The Coming "Technology Avalanche"

June 4, 2007

Charting the future has always been a perilous undertaking, but it's something Dave Evans, chief technologist for the Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group, pursues with relish. He's been known to replace his cell phone monthly and admits he has trouble passing by a technology store on his way home from work without going in.

As part of an interview series about future technology trends and their impact on business, Evans recently spoke with News@Cisco to discuss what he sees for the future of technology and the profoundly new ways we will be interacting with it in the coming years. (The following is a modified excerpt from a News@Cisco podcast interview with Evans.)

Before we explore your macro-thoughts about technology, can you tell us about your personal view of it?

Dave Evans: I have what some would describe as a clinical obsession with technology. There is probably no technology in my home that is more than six months old. Cell phones last about a month. Because technology's changing at such an exponential rate, the only way you can stay on top of it--especially someone in my role--is to have a very close, immersive relationship with technology.

You've been quoted as describing the future as a "technology avalanche." What do you mean by that?

Dave Evans: I very consciously picked that metaphor because if you think about technology change and the four pillars of technology--computing, storage, the network and information--you see that they are all growing at an exponential rate. Storage is an excellent example. When the hard drive was invented by IBM in 1956, a single megabyte of storage cost $65,000, adjusted for inflation. Today I carry in my pocket a two gigabyte USB memory stick. That's the equivalent of a $130 million device back in 1956. Now take this trend forward about 20 years. By the year 2025 I'll be able to walk into my local electronics store and buy about 6.3 petabytes of storage for about $100. To give you a sense of the immensity of 6.3 petabytes of storage, consider this: if I had taken a high definition camera and I had set that camera on record at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, which is about 1700 AD, and let that camera record 365 days a year, seven days a week, and 24 hours a day, I would still have years of storage left in that camera. And that's the amount of storage I'll be able to buy for $100 20 years from now.

Here's another example of information growth. IBM estimates that, by 2010, the amount of digital information is expected to double every 11 hours (source: http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/ en/presskit/21064.wss.) We're creating so much information, how do we mine it such that we pull out the relevant meaningful nuggets of knowledge that we can use to do our daily jobs?

What new applications will this spectacular growth in those four technology pillars enable?

Dave Evans: Radical changes will occur in the way we as humans interact with technology. We will encounter Virtual People that will respond to us with automatic emotions, gestures and responses. This will involve more sophisticated speech recognition, text to speech and knowledge of previous encounters-a type of memory. We will begin to see brain-computer interfaces. Some of this is already occurring today. In October, 2004, a 25-year-old quadriplegic had 100 tiny sensors implanted in his brain, and was then connected to a computer where he was able to play the computer game, Pong, just by using his thoughts.

Both of those examples seem to involve communications. Is that a key area where you anticipate major changes?

Dave Evans: If you think about human beings and society, we fundamentally progress because of one capability, and that capability is communication. It is communication and the exchange of goods and services and ideas. Whether it's the trade routes from the east to the west or sharing information over a phone call or sharing new discoveries, the network is a critical tool in all forms of communication. So the network is fundamental and it's at the core of everything we do as a society going forward.

Would you go as far as to say that it might not happen without the network?

Dave Evans: I'll actually submit that that is a true statement. I think that, as a society, we've now reached a point where it's analogous to saying, imagine if there was no electricity tomorrow. The network is the lifeblood and I believe we have just barely scratched the surface of what the network will do in the future. Consider some of the numbers and some of the stats. Roughly 15 percent of the global population connects to the Internet today. We've barely scratched the surface. In a few years there will be billions of new Internet inhabitants. An estimated 50 billion RFID tags and 10 billion readers will be connected to the Internet by 2010. "Smart dust" sensor networks will be everywhere as part of what Forrester Research calls the "Extended Internet," detecting temperature, air flow, humidity among many other variables. So if you look at all the opportunities, we've barely scratched the surface. Look at some of these new forms of rich media, whether it be TelePresence, video, or presence, I think the network is a key enabler for how we will function as a society going forward.

As a futurist, what do you consider to be true innovation and what role does that play here at Cisco?

Dave Evans: People often confuse invention and innovation. While there are many inventions, I believe the number of inventions pales in comparison with innovations. To me innovation isn't necessarily coming up with something brand new, it's often connecting the dots in new and unique ways. New ways to use the network, for example, or new ways to communicate or to collaborate. Connecting the dots is a big recipe for innovation.

Many executives wait around for others to define the future before they respond. Cisco seems to take a different approach. Do you think that's important to define the future rather than let others define it for you?

Dave Evans: Cisco does a fantastic job of defining the future. If you look across the organization, we have many people like myself who are studying the future. Our Emerging Technologies group is one example. We also have an incredibly strong acquisitions team. And we have a very strong business development team. It's in our DNA as a company. We look to see what the future holds and we help shape that future. We don't sit back and passively wait for other people to define it for us. We're helping to define the future. If you look at what we're doing with networking technology or collaboration or video technology, we're basically saying to the market, look at what you can do with, say, TelePresence. Or consider the impact on your business of deploying web- based applications, or unified voice, video and data capabilities. In many ways we are moving aggressively within the industry to say to our customers and our competition that we are shaping the future; let us show you how through specific, tangible products and examples. We don't take a back seat and wait for others to define it for us. We're absolutely out there driving the future forward.