I have a dream. In this dream, all our digital content is stored securely online in public data farms. Higher-education institutions have teamed together with goverments and the world’s largest corporations to create an infinite amount of storage space on the Web. Every person with access to the Internet also has access to this StorageWeb. Data is secured via biometric (palm and retina) scanners. Biometric scan data is permanently encrypted.
Data and media are not only stored online, but created, viewed and manipulated online. With the exception of processor-intensive high-end applications (gaming, multimedia production, etc.), everything is done in a web browser. Several corporations have offerings; some free, and some commercial. But one thing is constant: digital file formats.
Digital file formats have been standardized by Open Standards groups, supported by governments, civil liberties groups, and higher-education institutions. Federal regulation requires that software developers, online services and device manufacturers strictly adhere to these standards. This has created a world where users don’t even think in “formats,” they think in “types.” You have music, not mp3, WMA, or AAC. You have videos, not avi, mpg or mov. You have documents, not Word docs, ODF, WPS, or PDF.
Many early open standards have survived to become official Standards. PDF (Portable Document Format) was opened and became the Print Document Standard. ODF (Open Document Format) became the Digital Document Standard. XHTML, of course, remained as the Web Document Standard. MPEG Layer-3 music files were forced open, the patents absolved, and it became the Digital Music Standard. Quicktime and the H.264 codec became the Digital Video Standard (think – all your cameras and camcorders now only record to the Digital Video Standard).
When creating and working with data online (such as a document), your work is saved every 10 seconds and backed up in realtime. Lost files are extinct. As the Web makes this easy, you can collaborate with colleagues or friends in editing documents or other media, in realtime.
My brain is exploding at the possibilities. Projects like Oxygen become so much easier. It may actually make the world a better place. The only reason you would need a full-fledged PC is to play games or make complex media (pro music, video, imaging). You can always play on an XBox and mix your videos with a non-linear hardware video mixer. Or buy a Mac, which reminds me, Apple would continue as always through any major industry shakeup. They would just have to follow standards. Yay!