Futurity

You're possibly starting to see the first echoes of it. Perhaps you've been there from early on. But you can't really have missed that smartphones are becoming 'big'.
It's an interesting trend - I know many more people who can see the virtues of mobile internet, who never really appreciated mobile telephony.

But there's another trend, coming from the other end of the iceberg* that is IT. Virtualisation and the cloud. If you're already nodding, then bear with me, as I give a brief idea of what it is. Virtualisation is when you take a 'computer environment' - like your desktop, or perhaps a web server - and package it up, so it can run anywhere. It does create an overhead - a virtualised desktop will be a bit slower than a 'real' one.
But it does mean you can run it anywhere, and do some very clever tricks, like being able to snapshot and clone your virtualised system - so I can take my 'main' desktop, I can create a complete copy of it, install a new bit of software, and run them both in parallel. And then, if I decide the new software does or doesn't work out, just ... make the one I didn't like, vanish.
But the important thing is, you don't need two bits of hardware any more. That inefficiency for running 'virtual' is balanced by the fact that you can get more 'systems' in a given bit of hardware. Many computers now, have performance that means it's responsive when the load is high, which gives them a lot of head room. Run 'taskmgr' now (or whatever the equivalent is on your system). Mine says '15% processor use, 50% memory use'. So actually, there _would_ be room to do all the stuff I'm doing twice.
It's a really cool sort of thing, when you start talking on a datacentre scale - you need the head room in you computer, so it doesn't chug when you do something intensive. But when you talk about lots and lots of computers, they don't (usually) all need that head room, all at the same time.
So you 'share' loads, and cater for peak demands, whilst needing less hardware overall.
All green and good.

But the next thing that's starting to become a reality, is known as 'the cloud'. That's partly market-speak, so you'll be forgiven if it sounds like so much nonsense. But what it is, is taking this virtualization idea, and making it world wide and dynamic. Those two systems I could run on my laptop. Why shouldn't I be doing that most of the time? I mean, I use _slightly_ more power if my processor is always running flat out, but compared to 'everything else' it's actually not that big a deal.
And if I've got the distribution working right, the stuff I'm doing on 'my' computer, can be passed on to a server in the datacentre, to do much the same thing - in effect, you already do this if you've ever used google mail, google documents, google maps. Perhaps you've used drop box.

Which is where things start to get exciting - you see, even now, I could use my laptop as a 'terminal', for stuff in a datacentre, and have access to a vast amount of hardware, all at once. But if I don't have to own the hardware, to cater for my peak demand, I can do a lot more - imagine if I could 'borrow' a million servers for 10 minutes. What could I do with that?

And ... it's very nearly at the point where you can do that sort of thing from your smartphone - my Desire HD has a better processor and memory than quite a few of my early computers, higher res screen and more internet broadband.

The possibilities are pretty mind blowing. We're just on the cusp of a big shift - businesses are starting to adopt 'cloud' type technologies. Just starting to think about the massive operational advantage they can get by being able to reduce their overall investment in computer systems, for more net gain. But I think it's not too long before we'll start to see it entering the home and the smartphone. A smartphone is ... nearly the perfect platform, for enhancing with on demand compute resources. Portable devices, with net connections, screens, cameras, speakers and microphones, are the ones that will benefit a lot from not having to accept the compromises - in terms of size and cost - that having high performance, high capacity computing resources available would mean.

*I've always felt a iceberg to be a good analogy for what goes on in IT. Most users see the top 10th, and don't really care what lies beneath the water, until they run into it. That's good though - because they shouldn't need to. Information technology is at it's best when it's not dominated by the 'technology' half of the phrase.

Some interesting stuff:
Amazon offering a 'micro' Linux instance, free for 12 months. (Select 'micro' not 'small' because otherwise you'll be charged) http://aws.amazon.com/free/
Drop Box referral link - 2Gb of 'cloud' storage, accessible from ... pretty much any computer or smartphone. (Seriously, if you're an Android/iPhone user, this is really useful)

What I live for

Well, to follow on from a previous post: "What do you live for?"
I left my answer aside, because I wanted to solicit opinion without applying my bias first. (Or maybe it was because I was in a rush).

Anyway.

Recently, my answer would be because I have met someone wonderful, and they've brought a new degree of depth to my world. You see, I have spent quite a long time 'content'. I had everything I wanted/needed. I stayed well clear of advertising, due to lack of TV, so actually had quite a delicious bubble of 'my world'. It was comfortable, warm, but ... lacking. I have no doubt whatsoever that I could have lived out my life content.
In hindsight, I know what was missing though - I didn't really grasp what 'beauty' meant. What love was. The heady intoxication of powerful emotion. I think I could easily have never experienced it, and gone through life like that - content, but intrinsically unfulfilled.

But prior to that - and even now - it's because I want to see what the future holds. Some days, I'm a bit pessimistic, and think that mankind is doomed, and in quite a narrow time frame. (Oil running out, civilisation collapsing).
But from another angle, the future seems ... fascinating. There are people today, who've never experienced a world where there is no Internet, and where phones were something that had a wire.
When I grew up, at an early age, Dad had a computer. It was ... an enthusiasts sort of project. There was a matchbox taped to the side, with the memory upgrade, in a day where ... practically no one at school had a computer.
And I've seen the world change. I've seen computers become common, and then ubiquitous. I've seen the Internet grow - I remember logging into a bulletin board, via a modem, when the BBSes weren't really interconnected.

And from such small acorns, the world has changed - in some ways, it matches my life.
I've owned a PDA, and that's disappeared because my phone has got really smart.
I mean, a 1Ghz processor, a half gig of ram, and a 480x800 full colour display? That exceeds the capability of the first computers I used by quite a significant margin.

But ... that's sort of what drew me into IT. Well, ok, it was computing back then, because IT was what people who couldn't cope with computers did, when they did spreadsheets, and left us to do the programming.
I went to college, university and entered the world of work, always intent on 'playing with computers'. And the reason is, because I want to know what happens next.
The things I work with - storage systems - was fledgeling field back when I started. Hardly a surprise back in a day where a 'network' was a rarity, and redundant disks was a ludicrous expense.

The world is changing. And it's doing so faster and faster. 'high tech' is no longer the realm of the techies. Smartphones are really the leading edge there, but - to see my previous post, so are other, new emerging trends.
Twitter and facebook are also becoming widely immersed in our culture - because 'everyone' is getting on this bandwagon of smart mobile devices, everyone has a camera, everyone has a video camera, a colour display and a netlink.
We're not quite there yet, but we're already seeing Twitter being a faster news source (and in some case, more reliable, such as during the Iranian elections) than the _actual_ news sources. But even there, it's a minor miracle that we can know about flooding on the other side of the world, and be watching it as it happens.

And the really impressive part? The evolution of technology is getting _faster_. 4 years ago, I had a Nokia N95. And it was amazing, because it could do mobile video. 2 years ago, I had a windows mobile smartphone, and it was amazing because it could do email on the move.
The rate of progress is accelerating. Charles Stross posted a blog entry, about how writing 'near future' is becoming difficult, because the lead times on publishing are such, that between you writing, and it appearing on the shelves, everyone's got iPods. Or similar. (Edit: ehrine found the links I meant. See comments).

So yes. I want to know what happens next. Things are changing, and they're changing fast - and faster. That's... the headlong rush, either into the technological singularity, or the collapse of civilisation. I think either will be very interesting, and I want to be there to see it. We live in Interesting Times.