O'Reilly: Inventing the Future

Where networked computers are headed, from someone with a seat near the front:

Inventing the Future by Tim O'Reilly [O'Reilly Network via Camworld]

[Widespread] wireless...
Next-generation search engines...
Weblogs...
Instant messaging [between programs]...
File sharing: ... Napster may have been shut down by the legal system, but the ideas behind it are blindingly obvious in retrospect. ... When everyone is connected, all that needs to be centralized is the knowledge of who has what.
Grid computing...
[Alternate interfaces to useful data via] web spidering...

All of these things come together into what I'm calling "the emergent Internet operating system." The facilities being pioneered by thousands of individual hackers and entrepreneurs will, without question, be integrated into a standardized platform that enables a next generation of applications.

Near the end he describes some very cool web services which have sprung up via web spidering and which may well become more efficient and formalized once companies figure out they can charge reasonable fees for them. All in all, a nice optimistic piece for the actual users and builders of the Net.