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Silico sapiens, cyborgs, or
whatever may be the attempt to build superior humans. At the moment, the process of
digitization is the zing thing for handy and easy use. The word doing the rounds is that
applications and technologies driving the convergence of communications, computing, and
entertainment will revolutionize the advanced consumer electronics industry over the next
decade. In the same way, as microprocessors revolutionized the computer industry during
the Eighties. Nowhere is this more evident than with the set-top box.
A set-top box is a device that
enables a television set to become an user interface to Internet. A set-top box is, in
effect, a specialized computer that can "talk to" Internet, i.e., it contains a
web browser and Internet’s main program, TCP/IP. The service to which the set-top box
is attached may be through a telephone line or through a cable TV line. But this is just
the beginning of a more sophisticated box. Boxes that will talk with other electronic
gadgets like refrigerators, washing machines, air-conditioners, microwave ovens, and even
hair dryers which are almost our day-to-day requirements. This could mean by e-mailing the
microwave before leaving the office will keep the dinner ready on reaching home. Or say
you forgot to switch off the TV or the geyser while leaving home, punch in a couple of
numbers on a phone or send an e-mail and the appliances will be switched off. That’s
just a sample of what convergence is all about—wiring the world. Through advances in
IT and in digital technology. And today, people are talking about set-top boxes converting
digital signals into analog before delivering them into the TV set. But someday in the
future, the set-top box may become obsolete if appliance themselves become digitized.
Nonetheless, the convenience will multiply.
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