Always on the Net:
During his very engaging talk at the 5th annual CTO Roundtable summit, Walt Mossberg talked about how, in the future, the network will become invisible. It is very common for us talk about the internet a place we go to get information or to complete a transaction. As broadband wireless becomes pervasive (and hopefully cheaper), every appliance, consumer electronics device, automobile, computing device, etc. will be connected to the network all the time. I wrote about the impact of "always on internet" on automobile navigation with the device from Dash Navigation. The collaborative navigation feature alone completely changes how we get from one place to another.

In the future, we will stop going on to the internet because it will be a utility available to us everywhere we go (just like power). As Walt described, we do not talk about connecting the coffee bean grinder to 120V grid or connecting the coffee machine to the power outlet. Similarly, we will stop talking about the network as a place we go to.

Expect a whole lot of life-changing innovation driven by being always on the net!

What a relief: ip and http are world-wide standards - no adapter hell for this utility!