We are just at the dawn of the computer age. I know that because we are finally seeing computers that are not just, well, computers. The $99 iPod shuffle, barely larger than a stick of gum, is thousands of times more powerful computationally than my first hand-built personal computer from 1977. And we don't think of an iPod as a computer at all, but it is. Cellphones are handheld computers that have been programmed to behave like phones (and cameras, and calendars, etc.).
I started thinking about this when I read about Asterisk, which is an Open Source software project that makes a cheap Linux or Macintosh computer behave like a PBX. PBX is an old phone company acronym for Private Branch Exchange, or a small telephone switch normally owned only by medium and large companies because they have been very expensive.
But now any small business can afford a PBX simply by downloading this free software and installing it. It works with most popular Voice over IP protocols, and interoperates with other common telephone equipment. It's an incredible piece of work that is the result of probably hundreds of people working collaboratively for the common good.
And it must scare the pants off companies like Lucent, Alcatel, and others that still make a lot of money selling telephone switches. The world we knew is crumbling around us, and dazzling new opportunities are emerging.
I've been reading a lot of historical fiction and nonfiction recently. I've slowly been ploughing through Neal Stephenson's three book opus on the late 1600s and early 1700s. I'm just finishing up book two, ,The Confusion. It's a fictional account of those turbulent times when the first global economy began to emerge and innovations like paper money changed the rules of nations and commerce simultaneously. Stephenson is a genius of a writer, rooting his story firmly in the real history of the time, including figures like Isaac Newton and Leibniz, both of whom had a profound effect on that era.
I think it is good to read this because it is reassuring--we've been here before, we've seen massive disruptions of business, commerce, and of nations, and somehow, over time, things have always gotten better. By fits and starts to be sure, but we need not be afraid--we need to be bold.