We are facing a future of unbounded complexity. Whetherthat complexity is harnessed to build a world that is safe,pleasant, humane and profitable, or whether it causes us to careenoff a cliff into an abyss of mind-numbing junk is an open question.The challenges and opportunities--technical, business, andhuman--that this technological sea change will bring are withoutprecedent. Entire industries will be born and others will be laidto ruin as our society navigates this journey.
There are already many more computing devices in the world thanthere are people. In a few more years, their number willclimb into the trillions. We put microprocessors into nearly everysignificant thing that we manufacture, and the cost of routinecomputing and storage is rapidly becoming negligible. We haveliterally permeated our world with computation. But moresignificant than mere numbers is the fact we are quickly figuringout how to make those processors communicate with each other, andwith us. We are about to be faced, not with a trillion isolateddevices, but with a trillion-node network: a network whosescale and complexity will dwarf that of today's Internet.And, unlike the Internet, this will be a network not of computationthat we use, but of computation that we livein.
Written by the leaders of one of America's leadingpervasive computing design firms, this book gives a no-holds-barredinsiders' account of both the promise and the risks of theage of Trillions. It is also a cautionary tale of thehead-in-the-sand attitude with which many of today'sthought-leaders are at present approaching these issues.Trillions is a field guide to the future--designed to helpbusinesses and their customers prepare to prosper, in theinformation.