2002: A slow year for IT in RI

Zatni Arbi, Contributor, Jakarta

If you have been traveling much in the past year or two, you must have noticed that in a growing number of airplanes the headrest now can be molded in such a way to better hold your head up as you sleep. Most of these new seats have headrests that can be height-adjusted, too.

These are just two small improvements that by no means deserve to be considered technological breakthroughs. Still, they have made sleeping during extended flights far more bearable. Since your head can now be well-secured on the headrest, it will not end up resting on the shoulder of the poor fellow sitting next to you. More importantly, the adjustable headrest prevents you from waking up with a stiff neck.

In the information and communications (IT) technologies, there have been small improvements much like these ones that we could observe throughout the year. To start with, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) now come mostly with a color display. Cell phones, too, come with sharper screens that make SMSing more hip. Notebooks and brand name computers -- even the multimedia PCs for home use -- come with an RJ-45 port to connect it to a local area networks or a cable modem. These were not breakthroughs, only small improvements that meant a lot to us.

Networking itself has become very easy thanks to improved support that is already built into the operating system. Routers and switches have also become affordable. Home networking is the way to go as broadband access to the Internet has been gaining momentum worldwide. With a home network, family members can share the same 24-hour Internet access.

Unfortunately, in Indonesia, the number of broadband subscribers has been largely stagnant. Stephanus Jonatan, Marketing Manager of CBNNet, said the total number of cable Internet subscribers in Indonesia basically remained unchanged in the past year; they were just moving from one ISP to another to find the one that could serve them better. The way the infrastructure and service is in this country, it would be an illusion to expect that cable internet could offer complete customer satisfaction. It is, however, still beyond the economic reach of most Indonesians with home PCs.

It is also a pity that the market for broadband services are not growing. It means that it may be some time before we can enjoy the convenience of wireless LAN with Wi-Fi hotspots in Jakarta.

On the hardware side, we have seen more or less the same frequency of new product launches this year as in 2001. Color laser printers have come down in price-and gone up in output quality and speed as one would expect, but home users still cannot justify the investment. Inkjet printer makers seem to have run out of ideas on how to make their products cheaper, better and faster, as they are already so good. Multifunction devices -- printer with a scanner, a copier and a fax -- are slowly gaining popularity in Indonesia, although consumers still think that these four functions actually require four different machines and therefore combining them into one single unit will only reduce their reliability.

Like the digital cameras, new PDAs compete in the slowly growing market. PDA makers continuously add features to lure consumers. Sony, for example, recently added a video camera to its Clie NX70V. In the meantime, PDA and cell phone combos have already appeared on the market.

Among the more active segment in the hardware industry is the graphics subsystem. In the past, it was completely ridiculous to imagine that a graphics card would be equipped with 128 MB of high-speed memory, but that is more and more common today. The funny thing is that this expensive component is coveted more by hardcore computer gamers, and the card alone can cost as much as a low-end PC.

Intel topped out at 3.06 GHz this year, but it should be very easy to predict that the Pentium 4's speed will reach or even exceed 5 GHz by the end of next year. We have been asking ourselves whether we really need this much speed, but, obviously, it is not for us to decide.

The prices of LCD monitors have leisurely moseyed on with their downward trends, although in a price-sensitive market like ours buyers still opt for the CRT monitors. Digital projectors have also become less expensive, although not yet affordable to the masses. Today it is hard to find a computer maker that does not offer a digital projector, while the traditional players such as Canon, Epson, Infocus, NEC, Sanyo and Sony have continuously raised the bar on versatility and reliability.

Digital cameras have virtually become a mass-market commodity. We no longer talk enthusiastically about their 4, 5 or even 6 megapixel capability, knowing that we can get a decent photo with only 3 megapixel resolution. One thing that was confusing was the wide array of removable memory devices, including the Secure Digital, MultiMedia Card and Memory Stick. Each of them requires a different type of slot, and a device typically can support two slots at the most. The situation will get even worse next year, as there will be more choice -- including Sony's high-capacity Memory Stick "Pro".

You may have noticed, too, that new notebooks now come without a floppy disk drive but with a CD-RW instead. Clearly, we will still be using floppies to share computer files, but CD-RW has definitely become commonplace. The good news is that the software tools for burning your own CDs have become easier to use, and the technology has also matured and become more foolproof.

Talking about innovation, we have not seen much of it on the software side. That is not surprising. Word processing and spreadsheet programs have become so good today that adding more functionality simply has the potential of lowering productivity because the new features will interfere with the work too much. Corel released Version 11 of its flagship product CorelDRAW, but it did not create so much as a ripple, because the earlier versions already offered most everything that we need. It seems that in 2002 software development projects were largely focused on meeting the demand of businesses rather than the individual home users.

Perhaps innovations can be expected in the development of applications for Microsoft's Tablet PC, which was officially launched on Nov. 7. Handwriting recognition, which does not force us to write in a shorthand form, is a progress that hopefully will continue next year. Add to it the improvement in voice recognition and text-to-speech synthesizing. However, for most notebook users in Indonesia, Tablet PCs are not likely to be their primary need.

What else do we have coming next year? The leaders in digital photography are getting together to work out a standard so that a digital camera from one vendor can print directly to a photo printer from another vendor. It is certainly the adjustable headrest of digital photo printing.

And, if you have an e-mail address, you will be receiving a lot of spam. There is no question about it. Spam and viruses have been on the increase throughout the year. People will dump all sorts of garbage on almost all e-mail addresses they find, and no filter can keep up with the influx. You will have to live with it.

If you regard spam as an act of terror, you should listen to one of IDC's projections for next year. As reported by CNet, they believe that "a major cyberterrorism event will occur in 2003, one that will disrupt the economy and will bring the Internet to its knees for a day or two." It seems that we can also call PLN a terrorist if they let a blackout hit Jakarta again for a day or more like they did on Sept. 12.

And, with the fear of actual terrorism still thick in the air, surveillance systems will continue to be one of the most lucrative industries. Thanks to tiny cameras and wireless technology, you will have less and less privacy as a human being. And the proliferation of camera cell phones, you have to constantly remind yourself that you are being watched. Oh, what a life it will be!