Not a bad thing to dream about. Looks as if Intel is trying to make that happen with more powerful and less power-hungry processors. Here is Intel CEO at the Consumer Electronic Show (CES):
“It’s an internet that is proactive, predictive and context-aware.”
Explaining that devices would be location-aware, and would access the internet over Wimax wireless connections, he said: “Instead of going to the internet, the internet comes to us.
“We need a ubiquitous, wireless broadband infrastructure. Eventually we will blanket the globe in wireless broadband connectivity.”
Mr Otellini said for this vision of the future to be fulfilled it would “require exponentially more powerful processors, using less and less power”.
This is great. It may happen in a few years. But as software professionals, how can we leverage these new developments? Here are some things to think about:
- Does size (of applications) matter?
- Will we have hundreds of small, loosely connected, context-aware applications, instead of just a few?
- Do we need new frameworks to build these apps?
- What will be the evolution of mobile operating systems? Which one is ready for the challenge?
- How will the IDEs and development tools evolve?
- What new languages or new language features emerge?
- What are the user interaction design challenges? (the current mobile apps suck big time)
There seems to be many opportunities in this space.