Thin Clients Are All The Rage

Rajesh Jain’s publishes an article on the coming of what Gilder terms the teleputer:

Handheld devices that are computers, telephones and video players will be available one day. George Gilder, a technology evangelist and author of the book “Telecosm: The World After Bandwidth Abundance,” coined the word “teleputer” many years ago. He thinks of it as “a handheld device that’s a fully functioning personal computer, digital video camera, telephone, MP3 player and video player.

Epitomized by the multi-purpose cell phone handset or personal digital assistant, the teleputers is optimized for ubiquitous connectivity. It will be as portable as a watch and as personal as your wallet. It takes pictures or videos and projects them onto a wall or screen or onto your retina and transmits them to any other digital device or storage facility.”

As usual, I think Gilder might be a little ahead of his time. But, there is a lot of truth in his vision. The complete functionality of the teleputer as he describes is still some time away, there are a lot of similarities between what he calls for and the noise we're starting to see around thin clients.