George Gilder
It was hard to live through the dot-com bubble and not know about George Gilder, seer of the Internet Era. If there was anyone who personified both the hype and the disappointment, he was the one.
I stumbled across my first Gilder article back in 1994 or 1995, talking about the promise of optical networks and the "telecosm," as he described an always-connected high-speed world. As a graduate student struggling with relatively low-speed networks (back then, a T-1 was a big deal!), the vision was both compelling and made immediate sense.
Gilder's problem was not that he didn't have vision. He had plenty of vision. His problem was that, with his head in the clouds, he forgot that his feet still had to be on the ground. He was right about what the technology is capable of, but wrong about how long it would take to deploy and build viable businesses.
Ultimately, I think most of what he predicted will come to pass, but it will take much longer and the people making money won't be the ones anyone thought five years ago. During the railroad boom of the 19th century, everyone thought the winners would be the railroads. As it turns out, the real winners were the consumer products companies (General Mills, Kellogg's, etc.) who now had the infrastructure to build national brands. The winners in the Internet era won't be the companies who buried optical fiber in the ground, but the companies who figure out how to turn this infrastructure into....something.
My Predictions
I'm a terrible prognosticator, but I have some ideas about what might happen:
Ease-of-use will become more important over the next several years. Most software now has far more features than anyone actually uses, or knows about. More emphasis will be placed on making it easier to get stuff done. To most people, a computer is a tool, like a hammer. They don't want to spend hours or days learning the theory of nails, or all the different techniques for hammering. Most people just want to pick up the hammer and whack something.
The first set of killer applications were about productivity (spreadsheets, word processing, etc.). The second set was about connectivity (E-mail, web browsing). The third set will be about community (connecting people together for a specific task). There are glimmers of this out there today, but don't ask me to be more specific. If I knew what the killer application will be, I'd develop the software myself and make a killing.
The next big fortune to be made in technology will be to the guy who figures out how to provide anytime, anywhere access to all our files, tools, and applications, in a way which isn't bulky, inconvenient, intrusive, or geeky. Believe me, I love my palm, but it doesn't do the job. Smart phones and Pocket PC devices are worse.