Link: Chips with Everything.
Steve’s ultracapable iPhone, whose screen can be squinched with your fingertips as if it were Play-Doh, bids fair to become Apple’s “remote control for reality.” With the Web in your purse or pocket, applied to physical reality via Google mapping services, you own the ultimate Reality Distortion Field! For Gates, the computer is transforming itself into Microsoft on wheels, a Zune that walks: with brand-new software supporting Microsoft for Robots, a PC can ramble all over your house photographing, scanning, listening, grabbing, and gripping—maybe even fetching a beer! Where does Microsoft’s Wireless Robot want to go today?
Forget the wires, and you can forget the computer too. The computer just fades into the Internet cloud. That network-as-cloud enables a new class of amphibious virtual-actual products. Cut the wires—and shoes can talk to iPods. Doors and windows get wireless remote controls. Light switches pop up wherever you care to stick them. “Industrial Wireless” appears on the scene: heavy-duty applications in factory command and control. Cut the wires—and automated buildings and factories beckon. The Internet’s wireless towers become the church steeples for tomorrow’s City of Bits!
