You're going to also hear a lot more about web 3.0, driven by the semantic web, something that will be emerging pretty quickly here.
Also, the mashup of geospatial and GPS. WalMart started the drive forward in terms of RFID and pulled it back, but inevitably this mashup of geospatial information and the very fast evolution of GPS and that colliding with RFID. RFID chips are down to 19 cents, when they get down to 1 cent, you're going to see a massive embrace.
Singularity-when AI based computers and networks rival or surpass human intelligence-wins the top prize for outrageous ideas of the year. But this quest to better understand complexity, accelerated technology and the future of artificial intelligence will change our world. We live in a time when emerging supercomputing systems rival the speed of human thought and that rival a certain degree of cognitive intelligence, so that may be on top of either the hype mountain or the top of the reality mountain for the near future. This idea of future trends in supercomputing that evolve into super intelligence has captured people's imagination. We will need singularity computing to manage the future grand challenges of climate change, global commerce and the infrastructure of megacities, as examples.
Another key trend that's happening much quicker than I would've thought is convergence of platforms. As all of these platforms converge in a kind of multimedia Web-driven ecosphere, it's going to create a very different marketplace for knowledge and for things. Shortly everything will have an IP address-every object, every piece of clothing, every product, every device, everything will have an IP address. Then everything will have the ability to be interoperable with everything else.
The implications for IT leaders in a world with pervasive connected intelligence represents fantastic new business and career opportunities. You've got 4 billion cell phones on the planet today, 2 billion people on the Internet, within five years, 90 percent of those cell phones will be Internet transaction devices-we're talking about potentially 5 billion cell phones, 5 billion users on the Internet. I think this is happening much faster than is reported in the media, and IT leaders need to be ready for this accelerated, fast convergence to be able to rethink, embrace and use this IT revolution.
You have this whole evolution in healthcare, which is largely driven by IT and is all about leveraging knowledge and information faster. There's going to be a greater need for data warehousing in the area of healthcare than in any other area in the next couple years. Also, I'm forecasting that personalized medicine is going to be part of a $4 trillion marketplace in the next eight years, and it's all IT driven. It's just beginning now.
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