I have always admired Bill Gates: one of the cleanest fortunes man has made: based on one idea. He was the only one to see in the 80's that the computer business was going to be a compulsory step in the late XX's century for its evolution. What I did not understand was that about 15  years ago, his investments were directed towards low altitude artificial satellites.

Now I do: His idea was his concept of the cloud!!!  So in which way will the cloud come about?  It seems clearer and clearer that as time evolves, connections to the internet will become more and more accessible to everybody. Connections will also become faster and faster and more and more available.

So, the whole Gates' financial model will migrate completely to the net. i.e. Microsoft will sell licenses to use any of their software from anywhere in the planet. Ultimately, if you do not pay you will not be able to use "Word cloud's version".  Inevitably there will be piracy but it is more difficult when piracy concerns "your" servers. Computers will evolve to faster internet machines with little or no computing capacity:  all of the computing will be done in multi-processor  servers and netbooks or tablets will serve as a mere point of contact.

I have heard comments that the iPad is a "dumb" machine: It has no computing power and it is simply a larger iPod touch... as most Apple products, it is ahead of its time and by a number of years but people do not seem to grasp that this is an essay for newer hardware: the hardware of the 20's/30's.

The first netbooks were sold on the grounds of "size" and "some internet connection" so as to test the world market and they were oriented with a premise: "consult your email". So now everybody has an email and let's see how our netbooks sell!!! The next step will be to make Word or Excel so big that they won't fit in any netbook. So you will have to use the server's version.  The storage size since I used windows 3.0 to today's version has taken over most of disk space. It has grown, not diminished. Have to admit that it "does more" than previous versions but any of the newer versions are "not compatible with old ones" so you must update!!! And so the trend will be.

Look at today's smartphones; they can replace almost fully a computer. From the practical point of view, smartphones have reached the point that if you do not have a smartphone you have no incoming jobs: Some companies submit via the Blackberrys or the iPhones or the Samsungs or the Nokias or the Treo's or you name it, their needs. The publication is immediate without costs of mail and many other overhead expenses. If you are not "on line continuously via a smartphone" you will not get the job, other agents such as salesmen, trainers etc. got the message as well via the smartphone and applied for the job on the spot and got it.

This is an example of how computing will evolve in the very near future. As of today if you do not have a smartphone and you are a sales agent, you simply will get no offers. You "have to" have a smartphone if you want to have a job, as simple as that, or somebody else will get the very same message and answer to the call before you.

I wrote an article at El Financiero, "Reemplazaran nuevos aparatos a los medios actuales de comunicación", October 15, 2010,  in which the essential question was to present the potential future for communications: The article summarizes that the future will consist of a larger iPad with 2 internet lines to speed up data transmission. Today the smartphones are kings: next, a new generation of Tablets will see the light and the war between those two devices will be more than declared. This war will start I suppose, in some 4/5 years.

It is almost impossible to give an idea of which devices will come out but the most difficult question now is:

After the Cloud... what next? Nobody foresaw the facebook or twitter phenomenon... so what is awaiting for us in the future?

Guillermo Ramón Adames y Suari is a former electoral officer of the United Nations Organization. Contact him at gui.voting(at)gmail.com.

Source: http://banderasnews.pvwriters.com/?p=832%20.