A couple of days ago, Scoble talked about Microsoft's biggest enemy. It wasn't Linux but Analog Thinking. The thinking that basically keeps us from truly living in a digital world with people doing everything on a computer instead of paper or whatever primitive tool you are using.
When every single transaction is done on a computer, then we can start worrying about attacking the competition. When every single human behavior is done on a computer, then we can worry about attacking the competition. When every single business does all of its work on computers, then we can worry about attacking the competition.Until then, all that worrying is just taking our eyes off of the ball. I wish we'd stop doing that.
For me, in order for this vision of the future to happen, many things need to fall into place. Open standards for how types of applications can interact, peer-to-peer technology to be the engine of these apps so that access to a central server somewhere isn't required and finally, that there are easy, user-friendly ways to encrypt and decrypt all of this data being written or transferred.
Update: Brent makes an excellent point about the difference between the analog world and the digital world.
The analog world is made up of atoms of poetry. The digital world is made up of bits.
On a certain level, I think Brent and Scoble are talking about different things but both cause me to think about the future.
Posted by Josh at July 25, 2003 11:50 PM | TrackBack