Predicting the future is always a risky business, but the uncertainties seem to be magnified when it comes to information technologies. Blame it on "tipping points," unstable equilibriums, systems analysis, whatever, but planning ahead has never been a more hazardous exercise.
Undaunted, the U.S. National Intelligence Council has convened a series of conferences on the information revolution to get the lay of the land. Under the auspices of the NIC, the RAND Corporation's National Defense Research Institute brought together some high-watt minds to ruminate on what IT will look like in 20 years or so.
The prominent features of the new landscape don't seem too fantastic: no flying cars, no time travel, no particularly interesting television shows. They do include photonics (all-optical networks), universal connectivity (anytime/anywhere), ubiquitous computing, pervasive sensors and global information utilities (infoplugs, a lot like electrical sockets that provide information, not energy). The most intriguing element is all-optical networks. Photonics depends on fiber everywhere, as well as optical switches. Experts think the latter will be on the market in the next four to five years, which means that we should have end-to-end pure optical systems within two decades.