You've probably read or sensed the fading glory of Bluetooth, which has gone from the most hyped emerging technology to an also ran in less than a year. 802.11b (think Apple airport) is spreading to smother bluetooth and I guess that makes sense. When all of the major networking hardware players are already competing with 802.11b, why would they dilute their efforts to also support bluetooth when it might be just as cost effective to have their engineers figure out how to adapt and evolve existing 802.11b into bluetooth's space. "But bluetooth is cheaper for low power networking," pundits cry. Yeah, but being the more appropriate and higher quality solution is never a guarantee of success, look at Betamax & most Microsoft competitors. Besides, would you rather have your cellphone/pda/printer/etc... wirelessly connect to your existing Airport or Intel 802.11b network or would you like to go out and buy another wireless networking adaptor(s)?

I envision each of us having an "address" and that communications will be as multi-tasking as your computer. The address will probably look just like a phone number. Someone wants to call me: they dial my address, send an email: use my address, send a fax: use my address, I get a network connection: I'm on my address. The network infrastructure will determine the best path for packets destined for my address. If I'm on the road then voice packets are routed to my mobile phone. If that phone is busy then it's routed to my digital voice storage space (ie. online answering machine), or maybe I have a digital call filter which tells it to bring up a prompt on my laptop/pda/cell about the incoming call so I can actively switch to or otherwise dispatch it, or if it detects that I'm home it may ring the landline phone. A fax comes in and it knows from my configuration that I don't have a physical fax (not this week anyway) and routes it to an email translator or another digital storage area. I open my laptop in the Boston airport lounge and the local 802.llb network picks up my address and my "home network" is now right there in the club. This network may even be able to know or discover other resources based on my current location that become available to my home network or those trying to contact me.

Most of us are still at a crossroads where we distinguish between the various forms of communication. But face it, everything, except for what you scratch on a notepad in ink, is flying around the planet in packets. Voice, fax, email, browsing, contact lists, blogs, imagery, and video. The person sending out these bits, even the network, shouldn't have to know or care what it is or how you will choose to recieve them. That's between you and your information managing agents. I should be able to choose to recieve all videos sent to me on my home TV reciever, you might want them on your Mac in the study, my mom may not even bother with them.

(....time passes, next day...)
I've been thinking about this some more and have come up with a rough example. Imagine plug and play communications just like the p&p on your computer. You get a new cell phone, computer, fax, pda, telematics, or any other device and when it starts up your "communications computer" recognizes it, automatically configures, adding it to the suite of devices and capabilities associated with your address. Hey a home fax machine, I can now divert faxes to it when she's at home. But you really don't want this communications computer (CC) sitting at your house. The communication standards are evolving constantly and if you never knew or cared about it with your regular phone (how many times has the phone company called you to say that they were upgrading the software at the central hub or switching station?) why should you care with whatever new, centralized communications service comes to augment or replace it?

So is Yahoo, MSN, AOL working towards this end? They each offer a variety of services keyed around your central identity, data management, and some rough communications features. Maybe. Right now they seem to be really stuck on this internet thing and not making the bold chasm leap that renders the internet into a convienent method of configuration or wires, which is all it really is. Yahoo could sell phones, pda's, computers, ISP services...you name it, all configured as an expanding entity of personal communications. The problem is going from a core service (web directory) with all kinds of things glued onto it, to a totally new service where the old stuff is but a minor feature or sidenote. It's like building a desktop app only to find a few years later that what the customers *really* love is some feature one of your goofier programmers put in on a whim.

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