Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve cameray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technologies with
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello there, everybody,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Polette,
Speaker 1: and I am the tech editor here at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot Com. Sitting across from me, as usual, is
Speaker 1: senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Are you sure about that, Chris?
Speaker 1: We had a moment just a second ago that's going
Speaker 1: on the reel where it was unclear if Chris knew
Speaker 1: who he was or not. I never know who I am.
Speaker 1: He violated a very important trademark I did. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: It's okay. I think we should have just kept going
Speaker 1: with it. I think our listeners would have thought it
Speaker 1: was funny. And now they're all wondering what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: All right, So let's before we get started into today's episode,
Speaker 1: just leaving you guys hanging there, let's talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about Oh God, Punkin Chunkin and orenge you glad
Speaker 1: we are? Yeah? Right, So Punkin Chunkin shooting Pumpkins, great distances,
Speaker 1: television shows, Science Channel with giant machines. Yes, the enormous
Speaker 1: machines that propel pumpkins. Alright, so the Science Channel showing
Speaker 1: two shows the roads punkin Chunkin and punkin Chunkin on Thanksgiving,
Speaker 1: which is November twenty six, starting at eight pm Eastern time, right,
Speaker 1: and the nine pm, of course, would be the second show,
Speaker 1: punkin Chunkin. So you can watch people build machines throwing pumpkins.
Speaker 1: Great distances. Glad we got that all the way. What's
Speaker 1: on the docket for today? Well, today we want to
Speaker 1: talk about the future. Wow. Well you know, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think just talking about it really is enough.
Speaker 1: We're tech stuff, right, so we do more than just
Speaker 1: talk about stuff. We we do thinks. So I suggest
Speaker 1: we just switch a way back machine to the way
Speaker 1: forward machine. Let me just hit that switch. Did you
Speaker 1: check the levels? We'll be fine. We'll be fine. Able
Speaker 1: to get there and get back, no problem. Let me
Speaker 1: just flip the switch first. All right, now, everybody into
Speaker 1: the machine. I'm talking. I'm talking to the listeners to
Speaker 1: come on, guys, we're all going together, he says. It's safe.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna do you any good if you stay
Speaker 1: behind while we go up there. All right, Okay, everyone
Speaker 1: hands and arms inside the way forward machine until it stops. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's just set this forward a couple of decades.
Speaker 1: Uh right, Um for me, it's the weird sound effects,
Speaker 1: all right, hang on, hang on, alright, alright, I think
Speaker 1: we're there now. Um. Let's let me just open the
Speaker 1: door and make sure that Darren any dinosaurs or anything
Speaker 1: we didn't excellent Lina, No, no, here we go. Office
Speaker 1: of the Future. All right, everybody out. Okay, let's take
Speaker 1: a quick look around and see what we see here. Um. Wow,
Speaker 1: giant robots. Yeah, no, it's kind of empty. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: it turns out the Office of the Future not a
Speaker 1: whole lot of a lot of people in the office
Speaker 1: doesn't like it. I guess, um, I guess that telecommuting
Speaker 1: thing finally paid off. Who would have well apparent, Actually,
Speaker 1: quite a few people back back from our our home
Speaker 1: year of two thousand nine thought it. Uh. It turns
Speaker 1: out that a lot of executives believed at that time
Speaker 1: that we were moving towards a telecommuting kind of culture,
Speaker 1: at least in the Western world when it comes to offices,
Speaker 1: And part of the reason for that is that technology
Speaker 1: had reached a point where this is completely within the
Speaker 1: realm of possibility. There are a lot of people who
Speaker 1: telecommute back in two thousand nine, but more so than that,
Speaker 1: other concerns start to pop up, things like why should
Speaker 1: a company pay the overhead necessary to maintain a physical
Speaker 1: office space if every one could actually work out of
Speaker 1: his or her home or you know a coffee shop
Speaker 1: just down the street. Yeah, like why pay that electricity
Speaker 1: bill if you don't have to. I'm guessing if you
Speaker 1: go down to the factory down the road, there will
Speaker 1: still be people there. However, yeah, they will be the
Speaker 1: ones who are enslaved by the robots to fetch things
Speaker 1: like w D forty. But in the office it's going
Speaker 1: to be different. So there are a lot of different
Speaker 1: technologies that are at play here that can allow office
Speaker 1: workers to work remotely. Uh. And I don't think we
Speaker 1: should just jump straight to the to the working from
Speaker 1: home section. There are stages in between, for example, virtual PCs,
Speaker 1: virtual PCs. Now, I wanted to talk a bit about
Speaker 1: a company called Pano Pano Logic Panel Logic. They sent
Speaker 1: me a device to look at and I did, and
Speaker 1: it's a pretty interesting concept. The idea here is that
Speaker 1: And let's say that you've got an office and you
Speaker 1: have a hundred employees, and let's say that each one
Speaker 1: of those employees needs access to a PC while it
Speaker 1: work all right, Now, normally you would have to go
Speaker 1: and purchase at least one PCs, if not a few extra,
Speaker 1: just in case something breaks down, right, And that means
Speaker 1: that you have to purchase licenses for all of the
Speaker 1: software that you're going to be using for those PCs,
Speaker 1: assuming that you're using some across the entire office. Yes,
Speaker 1: you also have to maintain those PCs, so when things
Speaker 1: break down, you have be ready to fix them. Um,
Speaker 1: and that means you have a hundred different machines to fix.
Speaker 1: And unless you've bought them all at the same time,
Speaker 1: all from the same place, those PCs are gonna have
Speaker 1: different parts, They're gonna be different models. There may be
Speaker 1: different hardware associate with each one. So if one breaks
Speaker 1: down that that doesn't necessarily mean that you've got a
Speaker 1: drawer full of replacement parts to fix it immediately. You
Speaker 1: may have to go and get something new. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of headaches associated with having lots of physical machines.
Speaker 1: Now in virtually moving parts. Let's break So what Panos
Speaker 1: approach is is their suggestion, their their product. Actually what
Speaker 1: it what does is there? It's two parts. There's a
Speaker 1: software component and a hardware component. The software component is yeah,
Speaker 1: well well it should. So you install the software component
Speaker 1: on a server, all right, and you compartmentalize that server
Speaker 1: into uh into virtual PCs. So each virtual PC acts
Speaker 1: like a real physical PC. It has its own independent
Speaker 1: applications that run on their own without sapping anything else
Speaker 1: from any other virtual PC. But they're all running on
Speaker 1: one real machine. Yes, one real machine is supplying the
Speaker 1: processing power and storage capacity for dozens of virtual machines,
Speaker 1: all right. Then the hardware component is just a simple
Speaker 1: little station that you plug a you can plug a
Speaker 1: keyboard into, you can plug a um A monitor into it,
Speaker 1: and you plug an Ethernet cord into it. Two acts
Speaker 1: to get the data feed from the server, and you
Speaker 1: have a power chord. And that's about it. So there's
Speaker 1: no CPU, there's no disk drive, nothing like that. Everything
Speaker 1: is stored on the server. Everything you would access would
Speaker 1: be on the server. You would have your own individual
Speaker 1: folders to save things too that are on that exists
Speaker 1: on your virtual PC. But the information itself exists on
Speaker 1: the physical server. Now, why would a company want to
Speaker 1: do this? Oh gee, I don't know. It seems like
Speaker 1: it would uh save you a lot of trouble if
Speaker 1: you were trying to, you know, find ways to repair things.
Speaker 1: As you pointed out, Sure, yeah, that's a big one.
Speaker 1: And also would save you a lot of money on
Speaker 1: licensing software. Yep, that's true too. And um, you know
Speaker 1: there's there's always the opportunity to save on electricity. That's
Speaker 1: another good one. It's just cheaper, like each individual device,
Speaker 1: it would be cheaper than buying a uh are normal
Speaker 1: what you would normally consider I guess a midpowered machine,
Speaker 1: mid to high powered machine. It would be less expensive
Speaker 1: than that. Storage is simpler. And also if there's a problem,
Speaker 1: you have one machine to maintain, I mean you can
Speaker 1: you can do regular maintenance on a server a lot
Speaker 1: easier than you can on a hundred different physical machines. Um. Also,
Speaker 1: like here here's a here's a real world example of
Speaker 1: where this could come in handy recently, at how Stuff Works,
Speaker 1: we upgraded part of our software in across the entire office, right,
Speaker 1: and that required that each of us turn over his
Speaker 1: or her computer to the I T guy for an
Speaker 1: hour or more at a time in order to get
Speaker 1: this software installed on our computers. That's just procedure. It's
Speaker 1: company procedure, it's the way we work. So that meant
Speaker 1: that this one I T Guy had to go through
Speaker 1: and do the same process over and over on all
Speaker 1: the different pieces in the office. Now, if you had
Speaker 1: the virtual PC model, you make that change once on
Speaker 1: the server and then you then upgrade all the virtual
Speaker 1: PCs at one time. It's much faster than having to
Speaker 1: take it piecemeal. So what happens If that one machine
Speaker 1: goes down, then you've got a problem. If your one
Speaker 1: machine goes down, then yeah, all of your access goes down.
Speaker 1: But I mean that that happens already if you are
Speaker 1: working on a on a system where um things like
Speaker 1: you have an Internet server and the Internet server goes
Speaker 1: down and you're no longer able to access the Internet.
Speaker 1: I mean that's happened at many places. I can think
Speaker 1: of one very close to us right now, like the
Speaker 1: room we're in, so the But yeah, this this can
Speaker 1: happen to any office at any time. Now. Granted it
Speaker 1: does sound scary because it's the idea of Okay, well, now,
Speaker 1: you've got one point of failure, and um, you know,
Speaker 1: in the in the instance where you have lots of machines,
Speaker 1: one machine might fail, But unless it's a critical machine
Speaker 1: for a specific project, that's maybe not the worst thing
Speaker 1: in the world that could happen, whereas if that happened
Speaker 1: on a centralized point. But the idea being that if
Speaker 1: you can continue to do maintenance and and monitor this
Speaker 1: one machine, I mean, if that's what where your I. T.
Speaker 1: Departments focus is is directed, there's a much better chance
Speaker 1: of keeping that machine running than a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: different machines in various states of of use. So yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a risk versus reward consideration you have to take
Speaker 1: into account before you move to something like a virtual
Speaker 1: PC solution. But on the same by the same token,
Speaker 1: I mean, you're already running some of those risks in
Speaker 1: most offices now anyway. It's just that you're now putting
Speaker 1: more of a burden on that one machine as opposed
Speaker 1: to you know, a whole bunch of individual ones. But
Speaker 1: like I've worked in offices where you had to save
Speaker 1: everything to a network drive. You couldn't you weren't supposed
Speaker 1: to save anything to your local drive at all, and
Speaker 1: in that case, if that network drive went down, you
Speaker 1: could not access any of your work yep. And I
Speaker 1: mean that's happened before, So those sort of things, those
Speaker 1: those things are going to happen. But if you factor
Speaker 1: that in before you make your decision, it's not so
Speaker 1: scary if you just take into you know that, all right,
Speaker 1: sometimes stuff is gonna go wrong and you're gonna have
Speaker 1: to handle it. But this is kind of a it's
Speaker 1: also kind of a step toward another kind of computing
Speaker 1: we've talked about before, which is cloud computing. Yep. Yep.
Speaker 1: Now cloud computing, you're no longer even providing the server yep.
Speaker 1: That's true. Um, that information is all stored somewhere else
Speaker 1: on company servers, like for example, if you've ever used
Speaker 1: Google Docs or the upcoming uh Microsoft Office Live. Um, basically,
Speaker 1: the applications themselves and the files that you create and
Speaker 1: those applications are all stored on the company's on that
Speaker 1: company's servers. So Google's massive data warehouses filled filled to
Speaker 1: their you know, top with computers. All your files are
Speaker 1: in there somewhere actually, probably in many many places, since
Speaker 1: you many many backups. Um. But yeah, that's all. That's
Speaker 1: all done. Yeah, I mean that's all done with cloud computing.
Speaker 1: So and it's out there somewhere. The interesting thing here
Speaker 1: is that, you know, again you have to ask yourself
Speaker 1: the question why would any company move to this? And
Speaker 1: it comes down to cost. I mean by moving your
Speaker 1: your processing and storage loads off site. Uh. As long
Speaker 1: as the cost of the service is lower than the
Speaker 1: cost it would take you to purchase and maintain your
Speaker 1: own equipment, that's going to seem like a very attractive
Speaker 1: alternative for companies. Uh. But there are some big hurdles
Speaker 1: to get past. The biggest one, I think is the
Speaker 1: whole perception of how reliable are cloud computing services. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's taken some meetings lately to you. Yeah, in
Speaker 1: the in bet well lately being back in two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: in the future now, so years ago, back in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine, and our personal timeline right right, Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is hard. I gotta think in four dimensions. I usually
Speaker 1: manage one and a half. But the Yeah, so back
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine, you know, back when are we
Speaker 1: all were just a few minutes ago, the biggest problems
Speaker 1: were things like Google Gmail going down or Google Apps
Speaker 1: going down or T Mobile losing all the side Mobile
Speaker 1: didn't do that, except it wasn't Mobile and Mobile gets
Speaker 1: T Mobile gets the worst of that deal because not
Speaker 1: only were they not responsible for the the service outage
Speaker 1: and we're talking about the Sidekick service outage, the Danger
Speaker 1: servers that went down, not only was T Mobile not
Speaker 1: responsible for that, but they also get the blame for
Speaker 1: it because the T Mobile name is on that Sidekick device. Yes,
Speaker 1: and uh so everybody is angry at T Mobile, even
Speaker 1: though Microsoft is the one that owns the Danger servers.
Speaker 1: At any rate, when you can take the blame for
Speaker 1: someone else's problem, yeah, you gotta man. You gotta love
Speaker 1: being Microsoft in that situation. Except the savvy people, of course,
Speaker 1: already know the difference. It's just whether the general public
Speaker 1: is aware of it. But that's that's the problem, right.
Speaker 1: There's this perception that if you entrust your data to
Speaker 1: some other service and something goes wrong, uh, then you're
Speaker 1: you're totally up the creek. And I think the biggest
Speaker 1: obstacle for most people is a sense of control because
Speaker 1: these problems do pop up in offices right now under
Speaker 1: just local you know services, So your local servers at
Speaker 1: your office the ones that are actually physically in your
Speaker 1: building possibly could go down and it affects your entire office. Um,
Speaker 1: but you that feels different than if it were in
Speaker 1: someone else's control, like in Google's control, because at least
Speaker 1: then you can be the one standing in the room
Speaker 1: looking at all these machines that aren't blinking lights like
Speaker 1: they're supposed to and scream profanity if you wish, Whereas
Speaker 1: if it's in Google's building, you have no idea if
Speaker 1: anyone is screaming profanity or even in the general vicinity
Speaker 1: of the computers that aren't working. I mean, it's a
Speaker 1: safe bet. I don't know about the screaming profanity part.
Speaker 1: I'm not really aware of that in Google's culture. But
Speaker 1: the point being that without those those machines being on
Speaker 1: your physical premises you you lose that sense of control
Speaker 1: and it's harder to entrust your your data and your
Speaker 1: processing power to another party. But this is the future.
Speaker 1: We've gotten past that because obviously companies have managed to
Speaker 1: create UH services that are both secure and reliable, or
Speaker 1: at least secure enough and reliable enough and cheap enough
Speaker 1: for companies to say, you know what, we're gonna go
Speaker 1: with this because it's gonna save us more money in
Speaker 1: the long run. So what else has made the Office
Speaker 1: of the future become a non localized, non geographic you know,
Speaker 1: uh entity. I mean, now we no longer have these
Speaker 1: massive offices filled with people screaming and yelling at each
Speaker 1: other and typewriters clacking and oh wait, I'm thinking I
Speaker 1: took that trip to the nineteen twenties the other day.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of you know, I think those big screens
Speaker 1: over there might have something to do with it. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: well that that would have something to do with it,
Speaker 1: because the you know, of course, that technology is getting
Speaker 1: cheaper and cheaper every year. Yes, we're at least in
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, Yes, back in two thousand nine. By
Speaker 1: now it's you know, pretty much commonlies. You know. Well,
Speaker 1: I think the pennies back in so, you know, during
Speaker 1: that whole Mayan thing, yea, anyway, yeah, um yeah. Actually
Speaker 1: the telepresence idea Cisco um, you know, was big into
Speaker 1: that back in two thousand nine, about the idea that
Speaker 1: you can immerse yourself in um being in a meeting,
Speaker 1: in a virtual situation with the right kind of camera
Speaker 1: and having the large enough screen you feel like you're
Speaker 1: actually right in front of the person and talking to them, um,
Speaker 1: which was a pretty neat way of making it possible
Speaker 1: to uh, to communicate with other people, because that was
Speaker 1: the big thing about working in person when you had
Speaker 1: to be in an office building like this giant, empty
Speaker 1: one that we're in now. Uh, you know, well, what
Speaker 1: are you gonna do. You don't get any face time
Speaker 1: with anybody, You don't get the opportunity to make your
Speaker 1: point in person. But now you don't need to because
Speaker 1: you have you know this uh, this conferencing technology that
Speaker 1: allows you to do that, and you know it's all
Speaker 1: free with this. These ads supported voice over Internet protocol
Speaker 1: services and there's tons of them now. And not only that,
Speaker 1: but I think culturally the shift started where people began
Speaker 1: to place less and less importance on that in person meeting. UM.
Speaker 1: I mean, part of it was technlogy was allowing for alternatives,
Speaker 1: and part of it's just this interesting shift where people
Speaker 1: are becoming more comfortable with virtual spaces, with communicating over
Speaker 1: various forms of Internet or electronic uh methods. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about also collaboration. Collaboration is much easier in the
Speaker 1: future than it was, you know, in two thousand nine
Speaker 1: and and far easier than back and when I started
Speaker 1: working in an office environment, like when Google Wave revolutionized
Speaker 1: office communications. Sure, because let's let's think back to the
Speaker 1: early days of my career. Because this way I can
Speaker 1: I can kind of step through how collaboration has changed.
Speaker 1: Are No, no, we're not We're not going to get
Speaker 1: in the machine. I'm just gonna tell you about it.
Speaker 1: So the machine is just gonna stay right there. We're
Speaker 1: just gonna stay in this building. No one wander off.
Speaker 1: I see some of you going toward the windows. Just
Speaker 1: be careful, okay, alright, So anyway, the back when I
Speaker 1: started work, it was really hard to collaborate with other
Speaker 1: people because in order to do any sort of collaboration
Speaker 1: I had to create a document on my machine. I
Speaker 1: then had to email it or put it up on
Speaker 1: a server for someone else. They would pull a copy
Speaker 1: of that document onto their machine make changes. Then they'd
Speaker 1: have to save that copy back either to a centralized
Speaker 1: server or email it to me. And now you've got
Speaker 1: multiple copies of the same document kind of floating around.
Speaker 1: It just made it really messy and difficult to keep track.
Speaker 1: Ye skip ahead, you got you started getting things like
Speaker 1: Google Docs, where now you've got a centralized document creation source,
Speaker 1: like you can go to Google Docs, create a document,
Speaker 1: and you can invite other people to come into that
Speaker 1: document and make edits, and you can create a unified
Speaker 1: effort in creating this document without making extra copies. Move
Speaker 1: on to Google Wave, which incorporates not just collaboration, but
Speaker 1: real time collaboration, where you can actually see people making
Speaker 1: changes in real time and you can comment on them.
Speaker 1: You can have a discussion at that moment within the
Speaker 1: document itself if you wanted to and discuss what should
Speaker 1: and should not go in there. Yeah, it was, it was.
Speaker 1: It was a little buggy, you know, it didn't necessarily
Speaker 1: keep up with all your waves and and you didn't
Speaker 1: have that many applications. But now now there's practically everything
Speaker 1: available on Google Wave. You can do video conferencing, you
Speaker 1: can create documents, you can create presentations, you can do
Speaker 1: pretty much all the basic Microsoft kind of office things
Speaker 1: that a lot of officers did earlier. And what's really
Speaker 1: interesting is that, of course Google Wave is not the
Speaker 1: only solution. I think it it really led a revolution
Speaker 1: in how we communicate online. So really the there are
Speaker 1: tons of different applications, not just Googles. I mean, Google's,
Speaker 1: of course, is the oldest one, so that's the one
Speaker 1: we talk about. But obviously other companies have come out
Speaker 1: with their own versions of this kind of software. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: and just just wasn't anticipating the whole you know, Twitter
Speaker 1: buying Google things. Yeah, that really surprised me too. Yeah. Anyway, also,
Speaker 1: you know, um, well, we won't get into it at
Speaker 1: any rate. So somebody's gonna you know, look, listen to
Speaker 1: this here, that much of it and freak out. Well,
Speaker 1: clearly they didn't give in the machine with us at
Speaker 1: the beginning. If they did, they'd see what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: So here here's something some other things to consider about
Speaker 1: the office. Wow, what does that here? Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: what's because it's big empty building, right. Okay, So if
Speaker 1: we do move to more telecommuting, as this version of
Speaker 1: the future has shown us, now, granted we gotta remember
Speaker 1: futures they branch off. We may just be in one
Speaker 1: possible future. We didn't go to the one where the
Speaker 1: robots rule us. So, I mean there are a lot
Speaker 1: of different choices. Well I haven't looked out the window,
Speaker 1: tell you the truth. So but assuming that that this
Speaker 1: does hold true and that we no longer have the
Speaker 1: need to create a geographic location for our office. Like
Speaker 1: let's say, a lot of offices now they allow their
Speaker 1: employees to log in from wherever they are to uh
Speaker 1: to contribute to the company. What happens to all the
Speaker 1: office buildings, Well, you know, they they're really nice planters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's one of the things. I mean, it's one
Speaker 1: of those questions that you think, why are you even asking,
Speaker 1: and you think, well, no, this is a legitimate question.
Speaker 1: If what are all the people going to do with
Speaker 1: those Yeah, you've got you've got these massive buildings, like
Speaker 1: we're we're in a pretty tall building in Atlanta. And
Speaker 1: can you imagine if if more offices moved to a
Speaker 1: telecommuting uh atmosphere back in two thousand nine. Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: assume that offices do find that telecommuting does work, that
Speaker 1: employees are justice productive if they work remotely as they
Speaker 1: would be if they worked in the office. They gonna
Speaker 1: say more money by having a virtual space as opposed
Speaker 1: to a physical space. All of those real estate owners
Speaker 1: who own these buildings are going to be in trouble,
Speaker 1: I mean, And then follow the next step, what happens
Speaker 1: to cities. If suddenly you have all these abandoned buildings
Speaker 1: in the middle, it could turn into another city that
Speaker 1: I won't mention on this podcast. I'm not gonna. I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna at any rate you end up with a
Speaker 1: lot of empty buildings. That's actually a big trouble problem.
Speaker 1: And another legitimate concern that people have about the possibility
Speaker 1: of telecommuting is the impact it would have on I
Speaker 1: T departments. Yeah, that that does seem like it would
Speaker 1: be a problem. Well, it depends on what what what
Speaker 1: is used to deliver computing services now too. I mean,
Speaker 1: if it's centralized as you suggested earlier with virtual machines, uh,
Speaker 1: then there's probably very little that's going to need to
Speaker 1: be done in terms of regular maintenance at the at
Speaker 1: the person's house. Now, of course, you know something is
Speaker 1: an actual physical break. You know, somebody needs to replace
Speaker 1: a monitor for example, Right, But I think in that
Speaker 1: I think in these cases like let's assume let's let's
Speaker 1: take the test case of an office of the future,
Speaker 1: and let's say, okay, let's say that they have given
Speaker 1: all employees a very thin client to work with, as
Speaker 1: there their work machine. So by thin client, I mean
Speaker 1: that it does not have a very powerful process, or
Speaker 1: it doesn't have very much storage space. If anything, it
Speaker 1: pretty much has a screen and a keyboard and interface
Speaker 1: with which you can use too, or which you can
Speaker 1: use to access the services that you need to do
Speaker 1: your job. Assuming someone successfully resurrects that idea. Yes, netbooks, dude,
Speaker 1: they're already back there in two thousand nine. Okay, that
Speaker 1: idea was already alive before we got into the machine.
Speaker 1: So you have a thin client that can access these
Speaker 1: these things, or maybe even a company allows you to
Speaker 1: use your own machine. I think that would be a
Speaker 1: little more problematic because then you're getting into like intellectual
Speaker 1: property issues. It's not even people's preferences. It's really more
Speaker 1: of a question of I don't want you to have
Speaker 1: you have office property on your personal machine. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: well that and I was thinking more along lines of well,
Speaker 1: you bought this thing over here, and he bought that
Speaker 1: thing over there, and she bought that thing over there,
Speaker 1: and none of them are compatible with one another. Right,
Speaker 1: So I think the thin client is probably the most
Speaker 1: the most logical approach because it's going to be cheap,
Speaker 1: and it's going to be easy to replace if it breaks.
Speaker 1: And then the same Office of the Future which has
Speaker 1: given out all these these thin clients to employees some
Speaker 1: netbooks or whatever they whatever format they take um and
Speaker 1: then if one breaks, they have a contract with an
Speaker 1: independent I T department that can support this stuff, and
Speaker 1: they do it on a case by case basis, which
Speaker 1: is cheaper than supporting an I T department on your
Speaker 1: own until you get to a certain scale. I assume
Speaker 1: if you got to an office that was truly enormous,
Speaker 1: then you would want your own I T department. But
Speaker 1: otherwise I don't think you would need to. You would
Speaker 1: just contract out to to an independent company. And because
Speaker 1: all of your your source, your your storage, and your
Speaker 1: processing power if you're gone to cloud computing, because all
Speaker 1: of that is now on someone else's property. They're the
Speaker 1: ones who are providing I T support. They're the ones
Speaker 1: who have the I T department. You don't have to
Speaker 1: support that anymore. Which sounds great to the companies, it's
Speaker 1: scary as heck to the I T professionals out there,
Speaker 1: because yeah, you know, think about the idea being that, well,
Speaker 1: now there's there's not as big a need for as
Speaker 1: many i T professionals. You just need the number to
Speaker 1: look overlooked, you know, oversee the servers, not necessarily all
Speaker 1: the machines inside a big office. So that can mean
Speaker 1: that I T professionals could see jobs get growing more
Speaker 1: and more scarce and uh be a much more com
Speaker 1: out of the field. And um and that's not necessarily
Speaker 1: a good thing. I mean, there are people who have
Speaker 1: developed put in years and years of work in I
Speaker 1: T fields and have a ton of expertise who may
Speaker 1: have problems finding a job in the future because there
Speaker 1: just aren't as many out there to be had, even
Speaker 1: though we've moved to a much higher tech world. It's
Speaker 1: kind of a weird paradox. It is kind of strange
Speaker 1: when you think about it. Um. So, one of the
Speaker 1: things that I really like about the Office of the
Speaker 1: Future is the whole uh how it adjusts to you
Speaker 1: being there sort of you know, because that whole R
Speaker 1: F I D thing right was the first generation of
Speaker 1: how you know, it could identify who you are, and
Speaker 1: of course as soon as you walk into the room
Speaker 1: and could set the temperature to the right level and
Speaker 1: the lighting to the to the right ambiance. Um, you know, personally,
Speaker 1: I enjoy how we do our podcasts in their candlelit room.
Speaker 1: It's very very pleasant, very very calming. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: not everybody functions well in that kind of an environment.
Speaker 1: And not only that, but then you have things like
Speaker 1: augmented reality layers that you can put on top of
Speaker 1: your various interfaces. So let's say you do have a
Speaker 1: teleconferencing meeting with someone. Not only do you see that
Speaker 1: person's image on your computer, you know, and only do
Speaker 1: you see live video, but you might see real time
Speaker 1: stats popping up, things like the person who's you know
Speaker 1: that they're from a different company. You start seeing stock
Speaker 1: information popping up, you start seeing links to news stories.
Speaker 1: This could be both good and bad, because you know,
Speaker 1: you don't necessarily want the person you're meeting with to
Speaker 1: be reading the latest news about you and your company
Speaker 1: while you're trying to talk with him. But it's something
Speaker 1: that we have to deal with in the future. Yeah, so, uh,
Speaker 1: I really want to strike a deal with you. What? Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what now that you mentioned, thank you very
Speaker 1: much for the offer, We'll be I gotta go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what happened exactly? So did you do? So? The Office
Speaker 1: of the Future is is definitely a different place than
Speaker 1: back in two thousand nine. I mean even back in
Speaker 1: our office. We do occasionally telework back in two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: but it's it's not it's more the exception than the rule. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we still come into the office most of the time,
Speaker 1: and you know, we we work there in how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com And as you imagine, just imagine, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a big laboratory filled with bubble bubbling beakers and
Speaker 1: machines that go ping, just like in your imagination. It's
Speaker 1: exactly like that. It's not like a giant room filled
Speaker 1: with cubicles with people typing away quietly, everyone wearing headphones.
Speaker 1: It's not like that at all. No, not in the least. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's because we're sort of borderline future. Uh sadly, No,
Speaker 1: that it really is more like a bunch of people
Speaker 1: saying in a big room will make me want to
Speaker 1: go back to the past again. Well, mostly I'm saying
Speaker 1: it so that people don't want to show up and
Speaker 1: tour our office because there's really not much to see.
Speaker 1: I mean, tons of intelligent people working, which is cool,
Speaker 1: but you can find that in other places. So are
Speaker 1: we are we all done here in the future of
Speaker 1: talking about the fact that in the future there's really
Speaker 1: no such thing as a physical office anymore. Well then,
Speaker 1: all right, everyone, pile back in here. I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna flip the switch back to the way back machine.
Speaker 1: Hang on, all right, everyone, get in. Come on, no stragglers,
Speaker 1: don't want to leave anyone, Come on, come on, all right,
Speaker 1: let's go. All right, let's push the button. Chris, I
Speaker 1: can't reach it from me. All right, all right, all right,
Speaker 1: back in good old two thousand. Oh, where's Billy. That's fine,
Speaker 1: probably probably doesn't matter. And seriously, we have to get
Speaker 1: out of there because somebody is really inconsiderate. Okay, everyone out,
Speaker 1: come on. It's kind of uffing in here now. All right. Wow,
Speaker 1: that that's a first for tech stuff, right there, my friends, Uh,
Speaker 1: time trouble, I mean, not the not the flahlence joke. Um. So,
Speaker 1: I hope you guys learned something about the Office of
Speaker 1: the future. It really is kind of an interesting thing
Speaker 1: to think about, you know. It definitely has some pretty
Speaker 1: wide ranging consequences. Now, granted, if Kurt Swell is correct,
Speaker 1: we won't have to deal with that for very long
Speaker 1: because three days after the Office of the Future arrives,
Speaker 1: the robots will take over pretty much, so you know,
Speaker 1: enjoy those three days of telecommuting, and then um say
Speaker 1: hello to your android overlords. Hello, So, um, are you
Speaker 1: ready to move on to a little listener mail? I
Speaker 1: am indeed, so let's go to listener mail. This comes
Speaker 1: from Kyle, who is a help desk support specialist. Kyle,
Speaker 1: I hope we didn't scare you with the Office of
Speaker 1: the Future, he says. I've spent this morning catching up
Speaker 1: on some tech stuff podcasts and just listen to the
Speaker 1: Apple Tablet Cast. You guys made a joke about Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs not returning your calls, which surprised me because it
Speaker 1: turns out Steve Jobs actually does return all sorts of
Speaker 1: calls from the general public. A friend of mine has
Speaker 1: several Apple devices in his house, including an iPod Touch.
Speaker 1: He'd had a horrible time with it, had spent it,
Speaker 1: had been sent in for repairs multiple times, and always
Speaker 1: come back still broken. So he wrote a letter to
Speaker 1: Jobs and copied all twenty seven members of Apple's board
Speaker 1: of directors. About two weeks later, his cell phone rings.
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs actually called him directly to apologize for all
Speaker 1: the trouble he'd had and told him they would send
Speaker 1: him a new iPod Touch second generation. His broken one
Speaker 1: was a first generation and one of the new iPod
Speaker 1: nanos with the camera. They only spoke for a couple
Speaker 1: of minutes, but still, how often does someone get a
Speaker 1: call from the CEO of a fortune company? Like I said,
Speaker 1: I know you were just making a joke, but maybe
Speaker 1: you should try giving him a call. He might even
Speaker 1: tell you about their secret plans to take over the
Speaker 1: world with their new tablet ile. Um. Well, first of all, Kyle,
Speaker 1: thanks for writing. That's a really cool story that she told.
Speaker 1: I think that's really interesting, and I guess that might
Speaker 1: be why Forbes called him the the CEO of the
Speaker 1: was it the decade? Wow? So good on you, Mr Jobs.
Speaker 1: I'm still a little too intimidated to actually call him. Um,
Speaker 1: I think you'd fire me? Yeah, I don't even work
Speaker 1: for I think he would hire me, fire me, and
Speaker 1: then yeah, go out and go about his business. Um No.
Speaker 1: I I greatly respect what he's done. I fear him,
Speaker 1: not in the same way I fear Balmer. Balmber makes
Speaker 1: me physically afraid Jobs. It's more of a psychological thing,
Speaker 1: and I think that's probably warranted at any rate. If
Speaker 1: any of you out there have any comments you want
Speaker 1: to make, suggestions, questions, criticisms, that sort of thing, you
Speaker 1: can write us. Our email address is tech stuff at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. And remember you can watch
Speaker 1: us live every Tuesday afternoon at one pm Eastern. That's
Speaker 1: over at the the how stupp works dot com blogs.
Speaker 1: Just go to how stup works dot com. Look on
Speaker 1: the right side. You'll see the links to the blogs.
Speaker 1: You can check it out there and see tech stuff
Speaker 1: Live and see what Chris and I look like when
Speaker 1: we're making puns in person. And uh, don't forget to
Speaker 1: watch for some punkin chunking. That's right, chunking. Eyes open,
Speaker 1: And until next time, we'll talk to you guys again
Speaker 1: really soon. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
Speaker 1: visit how stuff works dot com and be sure to
Speaker 1: check out the new tech stuff blog now on the
Speaker 1: house stuff Works homepage, brought to you by the reinvented
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve Camray. It's ready, are you