文档介绍：Supernova 2005: It's a Who le New, Connected World
Published: July 27, 2005
Coming Soon...A Single, Global, Collaborative Virtual IT World (Phew!)
"Something fundamentally big is happening that will profoundly affect the life of
every person and every business over the next five to 15 years -- the collapsing of
everything into one single, global, ubiquitous, collaborative virtual IT world."
So said Hossein Eslambolchi, president of AT&T's working Technology
Services, at the recent Supernova conference co-sponsored by Wharton in San
Francisco. The conference, now in its fourth year, explores the forces in technology
that are puting from a centralized model to a decentralized one, from the
center to the 'edge.' These forces, which demand new systems and business models,
represent both threat and opportunity, said anizer Kevin Werbach, a
Wharton professor of legal studies and business ethics.
Eslambolchi was among those who focused on the opportunity: the benefits of a
single, global, and collaborative information technology world. Imagine, he suggested,
a time when "work will take over the headache of managing disparate
technologies. It will be like having a conference call with four people, each speaking a
different language with work rapidly translating everything into English."
Supporting such collaborative work will be an work in the
center -- "the basis for everything" -- with equally 'smart' devices such as phones
puters at the edge. Collaboration will dominate both the technology and the
workplace. "You will really work on work, not in the office," said Eslambolchi,
"and since work could be anywhere, it constitutes a virtual office." Already
20% of . workers, some 25 million people, are muting, with 40 million
predicted to do so by year-end 2008. That trend will accelerate as a result of the
convergence of voice, data and text in mobile devices -- laptops, PDAs, cell phones --
where they will operate based o