electronic signals, and wireless electronic signals are, of course, the pot of gold at the end of all those rainbows. Spectrum's profit potential was first understood, I think, with the arrival of broadcast television, which is impossible without it, is lifted up on the wings of spectrum and carried hither and yon over the river and through the woods. When I was a kid, though I knew not, every episode of I Love Lucy traveled on tendrils of spectrum that were snagged by the claw-like bars of TV antennae on millions of roofs and re-directed down palpable, earthbound wires to the Philco wonder-box in the living room.
I don't really understand spectrum, but I do know that it's everywhere and it's finite. There's enough spectrum to go around, bestowing wealth wherever it flows, but it has to be shared. I recall a fat kid named Philip at my grade school, St. Mary's, who was acutely aware of those rare, joyous days on which the dessert in the cafeteria was banana cream pie. On those days, Philip would skip the Spanish rice, the butter sandwiches, and the over-boiled peas. He headed straight to the dessert rack, piling 10 or 12 portions onto his lunch tray and hurrying to a remote corner of the cafeteria to devour his bounty in a frenzy of gluttony and flying whipped cream. Inevitably, there were polite girls and first-graders at the tail of the lunch queue who, because of Philip, never ever knew there was banana cream pie that day.
So it might very well be with spectrum and its potential users — now extending to mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and myriad related wireless devices and networks — if not for the prudent intervention of Uncle Sam. Once spectrum had been identified as a sort of natural resource, the US government decided, correctly, that it is something that belongs to everybody, like America's public lands, and that it needs both protection and grownup stewardship, like Yellowstone National Park or the Grand Canyon.
For obvious reasons, spectrum is always an issue here, at CES. So is government. It's a tradition here, on Day One, for Gary Shapiro, the charmer who heads the Consumer Electronics Association, to deliver a few nasty digs at the intrusiveness and superfluity of government regulation in a free market that would be — Shapiro insists — so much more “innovative” and lucrative if only the damn government would, please, shrivel up and die.
But then, ironically, the next day, Shapiro sits down on stage with the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) — currently Julius Genachowski — and cajoles him to favor the CE industry in his judgments and to be generous in his apportionment of banana cream pie… er, spectrum.
Right now, spectrum is a hot issue all over again because broadcast television doesn't need as much pie as it used to need. Broadcast TV is shrinking in the market, and a lot of TV is piped into homes by cable and satellite. TV antennae are becoming collector's items, and spare spectrum is available. It's also coveted, because so many “consumers” (the CES word for “people”) are using it to text and tweet, play games, watch porn, and otherwise shield their fast-atrophying brains from literate, intelligent pastimes.
CEA chief Shapiro actually favors the idea of fair trade in spectrum. He fears the intrusion of Philip into the lunch line because a spectrum hog monopolizing the banana cream would be bad karma indeed. It could shut dozens — hundreds — of companies out of the free use and exploitation of spectrum, leading to an era of spectrum tyranny, in the hands of a greedy few. A free and fair market could come to resemble the days of Ma Bell, and CES might turn into a shrunken, feudal flea market of same-old same-old.
The reality that is conventionally dismissed in the libertarian glibness of anti-gov Gary, and his ilk, is that no free market anywhere operates prosperously without the benevolent massage of government regulators whose mission — and their contribution to capitalism (an ideology that refuses to admit the importance of anything quite so touchy-feely) — is fairness.
Spectrum of frequency is much wider and wireless frequency is tiny subset of full spectrum of frequency. As wireless frequecny spectrum is very precious, new technology will try to widen wireless frequency spectrum or use it more efficiently.
“For those of us who continue to resist the idea that the PC is becoming extinct”
Pc's will be recovered soon , As I have mentioned in other posts Tablets are great if you like to cover your “social” and “communication” needs and that's all. It will be great to see a survey how many of the customers who bought tablets (in order to replace their pc ) still are using it.
Barbara, there is no doubt that Tablets will gain momentum in personal device segment. But as of now I won't think it can replace any existing PC/laptop because of the lack of computational power and memory. Once new Tablets are coming up with high computational power and storage facility, then the trend may be in reverse.
Nemos, as of now the tread is an additional device (tablet) with the existing devices like PC/Laptop. But when new version of tablets are introducing to market having high computational power/storage /Memory etc, then the trend may be in favor for Tablets. like you said as of now tablets can be use like a net book and ipods.
In my opinion, in the area of software development, CAD, animation and graphics related work, and such areas will still be dominated by PCs. Today's,s PCs will evolve to take place of yesterdays expensive work stations and the mini servers.
Barbara, this analysis by Gartner baffled me a bit to be honest. I cannot see how the PCs could increasingly become a shared resource when the hardware component prices are always declining. In addition, because things are very affordable for most people these days, we prefer to live “personally” in the sense that we prefer to own things for our exclusive use; we don't like to share.
Given the above observations, how can the PCs ever be shared. The last time I had to share a PC was in 1993 as the president of the Computer Society at my university. Since then I never considered or had to share a PC. At the time sharing was the only option as PCs were not affordable then especially as a student.
Sharing a PC also has a downside in terms of user experience. The more users access a PC, the more junk will pile up on it slowing the machine down, menu configurations will constantly change because each user has a different preference. In short, getting work done on a shared PC will become a nightmare. I guess keeping a PC as a “Personal Computer” makes sense to keep users happy and healthy.
Gartner's projection probably is based on the assumption that because not many PCs will be sold, software available for PCs will not sell as much and therefore it will be very expensive. I can see that PC software prices may go up a bit as the PC sales drop but can they ever be as expensive to propmpt sharing a PC between multiple users? I am not so sure…
Cryptoman: When I thought about it, Gartner's analysis reflected trends that I see in home use. We all have a tablet, and one PC (going on two) is shared by the family. In the workplace, though, you are correct: I don't think the shared use makes sense when PCs are so affordable. The one case where it might makes sense is sales–I know a lot of salespeople that use tabelts on the road and are rarely in the office. Maybe several salespeople would share a PC when they are in the office?
Granted. Workers on the field can benefit from sharing PCs. Also, sharing PCs at home does make sense.
However, from personal experience, even at home sharing a PC does cause problems. My desktop was filled with little icons and links to videos and images etc. used by my wife when I was sharing my laptop at some stage. I had to get her a separate PC to keep my sanity adn to save gigabytes of hard disk space! 🙂
Crypto: I hear you there. My son deleted all my favorites, and I'm still trying to recreate that list.
@Barbara was that an accidental or deliberate deletion? I'm thinking some kids could try to get their own back with parents using digital revenge.
Tablets are great if you like to cover your “social” and “communication” needs and that's all.
@nemos, I totally agree with your opinion. Tablets cannot replace PC's. Professionals still rely on desktops/laptops to do their dayily job because its easy to feed the data and easy to process the data.
Once new Tablets are coming up with high computational power and storage facility, then the trend may be in reverse.
@Jacob, the latest released ultrabooks which have high computational power and memory can be easily converted into tablets. So I am guessing these ultrabooks will become popular in coming days because you can use it as notebook or you can use it as tablet.
In my opinion, in the area of software development, CAD, animation and graphics related work, and such areas will still be dominated by PCs.
@prabhakar_deosthali, you are right but the same can be done if we use combination of cloud and tablet. Tablet will be more of a interface device where as back-end computation will be done in cloud.
I still do not get this – embedded software engineer/designer use tablet for FPGA/SOC/DSP projects or any software related works like that. Or am i just marooning in an island alone?
Ariella: it was deliberate–he was trying to cover his tracks. Instead of history, he deleted favorites. Luckily, the sites most important to me were stored on my company's VPN.
That's also one of the reasons why we finally invested in another laptop.
Does anybody do serious engineering drawings on a tablet? I don't think that I could do that, and I know that some of them would fill a tablet's memory, which would cause a problem. Also, the screen available on any tablet is just too small to be useful a lot of the time.
So I will not be replacing my PC with a tablet for a whole lot of years. I am sure that they are fine for emails and games and web searching, but a tablet just does not make it for design engineering.
@ Nemo, People with high computation job are quick to realise that tablets have not beenable to replace pc while people that do not have computational job to do keeps upgrading to tablets as a more comfotable device.
@William, Well, as at today, tablets can,t handle such task and that is what,s still keeping PC inthe mind of some prodlfessional, but I doubt if sooner than we thought,PC will soon be a thing od museum.
@ anandvy, For now tablets can never replace PC, but time will tell if we will soon have such device that can combine both tablets and special tasks of Pc.
William K, Correct. The tablet is not a workhorse and may not be for a while. Still, it is possible to envision a future where tablets have the capacity (storage and processing speed) of a desktop or a laptop and is durable enough to be tethered to a bigger screen on a desk. These are the phases that laptops went through before they became powerful enough to replace (for many people) desktops. If or when such a day arrive, employers will probably select this option rather than buy laptops.
One more concern about tablet computers, which was certainly valid for laptop computers, is power density. The desktop unt has a larger case that allows it to run a good bit cooler than the notebook or laptop computer, and running cooler does tend toward extending product lifetime a bit. The tablets are not as powerful as the laptop computers, so they don't get quite as hot, but they tend to be sealed, so they may suffer internal hotspots. So the increasing power density may well lead to a reduction in reliability.
“The latest released ultrabooks which have high computational power and memory can be easily converted into tablets, So I am guessing these ultrabooks will become popular in coming days because you can use it as notebook or you can use it as tablet.”
Anandvy, no idea. How a net book can be converted in to tablet? A tablet has his own features/specifications based on functionality and size.