There is so much going on in the high-tech world every day. And change continues to accelerate at an ever increasing rate. So it is with a large degree of hubris that I say there is one thing larger than any other that is occurring right now. But here goes.
The big change we are seeing right now is that we will be always connected. Or a better way to put it is, connectivity will be as pervasive and constant as speaking. We won't even view it as "being connected" anymore, we will just view it as a regular means of communication, retrieving information, etc. The change this is creating in society, the economy, the world will be as transformative as the industrial revolution.
It also means that many businesses will go away to be replaced by different businesses. For example, many ask how will newspapers survive. I think newspapers, radio news, and TV news will all be replaced by something new, just as the telephone replaced the telegraph. We will still get news somehow because there is a demand for it. But it will be as different from the newspaper as cnn.com is from the town crier.
Right now on the ground we are concentrating on the details of bringing this about. Systems are being created to support off-line mode, which is really another way of saying creating fault tolerant systems. This is akin to leaving a voicemail if someone does not answer their phone. We also see new devices coming (Apple will almost certainly lead here) that are focused not on being a phone or book or PC, but on providing users with the device that best lets them take full advantage of always being connected.
We will also figure out how to make all content available to everyone – instantly. The big problem here is figuring out how to pay the content providers because if it's not profitable, people will not create content. We haven't figured this out yet (the approaches so far all suck), but we will – soon. The other big part is search, and Google is still in the infancy of search. We will see this continue to become more and more powerful.
What will this mean? Who knows. But I see my daughters in constant communication with their friends and assuming that anything they need to know or get is instantly available. And they approach life very differently than I do in many many ways.
