This morning I talked with John Vorwald‘s Multimedia Web Design class over at UW-Stout.

One of the great questions asked by the students was:

“Where do you see the internet in 2 years?”

2 years? Easy.

1. Everything has a web server in it.
2. The internet is accessible everwhere.

On my desk, as I write this, there are 5 devices that can have web browsers in them. At least two of them also have web servers in them. Only one of them is a “computer”.

Dave Winer’s Denon Receiver has a web server in it, as do other devices like Chumby, TiVo, Eye-Fi.

Though the contexts are different, and the interfaces need to be different, the same internet-based service could make sense across all 9 of those disparate devices.

Two years from now?
Easy.