Difference between revisions of "Virtual Society: 2009"
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Newer, better and less clunky connected watches and other such devices were appearing on the market, and being accepted, especially in East Asia. More companies and airlines were using biometrics. | Newer, better and less clunky connected watches and other such devices were appearing on the market, and being accepted, especially in East Asia. More companies and airlines were using biometrics. | ||
[[The fears and hopes of Joop]] | |||
Latest revision as of 00:43, 11 December 2004
The virtual office was the new reality in 2009. The advantages were just too great. Some countries, companies and industries had embraced the move to the virtual office faster than others. However, the higher cost structure of brick and mortar employers made them ripe for takeover and transformation. When earlier in the year Shell was bought out by a Chinese energy company that had not existed 5 years before, and which, unlike Shell, had embraced the virtual office it served as a wakeup call to other such slow, old companies. Even the most skeptical companies were aiming to move to virtual offices within a year's time.
The virtual office had been joined by the virtual university. While online education programmes had existed for years, as society changed even the best universities had to change with it. When Harvard began offering online degrees for all of its programmes, it finally took away some of the stigma of an online degree. As increasingly more students in places like India and China were seeking university education, and wanted the old, well established brand names of European and American universities online education had become very popular. It now accounted for over 50% of all degrees in the world.
WiMax was beginning to come of age. While not universally available, it was present in many big cities. It was starting to take market share from older 3G systems. Mobile phone companies were reacting in a number of ways. Some took controlling interests in WiMax operators and began offering service. Some tried to accelorate the evolution of 3G systems to the point where they could be somewhat competitive with WiMax in terms of speed. Others tried to fight WiMax by seeking governments to place more restrictions on the new disruptive technology. The fight was on.
Meanwhile, the fight in entertainment had largely been resolved. The big entertainment companies had lost. Television, movies and music had converged with the computer. People had accepted the internet as the primary source of this content. CDs, DVDs and the like were now the stuff of history. All this was available with the click of mouse, or increasingly, a voice command.
Newer, better and less clunky connected watches and other such devices were appearing on the market, and being accepted, especially in East Asia. More companies and airlines were using biometrics.