[Brian]

Great minds think alike Bob .

I posted something similar over at Tapland regarding the SoulPad, and posted this thread (8/03) about the Jeff Hawkins interview which I later used as a basis for my submission to PalmAddict (8/05), which got picked up by several websites like PIC (8/5) Engadget (8/6) and The Register (8/9, and which I disagree with, by the way ). It quickly spread like wildfire around the net. It's amazing how this thing is evolving and coming full circle! I don't want to take credit if it isn't due, but I think I started this meme.

Forgive me for quoting myself (8/11) :

Imagine keeping your entire computing environment on a mobile device -your operating system, applications, files, and desktop settings. Then imagine that you could plug in your handheld device to any "host" computer to recreate your computer environment, using the host computer's keyboard, mouse, monitor and internet connection. You wouldn't be booting into the host computer's operating system, so you wouldn't have to worry about spyware/adware/viruses that could be infecting the host computer. Your host computer doesn't even need to have a hard drive at all.

That's the idea behind IBM's SoulPad. IBM researchers are working on this concept and you can watch a video here (14.4MB WMV file), where an iPod is used.

I wonder if a future version of the LifeDrive could be used some day as a SoulPad? They are both based on a similar concept...

While Jeff Hawkins is a very good salesman and he may be referring to the LifeDrive and Mobile Manager, he doesn't think small. I agree that the "Mobile Manager" category and "LifeDrive" are the very early stages of carrying mobile computing to the ultimate conclusion Jeff talks about in the interview:

I always think of mobile computing as personal computing. This long-term vision has led us through everything -- first the organizers and now through the smart phone space. It's like everything a personal computer is. Continue down that path. What are the implications of a world where everyone has a super high-speed Internet connection in their pocket and many gigabytes of storage, super-fast processors, audio, visual and multimedia? What are the consequences of that? How will that change computing when you have all that stuff available to you all the time? I try to think into the future. That's how we come up with new products. So I'm not going to tell you what it is, but it's following the consequences of mobile computing.

Combine this concept with his work on computers with "real intelligence" where he talks about adding cameras with vision systems that recognize objects when you point your device at them:

We'll do a vision recognition system. We are looking for applications that are small and simple and that demonstrate the technology well. We're going to create these tools and do one or two applications ourselves.

Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky started Numenta to make software, developer tools, and an operating system based on the research at the Redwood Neuroscience Institute, which has recently merged into the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at the University of California Berkeley, and has been renamed the Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience. According to Numenta's newsletter Jeff Hawkins is now taking a less active, advisory role at RCTN and will now be splitting his time as Chief Technology Officer at Palm and founder of Numenta. Tell me his two roles won't overlap. These two areas are his passions, and if he wants to make "intelligent" machines and he is still passionate about the future of mobile computing, it's very logical that he'll be applying his work at Numenta into mobile computing. The LifeDrive would be the logical platform and device once it's mature enough and Numenta has made suitable progress to bring their products to market.

I wouldn't be suprised if Palm becomes one of Numenta's first licensees and they start to work on "intelligent" PDAs. Look at these two quotes from the interview and it could happen fairly soon:

What we're building is actually a platform. It's like a new type of operating system. It's a platform on which people can use our tools to create new applications for solving different types of problems.

....

Q: How soon might we see HTM applied to real-world problems, like hurricane tracking?

A: Hard to say. I would say that it should be in five years but I wouldn't be surprised if it happened a lot sooner. I think it's more like two or three years.

The ultimate conclusion that Jeff talks about means that your handheld computing device becomes your primary computing device, communications device, personal assistant, etc replacing the desktop. The apparent move towards devices like the SoulPad shows that your desktop computer becomes irrelevant. You dock your "LifeDrive" which is your complete computing environment with all of your applications, files, emails, documents, settings, etc to any "host" (a device with a mouse, keyboards, monitor, and wired internet connection, which doesn't even need its own hard drive or OS) and your "computer" goes with you everywhere. When you're mobile but you have ubiquitous high speed internet access, your "LifeDrive" becomes a local storage device but you have access to web applications and web storage where you can backup and sync your "LifeDrive" with a .Mac like online service, have virtually unlimited online storage, and you can stream your media content if it isn't stored locally.

Historically, whenever Jeff and Donna get together, something revolutionary, not just evolutionary happens. Keep an eye on the evolution of LifeDrive and by all means, subscribe to the Numenta newsletter. I think we'll eventually see a relationship develop between the two, and that will be revolutionary.

I think we're onto something...

Brian