Periodic Ramblings

We spend a lot of time in the tech industry talking about Google, Apple/Microsoft, the latest social network craze and other relatively straightforward inovations on technology.  IBM usually is not in that list of companies we talk about.  It was nice to see a change in the news today.

CNN reported that IBM is continuing to work on their SyNAPSE project, in which they want to develop a computer that mimics the way the brain handles data.  So instead of programming this computer, it would be fed a series of inputs and learn about those inputs and make decisions organically instead of just sending back output based on programs that we put in there.  A lot like the brain handles data today.  We take in millions of pieces of data on a daily basis and then process it based on what we have learned in the past and in regards to the situation/environment we are in.

It is an interesting concept, and while AI and Expert Systems are nothing new, this takes the approach of duplicating the world’s most complex computer in hardware form, instead of trying to write lines and lines of code that mimics the interactions in the human brain.  It will be interesting where this goes in the future.

The New York Times posted an interesting article yesterday (January 22, 2010) showing the overlapping technologies from the four tech giants.

The list goes through and identifies which company is operating in a certain space, either with a product out today or a product in development.  The categories range from Mobile Phones to Operating Systems to traditional web services (IM, Email, Photo Storage).

The chart points out interesting changes in directions for the four companies:

• Google now competes in the Operating System and Mobile Phone space.
• Apple is in the Email and IM space.
• Microsoft is exploring the Social Networking space.
• Yahoo seems to be stagnant, not really offering any new products/services.

Over the past thirty years, the tech giants continue to change and evolve.  If this was done even ten years ago, who would be on this comparison chart (IBM and Sun maybe), twenty years ago, thirty years ago?  Technology will continue to evolve and so will the players at the top of the technology curve.