.:i think i thought a thought:.

Sun Microsystems had its tagline as ‘The network is the computer’ a few years back (they probably still do - was it before or after ‘we are the [dot] in dotcom’?]. Sun had it as its tagline - and the belief is that Google might be making it come true.

The idea of grid computing and ‘dumb’ client terminals plugging into a central processing service (a huge mammoth computer or grid) might really be the future or children will see. [random thought: what will be the technology that make our PC’s today look like punch-cards of the yester years?]
I idea of the dumb terminals plugging into a central server has a few main components:

- Client machines with a display unit + input devices but no powerful processor or storage
- Servers with infinite storage and (nearly) infinite processing power
- Ubiquitous network access.

Compare this to the electricity (or water) supply these days. The analogy is

- your tv, fridge, electric kettle, light bulb do not generate electricity. They merely consume it.
- huge generators and power plants generate (nearly) infinite electricity [atleast when compared to the amount of electricity used in a household]
- Electricity is ubiquitous (in the developed world)

So the future is being able to plug your computing device (think beyond ‘computers’ here) into the network to draw processing power according to your needs. Plugging in wont really need any wires. The network would very likely be wireless. Your TV could plug in to the network to play or save your favourite shows. Your playstation would probably be built into the tv and let you play Pro-Evo Soccer with you friend in Timbuktu. Your refrigerator would recognize you’re running out of milk [think RFIDs and image recognition] and order it from your favourite supermarket.

So much for a dream.. feel free to build on it, I’m sure there are sci-fi movies that have been thought further ahead about flying cars and retinal identification with personalized advertising. there’s no limits.

But are we getting any closer to that dream? I think yes.. the future desktop computer would have the most basic OS with you favourite image editor, browser (if they still exist), word processor all available as pay-as-you-go or pay-monthly services from your favourite service provider. [The rest could probably be achieved with Bluetooth connecting to this central computer]

But the idea of a network based OS seems one step closer when you look at www.youos.com
I’ll leave the rest for you to google.. just type ‘web os’ in google and see other variants and talk about a Google OS. Wikipedia also has a good summary for WebOS.