The Web as the Sea Around Us: Will it Engulf or Buoy Us?

by Stephen J. Andriole

It cannot be said any clearer: we have significantly underestimated the impact that the Web is having -- and will continue to have -- on our personal and professional lives. Within five years, the Web will become the dominant personal and professional platform for communication, collaboration, entertainment, learning, and all forms of business transaction processing. Within 10 years, the personal/professional merger will be complete with virtually no distinctions between what we do to live and what we do to work. I predict that significant aspects of our personal and professional lives will move to the Web, be managed by Web-based providers, and support an agility and mobility that we're unable to define or appreciate today. This means that everyone will become immersed within, and dependent upon, the Web. Is this a good thing? A bad thing? Well, just about all of us are committed to and dependent on cable TV, our cell phone carriers, and the people who service our cars. In a recent Cutter Business Intelligence Executive Report (see "Living on the Web: Digital Life and Death in the Early 21st Century," Vol. 9, No. 5), I suggest that shifting to the Web has benefits that extend well beyond agility and mobility and is likely to change the way we all think about the range of activities that define who we are, how we live, and how we work. It's all inevitable.