21st Century Trends

Applied to the microchip, the Moore's Law (Gordon Moore, cofounder of Intel Corporation) describes a near magical effect for interconnecting transistors: as increasing numbers of silicon transistors are packed in a smaller space, they run better, faster, and cheaper. The performance of chips literally doubles every 18 months. And so does the bandwidth for networks.

Some of the results visible in the first decade of the 21st. Century, (assuming that we go well through the Y2K crisis), are:
- Prices of voice/data/video communications will drop dramatically, worldwide. Long-distance phone communication will be carried mostly through the Internet, for under 3 cents per minute.
- Most "mass media" will become interactive, although some passive forms will still exist.
- Digital TV broadcasting will be the norm, with most of the world adapting to it.
- 24-hours/day customer services will become a widespread business reality. We will see extreme product and service customization, according to increasingly narrow niches.
- Wireless computer-phone devices will be available for less-expensive communication from anywhere to everywhere.
- Paper will be more expensive, and will slowly become replaceable by cheap, ultrathin, flexible digital displays (as cheap as fine stationery, and therefore disposable). These displays, as thin as a latex glove, have been already invented at Xerox PARC, and will be competing with other forms from MIT and E-Ink . Same technologies will be used for inexpensive portable computers, and large commercial signs.
- The price of chips and digital storage will fall as dramatic as that of communications.
- Entire books will be available for download to such a portable and inexpensive display (flexible or not), changing the world of publishing.
- Long distance learning and telecommuting may finally change the way we live. Employees will have a serious need to expand their computer skills and entrepreneurial qualities.
- The migration of middle class from suburbs to the countryside, and that of corporations from cities to areas of less taxation, may very well accelerate.
(http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/future_technology/10487)