On Digital Convergence and Challenges
Won Kim, SamSung Electronics, Suwon, Korea
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Abstract
In the center of the current digital revolution is the digital convergence phenomenon. The ability to convert various types of analog data to digital form has made it possible for such data as voice, music, photographic images and video to be stored in computers, processed using computers, transmitted via digital communications networks, and presented on both digital and analog devices. Digital convergence has already brought about, and will continue to bring about, sea changes in how people live, work, interact with others, and entertain themselves. In this article, I will provide a brief overview of the digital convergence phenomenon, and outline some of the challenges that need to be addressed.
1 INTRODUCTION
Today the mankind is witnessing the unfolding of the digital revolution.
Consumer electronic devices are increasingly becoming indispensable
parts of every-day life today in industrialized parts of the world.
Cell phones, PDAs, MP3 players, digital cameras, DVDs, DVRs, digital
televisions, etc. are already in wide use. DMB devices, digital phones,
etc. are expected to be in widespread use in the foreseeable future.
The digital revolution is being led by several industries, including
semi-conductor, communications industry, entertainment, consumer electronics,
and of course computer. The consumer electronics industry is delivering
cell phones, home entertainment products, etc. The entertainment industry
is delivering the contents, such as television programs, movies, music,
etc. The communications industry is providing the communications infrastructures
for delivering the contents, including the Web pages, both wirelessly
and via the Internet. The semi-conductor industry is providing the
microprocessors, memories, and flash memories that form the brains
of the digital devices.
One of the key enabling technologies for the digital revolution is
the analog-to-digital conversion and digital-to-analog conversion
technology. The analog-to-digital conversion technology has made it
possible to
transform analog data to digital data. Once analog data takes digital
form, truly breath-taking possibilities open up. The data may be
stored in computer memories, computer hard disk drives, flash memories,
and
a variety of digital storage devices that contain such memory devices,
including DVDs, DVRs, digital cameras, digital video cameras, etc.
The data may be transmitted over the network, including the Internet.
This makes possible music downloading, file sharing of multimedia
data such as photographs and music, etc. The data may also be output
on
digital presentation devices, such as computer monitors of differing
resolutions, digital televisions, MP3 players, printers, faxes, cell
phones, etc. Of course, the data stored in computer memories may
be tagged, organized, indexed, searched, edited, combined into composite
data, compared in digital form against sample data, etc. The digital-to-analog
conversion technology allows digital data to be presented on analog
devices, such as conventional phones, televisions, printers, photo-processing
machines, etc. Seemingly endless scenarios now open up for capturing,
storing, processing, transmitting, and presenting a wide variety
of
data. For example, photographs may be taken using a digital camera.
They may be transmitted wirelessly to a computer or stored on a flash
memory card and the memory card may be used to move the photographs
to the computer. The photographs now stored on the computer may be
edited and uploaded to a personal homepage, and someone may download
them and view them on a cell phone. The photographs may be sent to
a photo-processing machine to create hardcopy prints.
2 CHALLENGES
Just as any revolution rooted in technology, the digital revolution
poses two types of challenge: technological and societal. Societal
challenges come in two types: One is the new problems that arise from
the pervasive availability of digital devices. Examples are the increase
in traffic accidents due to people using cell phones while driving,
invasion of privacy due to the tracking of the physical locations of
the users of cell phones, students conspiring to send exam questions
and receive answers in instant messages using cell phones (as happened
in South Korea in 2004), children downloading or receiving pornographic
images on the cell phones, etc. This type of problem becomes an issue
because of sudden mass proliferation of certain devices and the unforeseen
and less-than honorable, mature, responsible, or self-constrained behavior
of certain segments of the users.
Another type of problem is the challenges in identifying ways in
which the advances in digital technologies can make life better for
people
and solve certain existing problems. This type of challenge will surely
be addressed by the hundreds of thousands of creative people and organizations
that will try to identify and develop applications and business models
to disseminate solutions for profit. Solutions will include both technologies
and contents.
Technological challenges touch on several areas, including user interface,
software, hardware, communications, semi-conductor, and manufacturing.
The challenges on the hardware, communications, semi-conductor, and
manufacturing fronts are the usual – faster, smaller, cheaper,
and more reliable. As these are not my areas of expertise, in the remainder
of this article, I will outline only the challenges facing the vendors
on the user interface and software fronts.
2.1 User Interface
In my view, the user interface for most digital devices today is very unsatisfactory,
even disgraceful. For example, to do anything other than simply making a
call or receiving a call on a cell phone, one has to push a sequence of buttons
and/or keys on the keypad. The sequence itself and the keys do not indicate
any logical connection with the function to be performed, such as changing
international roaming, calendar management, phone directory management, storing
and viewing digital photographs, etc. Even a relatively innocuous device
such as a microwave oven poses user-interface challenges. The clock on it
requires a full cycling when re-setting for Daylight Savings Time. It is
confusing to set “Power” level, as on some models it is a single-digit
number and on others a two-digit number. Electronic watches come with many
functions, including multiple time-zone support, calendar options, various
types of alarm, stop watch, calculator, etc. However, they have only four
buttons and a key pad to operate all of the functions. Digital devices that
come with a clock usually make the re-setting of the clock a major brain
teaser: there is absolutely no clue as to how to re-set the clock, and as
one comedian on TV cracked one night, “there are millions of VCRs in
the US today that blink ’12:00’ on their clock.”
Operating most digital devices, except for a few simple every-day features,
requires one to consult the user manuals, and often the user manuals
are confusing, too. There are three sources of problems with the user
interface on most digital devices. First is the disparity between the number
of functions
supported and the number of buttons and/or keys on the keypad on
the device. There are more functions than the buttons and/or keys on
a device,
necessitating
the use of a combination of the buttons and/or keys. Second is the
difficulty in making each of the buttons and keys, and each combination
of the buttons
and/or keys, correspond to each of the functions in a way that is
logical and natural to ordinary users. Third is the different approaches
to user
interface that vendors have adopted. Each vendor of a digital device
has made some, albeit very unsatisfactory, efforts to make the correspondence
logical and natural between the functions and the buttons and keys,
and combinations
of the buttons and keys. However, different vendors of a device of
the same type (e.g., cell phones) have adopted different approaches
in designing the
user interface for their devices. Further, vendors of a device of
one type (e.g. cell phones) have adopted different approaches from
vendors of a device
of different types (e.g., MP3 player).
The ultimate goals of the user interface for digital devices should
be, in my view, one that will, at least with respect to certain
core principles, apply across different types of devices, and also
one that will obviate the
need for the user manual (or if there must be a user manual, the
user manual should be one that will not require a second reading).
Such a user interface
would be so logical and natural to most ordinary users that they
should be able to operate any digital device based on a small number
of simple and
common core user-interface principles, and they should be able
to operate the device by using a small number of buttons and/keys,
and logical and natural
combinations of buttons and/or keys without having to consult the
user manuals.
2.2 Software
Japanese cell-phone makers estimate that the cost of developing a cell phone
today is split 80 to 20 between software and hardware, while the split
was 20 to 80 in 1998. Large US software makers now estimate that high-end
embedded
software will consist of up to 9 million lines of code in the near
future. All digital devices are embedded systems. Some consist of hardware
and firmware
only, while others consist of hardware, firmware, and software burned
into flash memory. High-end embedded systems, such as high-end cell phones
and
digital television, have large-scale complex software. As vendors of
such devices are being pushed, by competitive force and their own drive to
increase
profits, to add more features and improve on current features, the
devices are increasingly becoming software-oriented. The current competitive
landscape
requires vendors to churn out many models of the devices in ever-compressed
production cycles. The current production cycle for many consumer-electronics
devices is six months; and sometimes it is even 3-months.
The rapid increase in the size and complexity of software in digital
devices requires a corresponding increase in trained software workforce – developers
and testers alike. Currently, Japanese consumer electronics vendors
are being forced to outsource parts of their software development and testing
projects
to India and China, not necessarily to benefit from the presumed lower
cost there, but largely because they simply do not have adequate software
workforce.
In the end, the lack of trained software workforce may prove to be
one key factor limiting the pace of progress in digital convergence. Availability
of high-quality and adequate-strength software workforce should certainly
be a key competitive factor in the market.
As the software runs on embedded hardware, testing and debugging it
requires tools that run on the same hardware. Tools are not available
for certain hardware and operating systems. As such, the challenge
is to
develop
and port tools that work on a variety of embedded hardware and operating
systems.
Today’s software embedded in high-end digital devices may need to
be restructured so that it will run on parallel or distributed computer architecture.
Although microprocessors, memories, and interconnects in embedded systems
will surely improve in performance and capacity for the foreseeable
future,
simultaneously means should be found in software to improve performance
of embedded systems. Just as has been the case with conventional software,
parallelism
and distribution of workload by making effective use of parallel and
distributed computer architecture should be obvious potential opportunities.
About the author
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Won Kim is Senior
Advisor at SamSung Electronics, Korea. He is Editor-in-Chief of
ACM Transactions on
Internet Technology (htttp://www.acm.org/toit),
and Chair of ACM Special Interest Group on Knowledge Discovery
and Data Mining (http://www.acm.org/sigkdd).
He is the recipient of the ACM 2001 Distinguished Service Award.
He can be reached at wonkim@austin.rr.com |
Cite this column as follows: Won Kim: “On Digital Convergence
and Challenges",
in Journal of Object Technology,
vol. 4, no. 4, May-June 2005, pp. 67-71 http://www.jot.fm/issues/issue_2005_05/column5
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