The shared vision of portable connectivity will be here sooner than later

The Dick Tracy wrist watch – computer and video phone –  was a dream in the 60s

People like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates made it a reality.

The smartphone is just the beginning of the truly personal computer that connects us together and to the businesses we use.

It won’t matter who builds the devices – Apple, Android or Microsoft.

Microsoft’s Productivity Future Vision 2011 predicts a connected world of hand held devices in business and personal life that expand creativity and connectivity.

The 2011 video plays off and earlier video Productivity Future Vision (2009) that displayed cool information appliances.

Think of the things we have today like Kinect for motion control of computers. Samsung is going to start shipping flexible smartphone screens that are translucent. How long will it take before Minority Report devices are common.

Even that builds on the earlier vision of Bill Gates “a computer on every desk” that the CEO of Digital laughed at. Where is Digital today?

Apple had their 1993 video Knowledge Navigator which portrayed the connected world and predicted widespread use of the “Internet” – amazing that the Internet was considered bleeding edge in the early 90s.

In the late 1980s, Hewlett Packard visioned the connected world in business in a video called 1995. Almost everything they predicted is easily available today. In 1988 the video was for dreamers only, although I built a business based on those things coming to market.

That vision seems old fashioned today.

The future is rushing towards us and there is no turning back.

The real drag on innovation are the patent lawsuits where a vendor like Apple tries to exclude Samsung and others from markets.  No one company created this technology and no one company can control it.