14 June 1999

I've been home for too short a time -- just three days. And tomorrow I leave again. But then again, I am in the middle of a very intense travel period, so I must keep perspective. And tomorrow is a trip of my own choosing. Tomorrow I leave for San Francisco and JavaOne.
JavaOne is the premier Java conference for software developers, held once a year at the Moscone Center.   This will be number four. Java is maturing. Last year a record 14,000 developers attended. The projections this year are for 17,000, a new record. This will be the largest software developer conference ever held. And it should be fun.
Last year Sun gave away 14,000 Java Rings, and I've been wearing mine ever since.   The ring features an iButton, which is a programmable 16mm computer chip housed in stainless steel. It can be worn by a person or attached to an object (like a ring) for up-to-date information at the point of use. Power for the chip comes from the serial device that attaches to give an interface to the outside world. During the 1998 conference, attendees were encouraged to personalize their ring with business card information. Then, each time they connected to the serial interface, the CPU on their ring was used to calculate the pixel position of one pixel in a fractal of 64K pixels, that was being processed jointly throughout the three day event. Basically, 14,000 asynchronous, independent CPUs were utilized to solve a single problem. And they were rings, which was way cool. What was equally cool, however, was the software behind the curtain, as it were. The stuff that allowed all those processors to work together so easily: JavaSpaces, which is based on Jini.
When I share my ring story with people, I am often asked, "What can it do?" To which I reply, "It's a computer. It can do whatever you program it to do."   Which is true. The CPU on the ring is the equivalent of a SmartCard, which would generally be used for authentication purposes, however. Or personal history information, like a medical card, something like that. But it is nevertheless a small, simple system that can have uses otherwise.
We will be wearing more systems in the near future, of that there can be little doubt. They will take the form of jewelry, clothing, eye glasses and even implants. And to the extent they give rise to competitive advantage on an individual or group basis, the spread of wearable systems will be even more prolific than has been that of the personal computer over the past two decades.
Early tomorrow morning I'll fly out of JFK, bound for San Francisco, to see some old friends and colleagues, attend some technical sessions, eat, drink, and make merry, and once again commune with the developer masses that are engineering the incredible changes that we are given to witness. Last year I came away from the event changed, with a ring as evidence of the future to come. It will be interesting, to say the least, what changes the conference this week will yield. And with any luck, I too will be changed yet again, with fresh insight, new knowledge and boundless motivation, coming from the realization that the work we are doing is making a real difference.