Reading through the “Respondents’ thoughts” section in the recent The future of cloud computing report from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project I was struck by something that seemed to be absent; a description of the hardware device that would be used to connect to all the cloud-based services that will be out there. The general idea seemed to be based around a smartphone. My concern is the screen size. Is the size of the screen on the smartphone going to be large enough to support everything the device should do?

I’ve suggested that the map approach (see the Nuclear Politics map as an example) and, in particular, connected maps (see the world oil spill map) might work as a next step beyond blogs and non-fiction ebooks. I’ve also suggested that a touch-screen version would work well on a tablet computer and as a clam-shell design on a smartphone; that is, on the smartphone the map shells would display on the phone on a background (the board) and the Details panel would pop-over when a particular shell or sphere was selected.

But this still leaves the size of the screen. What is the smallest size that I can get away with? Is it the size of a screen I can hold comfortably in my hand – the smartphone size? Now I’m not so sure. I think it has to be bigger to accommodate the graphical display. So here’s my thought on what might work and I’m certainly not a hardware guy so please bear that in mind.

note: 7/01/10 — in retrospect I really shouldn’t have tried to suggest a hardware design – see the update note at the bottom of the page. Should’ve listened to that nagging little voice. Oh well. So please just hurry through the next three paragraphs while thinking of something else.

The screen on The Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy was “about three inches by four” but I don’t think that’s large enough. A mass-market paperback “display” inside is about 6 inches by 3.5 inches. Which is a nice size screen. The nice thing about paperbacks is that a lot of things are built to hold paperbacks already — from pockets to bags. So building a screen with this size gives a nice display area and is something that fits a form factor already out there.

If the tablet-computer-kind-of-thing is the route we’re going I’d like to see a device the size of a mass-market paperback with a slot in the back to hold my cellphone and let the two devices contact each other wirelessly when one is removed from the other. That way there’s two screens, one facing forward and one facing back. I’d also build in a pico-projector, like the next generation version of this one. It would also have built-in stereo speakers.

The reason I like this solution is that it seems to me to fit with the current explosion of smartphone use, but provides an upgrade path that would be robust in countries that may well leap directly to cloud-based services with a smartphone-based device to avoid trying to build an enormous personal computer infrastructure.

Since I’m not a hardware guy I don’t know much about all the other options that must be out there but I went looking for this one and found its beginnings – a device with a roll-up screen. Wistron is reported to be releasing a version based on this later in 2010. But I wonder how robust it will be in the field.

But now I think that I’m thinking too small. Technology like SixthSense, from inventor Pranav Mistry, whose code is going open-source, is right here. Jump in at 8:50 to see something beyond the tablet computer.

Then, perhaps beyond that, there’s something along the lines of Augmented Reality in a Contact Lens.

update 7/01/10 — for cleverer thoughts on hardware than mine, please see Roll-up computers and their kin by Nick Bilton in The New York Times on June 25 and how could I have forgotten One Laptop Per Child?

p.s. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with this blog. I was going to close it up completely and move to a new map called “the color blue,” but now [ ... ] I’m not sure if that’s exactly what I should do. So I’m going to keep it going in background with my main work done on the map. Please follow me there and if you want the RSS feed it’s available through the Hub View > Community tab. I think if you believe in a future and have a chance to go there you should.