What was the most compelling new technology to come out of the past five years?
Wireless phones .......... 54%
Palm Pilot .......... 17%
Instant Messaging .......... 13%
Interactive television .......... 8%
Napster .......... 4%
eBay .......... 4%
Choosing from five years' worth of stunning technological innovation, the one that grabs us the most turns out to be the one whose technology, per se, is the least revolutionary.
Wireless phones don't really allow us to do anything that we couldn't do before. They don't alter the nature of conversation or of human relationships. Let's admit it: They don't even work that well.
But wirelessness does liberate us from our desks. That simple phenomenon is actually quite revolutionary and life changing -- enough so that more than half of poll takers chose the mobile phone as the most compelling new technological development since 1996.
That says something important about the nature of innovation. We accept change the most readily when it arrives in familiar forms. Often, the most powerful inventions are those that slip into our lives with the least disruption. Mobile phones don't demand that we learn a new sort of handwriting or that we program a box on our TV. We barely have to read the manual, yet they deliver big-time freedom. We kinda like it that way.
(For our money, however, the 4% who picked Napster got it right. Award yourselves 1,000 bonus points -- and a front-row seat in the peer-to-peer-computing arena.)
"In five years, most of us will only go to an office once in a while -- when we have to meet with colleagues or customers face to face. Most of the time, we'll work from wherever it's convenient, from home or even from the beach, connected to work and to each other by technology."
It's a sure thing .......... 9%
It could happen .......... 48%
It's not likely .......... 37%
It's science fiction .......... 6%
How appealing to you is this scenario?
I want this, now .......... 53%
Give me five years, and I'll be ready .......... 23%
This is scary, but maybe not a bad thing .......... 16%
Not on your life .......... 8%
"Even from the beach..." Think that idea grabbed some eyeballs? Let's see: Working from a beach. Why, yes. I believe I could come to terms with that in five years. Some 76% of respondents, in fact, found the virtual-workplace scenario to be appealing. Clearly, American workers value the freedom of deciding for themselves when, where, and how they work. But few -- just 9% of poll takers -- are certain that they'll ever have that chance. Why not? Surely, the enabling technology already exists. What's lacking? One nontechnical ingredient: permission. Employers just aren't ready to grant the sort of freedom that workers crave -- and most employees simply aren't prepared to claim it.
The Internet has never been about dotcoms. It's never been about dotcom stocks, inflated or hammered. It sure hasn't ever been about a sock puppet -- although the mangy critter was sort of a hoot. Strip away all of the noise, and the Internet is an instrument of change. It has the potential to alter fundamentally the relationships that we have with institutions and with other individuals. It empowers people by facilitating their access to information.
People comprehend this promise, even if they don't quite see the results yet. Internet technology hasn't touched most people the way that cell-phones or PCs have. If the Net has changed their lives, then that change has been marginal -- with modestly better shopping, perhaps, or the ability to track stock prices. Even so, people get it. And they're willing to believe in the possibility of a much grander future. The Internet economy -- a freestanding, all-techie economic zone -- may never have existed. But there is the economy. And the Internet is one powerful force to transform it.
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