Business and enterprise software, and other applications that help a business run

The future of business (and personal) computing is writ large on the wall. Smaller, faster devices, virtual invisibility, cloud computing, planetary WiFi, and so on are going to be the order of the day, sooner than later. These all seem like positive features of  the future, but they could come at some significant costs. These costs need to be mitigated as we work out way into the fully wired future.

Security needs to be much better than it is. If all of our personal and corporate data is going to be living on the great server in the sky, we need to be sure that it is safe. Those servers need to be secure at levels that are only a dream today, as does the programming that transports the data back and forth from the cloud and you. We can't have the vulnerabilities of Windows, certainly, and either a super-secure *nix is the answer, or perhaps a totally new operating system, almost undoubtedly Open Source.

Privacy concerns need to be addressed, as well. If it will be possible for you to be connected 24/7, it will need to become possible to have total control over your on-line availability. “No” needs to really mean “NO!” If you work, you will need to be available, just as you are now, some part of the time. But you cannot have the boss butting into your life whenever she wants to. The same is true of friends and family. We need tools that make it possible to control the access that everyone has to us.

These things are not there now because we have never really needed them before. In a few years, we will need rigid security, persona privacy avatars, and all of the tools that make those things possible. When those tools are needed, somebody will provide them. Technology is an amazing animal, and it tends to provide what we need, when we need it. Once the security and privacy tools are in place, the future computing revolution will begin in ernest.