Boy the world is changing fast. A couple of months ago I wrote about distributed computing models (so called Cloud Computing). Amazon are very serious about it, and at the beginning of the month Google and IBM announced a partnership to deliver massively scalable networked cloud services. Initiated by an informal call from Sam to Eric (isn't that just the way these days?)
The shift has been quite fundamental, described here by Colleen DeCourcy as one "from Main Frame (many people sharing a computer) to Personal (one computer, one person) transitioning through Networked Internet (widespread distributed computing) to Ubiquitous Computing (where many computers share each of us)".
Distributed, networked models are disrupting everywhere. Function increasingly comes from the cloud. Colleen makes a related point about how "if we were accessing information and culture through many lenses and devices, our interfaces had to get out of the way and just facilitate". Which is the real point here. As things get more distributed, keeping stuff connected and putting new stuff together needs to be as easy as possible. The web is the web. It will become invisible. After all, it's only ad people that think in channels.
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