The future of the desktop will look very different from today
There is good, if rather long, piece on ReadWriteWeb this morning about the future of the desktop. This topic is of wide ranging significance, particularly for anyone with an interest in cloud computing, desktop apps and the browser.
I would highlight these points the article makes:
- None of the webtop services around today have really nailed it
- The browser will swallow up the desktop - it is a classic embrace and extend story
- We will see a shift from information to attention - and the focus of apps will move from organising information spatially to organising information temporally
- The webtop will be more social featuring shared spaces collaborative working - this is the natural human condition which has been stifled by the desktop and file mentality
- This will be portable and federated with open policies and permissions
Services like Friendfeed are today giving us the first glimpses of how the future might look across a wider range of applications.
August 19th, 2008 at 10:45 am
I don’t think we’ll know the difference between a browser or the desktop when our kids grow up. They’ll just expect everything to hyperlink to other resources that don’t exist on their computer.
I really need to blog more often!
August 19th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Too much generalization. The browser is one of the interfaces, but not the only one. We will see a hybrid of local and web-based applications. There are too many things you can’t do properly within a browser’s restriction.