Had a lunch conversation with a colleague and we toyed with the idea of being able to accurately predict what will the web be like in 10 or 20 years from now.
If you have a view, i’ll love to hear it. Drop me a comment. :)
- Bandwidth – I think with bandwidth growing at the current rate, slowly all data storage & desktop applications will become web based.
- Mobility – With mobile devices becoming more and more versatile, i think the mobile phone will eventually fuse with all portable devices (ie. Music, Camera, Video Recorder, Computer, Projector, etc) and it will definitely be internet enabled from almost anywhere.
- Affordable – Internet should also slowly become super cheap, maybe even almost free as costs will slowly be borne by advertisers.
- Semantic Content – Online content will eventually use a standard semantic standard. If we can use SWIFT code for bank transfers, i don’t see why we can’t use Microformats (or similar) for content.
- Universal Profile – I also feel slowly we will all use a universal profile. We have so many user accounts everywhere, twitter, facebook, flickr, yahoo, iGoogle, Gmail, etc… Sooner or later, we will all be able to choose to have one universal online profile if we wanted.
So my prediction is :
Affordable Internet everywhere via a mobile device to access all content, data, applications in a standard way using a universal profile.
if ( Now() = 2008 + 10years) { Webtop = Web + Desktop; }
I would love to see the day when Internet is 100% free and free highspeed access anywhere around the world.
Love the universal profile concept too! It would probably marks the end of identity theft. (hopefully)
Hmm… maybe everyone will be carrying around a micro-pc instead of a mobile phone?