Janna Anderson

By 2020, most computer users will carry powerful pocket-sized computing devices that connect to networks using data and applications in the cloud rather than on the device, Robert Cannon, senior cousel for Internet law at the Federal Communications Commission told the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project.

Cannon responded to a Pew study that surveyed about 900 Internet and technology experts that found 72 percent believe future technology users will do business on shared mobile platforms and smart phones rather than desktops in coming years.

Some experts in this survey said that for many individuals the switch to mostly cloud-based work has already occurred, especially through the use of browsers and social networking applications.

They point out that many people today are primarily using smartphones, laptops, and desktop computers to network with remote servers and carry out tasks such as working in Google Docs, following web-based RSS (really simple syndication) feeds, uploading photos to Flickr and videos to YouTube, doing remote banking, buying, selling and rating items at Amazon.com, visiting with friends on Facebook, updating their Twitter accounts and blogging on WordPress.

“It’s obvious that people are enthusiastically embracing the ideal of ambient intelligence — being able to share and access data and create things anywhere, anytime,” said Janna Anderson, an associate professor at Elon University’s School of Communications and the report’s author.

Anderson pointed out, though, that the shift requires overcoming obstacles such as security and privacy concerns and limited broadband spectrum.

The desktop will survive

Among the other observations made by those taking the survey were: large businesses are far less likely to put most of their work “in the cloud” anytime soon because of control and security issue

This does not mean, however, that most of these experts think the desktop computer will disappear soon. The majority sees a hybrid life in the next decade, as some computing functions move towards the cloud and others remain based on personal computers.

Some survey participants said they expect that a more sophisticated desktop-cloud hybrid will be people’s primary interface with information. They predicted the desktop and individual, private networks will be able to provide most of the same conveniences as the cloud but with better functionality, overall efficiency, and speed.

Among the defenses for a continuing domination of the desktop, many said that small, portable devices have limited appeal as a user interface and they are less than ideal for doing work.

The Web-based survey was conducted with Elon’s Imagining the Internet Center. It is the fourth of five reports this year.

Previously on TechJournal South:

The Future Internet

Contact Tech Journal South Editor and writer Allan Maurer:

Allan at TechJournalSouth dot com.

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Tags: cloud computing, FCC, Imaginging the Internet, Janna Anderson, Pew study