I continue to get requests along the lines of "is Smalltalk safe for the next 20 years?". I've got this post out there, which I think sums things up nicely. However, an article written by John Dvorak illustrated to me again just how hard it is to peer into the near future (much less any further out). I can't find the article in Dvorak's PC Mag archive yet - it'll probably appear there next week. When you look for it, the title is "Computers and Modern Anarchy". Dvorak got into a whole thread about control and anarchy that doesn't interest me a lot - but he did make a point along the way that I wanted to highlight:

If you were running a nexus point or a BBS, you had to have huge banks of modems and multiple phone lines to receive a user on your "site". Most users today can probably no longer configure or use a modem. Dial-up is automatic, and it dials the internet, not each individual target.

Imagine how you surf the web today and realize that before it existed, you had to get the phone number of the site and call it directly each time. There was no hyperlinking; if you wanted to jump from site A to site B, you would have to hang up on one site and dial another. This was standard practice a mere 13 years or so ago.

Think about that - I remember how excited I was about getting USENET access via one of the BBS systems back then - and I remember the large amounts of money a roommate spent on chat too (something that is completely free with AIM, MS Messenger, etc. today). In the early 90's, it was a completely different (online) world.

Now take that forward - what are things going to look like in 15 years? From 1990, I sure wouldn't have seen what's here now. I seriously doubt that anyone sees 2020 clearly either.