Summary

We have taken a broad look through a variety of technologies and industries. We started by looking at what might be the new key ingredients in the future computing world:

• Data. Data-everywhere devices (which, like a fuel in a rocket) leads to far higher potential.

• Communications. Changes to more "asynchronous-yet-immediate" technologies such as instant messaging nets higher efficiency.

• Networking. Radical new strategies for networking "everything," even the tiniest of devices, will lead to higher utility in our lives.

• Infochange. Data will race toward openness and self-describing styles allowing for far higher exchange and automation.

Data is the heart of it all, hence the title Inescapable Data. This is a little misleading because a hallmark of the new world is "information" rather than raw data, information enabled by new approaches to representing data and compute architectures powerful enough to process verbose definitions even if in a wristwatch. Networking has always been important, but wireless networking means that massive infrastructures can change and migrate faster than ever in our past. Connectivity, as it is now called, is more than networking: It is about gainful information sharing in a timely fashion. Finally, we have grown to understand that although we want everything fast, we want it asynchronous, including our own personal correspondences, because there are significant efficiencies to be gained.

We have tried to point out that our business and personal lives have blurred on many fronts. Perhaps the most important is that the two share common goals: efficiency, flexibility, and security. To get to the new levels of efficiency, we now know to look beyond our own business boundaries plus be relentless in our desire to mix streams of information. Regarding the new dimension of flexibility, we know that we will better retain employees and customers if we can be amazingly supple and accommodating. Finally, from terrorism to bullying to personal theft, security is dear to our hearts and we will look for common technology to relieve us in both business and domestic life.

The new world is not merely about technology. Technology has been here for decades...generations...centuries. Technology will continue to advance to bring linear advances in the single utilities they focus. The Inescapable Data vision is bigger: technologies intertwining for exponential benefits along the themes of efficiency, flexibility, and security. Look not for individual advances, but rather step-functions made possible by marrying information sources together, mostly in real time, and mostly wirelessly.

Therein lies the Inescapable Data vision.