in the near future

id say 5 years tops,

i will be able to -

buy a tablet that has a very powerful transmitter for wireless signal over 500 mts, when i say powerful i mean BROADBAND, able to carry video and audio, 10 discrete streams
i will use a stylus to sign on digital files and it will be leagal tender
” email ” will be ” video-mail “
the tablet i buy will come with atleast 2 MORE options apart from the standard OS on it,
i will also be able to download and install other OSs
i will be able to dock my tablet on any ” socket ” connected to my work WLAN or TCP / IP network and my colleagues will know i am ” at work ”
i will be able to selct a team or an individual from a list and work on a virtual copy of a file with them, this is after i give them access to view my camera feed and hear my audio and they do the same for me,
the virtual file will reside on any available machine that matches the specs needed to run the file over a VPN or a real network
so if im working on a video file with X, the video file will called up from central storage or downloaded from a local storage drive / private drive and made available on a machine close to me and X on a machine that is capable of performing the memory heavy processes via commands from my station
if the file is of a lighter nature maybe even my portable will act as the virtual host
it will not be the hardware itself that will play host, but a software layer, the hardware will merely manage local memory and sockets
when im done the software alyer will save the changes and the original to a disk and mark it
when the file is called up again by another department, a colleague or a client, the software layer will assign a machine fitting the stored files hardware spec requirement to play host and the process is repeated,
thus many versions of the same file will be scattered, creating not only a use-age pattern, but a use-ability pattern , indicating closest viable hardware resource for a specific task
this will also generate a ” user - heat-map ” that shows wchich team member worked on what part of a file to acheive what
following the evolution of a project will thus be ultra - simple
in all of this one service will prove invaluable - this one
why ? cos it will completely replace telephones when powerful, light-weight, ergonomic headsets start appearing on the market, targeted specifically for power users, cameras are already swivelling to follow you