Tim O'Reilly describes the future as writ by the alpha geeks that his publishing company mines for inspiration. Great editorial!
All of these things come together into what I'm calling "the emergent Internet operating system." The facilities being pioneered by thousands of individual hackers and entrepreneurs will, without question, be integrated into a standardized platform that enables a next generation of applications. (This is the theme of our Emerging Technologies conference in Santa Clara May 13-16, "Building the Internet Operating System.") The question is, who will own that platform?