| Backgrounder: |
Thomas Watson sr, founder of IBM, is often supposed to have once predicted a global market for only five or six computers. There is no evidence that he actually said this; if he did, it would seem to be one of the most inaccurate sales forecasts ever made. But after many decades in which the number of computers has increased almost exponentially, there are signs of convergence. One possible future scenario is that there will be millions upon millions of personal devices (not just laptops but iPods, iPhones, iPlayers and other iProducts1 ) and a rather small number of “real” computers – massive data storage and processing centers, consuming vast amounts of electricity and cold water. At the limit, and with tongue firmly in cheek, we might imagine a world with only five or six planet-sized computers: AmazonSkyBay, GoogleYahooTube, Microsoft China, OracleSAPForce, and the US Department of Defense. The network is the computer indeed.
One of the things that make this scenario both possible and plausible is the huge increase of internet activity. Not just the obvious growth in the number of websites and the increasing amount of time more and more people spend online. But the increased richness and depth of internet activity and interactions – getting closer to Tim Berners-Lee’s original vision of the read-write web. In recent years, this vision has been popularized under the title of Web 2.0.
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