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ARTHUR GOLDSTUCK: The next invisible thing
But to be truly invisible, computing must first be simple, secure and seamless — and always a service
Once upon a time on the World Wide Web, many of the futurists who had to earn their keep for predicting the future suggested that the web browser would soon disappear. Since it had only been around for a few years at that stage, it was easy to imagine it was just a passing fad. However, the tech bible Wired hedged its bets back in 1997, saying that “the browser becomes invisible by becoming ubiquitous”. The latter did happen; the former didn’t.
Almost a quarter of a century later, however, we are seeing both the ultimate form of ubiquity, in cloud computing, and the true power of invisibility. There is even a term for it: “invisible computing”. This refers to IT devices and data operating and processing without human intervention...
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