The future can’t get here fast enough for me. I am so ready for two major things to really happen in a meaningful way. The first is quality cloud computing. Baby steps have been made yet we are still dealing with slow connections, low Wifi saturation and wireless networks that aren’t fast enough to make the experience what it needs to be. For example, I am a mobile me user but other than for sync and posting photos or hosting iWeb sites it is useless. I want all my media to also live in the cloud and be accessible from anywhere on any machine or device. The same goes for my software. It drives me crazy that I have to spend time refining my media selections for syncing to my iPhone or that I have to choose which computer I can plug my phone into. They still haven’t cracked the code for making this a truly useful consumer experience. I would love to be able to take a week long business trip and be able to access all of my media, files, software and data from the cloud anywhere. It all comes down to one metric that is really keeping it from happening, speed. The U.S. is simply not fast enough, not saturated enough and currently has too many politics in the way of catching up.
I was in awe of the speeds when I was in Tokyo last year. I was getting 100mb down in my hotel room and at least 50mb wirelessly most everywhere I went. To make it even better, the wireless (cell) networks were blazing on my phone. It is sad that in the U.S. we are one of the highest web accessing countries but are one of the lowest in speeds.
I am excited for the day when we “get there”. When speed and saturation are good enough so I don’t have to tether myself to anything hard loaded to have the experience I want.
I find it amazing how many companies don’t see the writing on the wall when it comes to the future of computing, the web and software. Especially companies that offer technology or related services. Software as a service is growing today and in my view should be the focus of big providers like Adobe, Microsoft, Apple, etc. At the very least they should all be in the long term vision and planning for what this brings to the future. Imagine one day if you didn’t have to load the Adobe creative suite on your computer at all because it all operated online exactly the same with the same experience. Adobe could simply change their business model to a subscription based program with access to software based on the plan you choose. Think about it, never having to deal with loading the software on your machines, the messy licensing process, the constant downloading and installing updates, all gone. Adobe would totally bank! Again though, it comes down to speed first then of course the advancement of browsers, html 5 and beyond, and saturation of access. Adobe is one of the companies that I think is heading in this direction already but shouldn’t they all? Seriously, if your company can’t answer the typical interview question “where do you see yourself in five years?” of themselves then they need to evaluate their leadership.
I am fascinated about the upcoming evolution of computing and the yet to emerge countless business models.
And of course I can’t wait to jump into the thick of it develop a bunch of them for myself and others.
