Philip Wen's //

What will the future look like?

No doubt the state of the global economy has many of us contemplating on what the future may be bringing in the near future.  The geek inside me has always been curious on how technology will end up reshaping how business will be conducted.

For the past 20 years or so, the biggest impact of Technology can be summarized into the following two points:

1. Ubiquity of the internet, and
2. Ubiquity of the affordable internet enabled devices.

As the persistently-connected population worldwide reaches Critical Mass, how will the methods of inter-personal idea exchange– (and along the same vein, the exchange of Goods and Services) — evolve?

Like sunflowers, Social Networking sites that endlessly mushroom out on the ‘Net already give us a pretty clear indication of how people prefer to communicate.  Already, many of us are substituting phone calls with emails, and occasionally IM’s for emails, and now, Tweets and Wall Tags for IMs.

How will the business landscape be changed?  Everyone’s got different ideas, and once in a while I run into articles that I am surprised to encounter through that chance RSS sub.  While I largely agree with most of Tim O’Reilly’s thoughts, sometimes I think he is a little too optimistic in assuming that most of his readers are perched in the exact same echelon as himself on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Babbling aside, occasionally I hit upon other blogs that practically “stole the words out of my mouth”.  Which is great, because it means I am not too far out in the left field, and others can see the exact same trend I am seeing.

Take a look here.  Granted, Naseem did not mention anything new here that hasn’t been mentioned before, but it’s a great summation of the general consensus of modern technology thought leaders.

How do you predict things will be going?  Do you agree or disagree with any of this?