Let’s do some time travelling. Jump back a few thousand years and consider the development of mankind. Our ancestors’ lives remained pretty much the same from the end of the Stone Age, about 7000 BC, until the dawn of the New Age in 1500 AD. Progress has occurred in quite a static way until the last two centuries, when we’ve been beset by an exponential explosion of dramatic life-changing inventions.

 

But what is the underlying reason for this rapid technical evolution and its enormous impact on all our lives? For sure, the milestone of the industrial revolution contributed in a fundamental way with the use of trains for transportation and the assistance of mechanical machines for industrial manufacturing. Electricity also opened many new horizons.

 

But if you carefully analyze the history of mankind, you will come to an inescapable conclusion: communications and networking lie behind most of our advances.

 

In former eras, information transfer was locally restricted – and quite slow – especially if messages had to be delivered across long distances. Only a select few were able to reach out through broader communications. Remote conversations in real-time were impossible until the telephone was developed and an appropriate network had been established during the course of the 20th century.

 

Today, communications has truly been opened up to the masses since the breakthrough of the Internet in the 1990s and the enhanced networking capabilities it provided. And the recent growth of mobile communications is even more amazing.

 

Communications and networking enable knowledge and information transfer for global collaboration. Electronic data exchange facilitates open source projects and eliminates unnecessary delays. As people and processes get faster, decisions occur more quickly.

 

Networking in the future will create wired and wireless connectivity everywhere with nearly 100 percent availability. Different devices such as phones, computers and entertainment systems will converge into a single unit. Data, information and applications will be stored centrally and highly secured. So you can work from everywhere and anywhere. It will be nearly impossible to be “unavailable.”

 

Already today, you can see the trend toward virtual offices where employees stay at home to do their work. Due to electronic and unified communications, it is unnecessary to be physically located in an office. So except for production sites, many offices will disappear in the future. Business trips will become an anachronism due to full worldwide connectivity and 3D video conferences.  

 

It is uncertain what ultimate effect all these developments will have on our privacy and social interactions, but the next generation seems to have already adapted. To be realistic, shopping in brick-and-mortar stores won’t grind to a halt. Rather, there will be a gradual transition over the next 30-50 years.

 

Nobody definitely knows how life will look in 50 years, but I have just one caveat: without electricity, our world would come to a standstill.