NOTE: Took me a week to get to this–that’s what you get for avoiding Slashdot.
Robert Cringely is definitely a smart dude.
This week, from his Pulpit over at PBS, he is predicting that many years from now, we may look back at early May 2005 as an all-time historic moment in the maturation of the web:
It’s an expression made popular in Silicon Valley years ago
by Andy Grove of Intel: "inflection point." It’s that abrupt
elbow in a graph of growth or decline when the new technology
or paradigm truly kicks in, and suddenly there is no going
back. From that moment, the new stuff takes off and the old
stuff goes into rapid decline, whether it is a new standard
of modem, a new video game, a new microprocessor family, or
just a new idea. I think we’ve just hit such an inflection
point and — though most of us still don’t realize it — the
personal computer, video game, and electronic entertainment
businesses will never be the same.
Mr. Cringely then explains how XBOX360, Google’s Web Accelerator, Yahoo! Music Unlimited, and Apple’s rumored video plans will change the Web, and the world, as we know it.
Make sure you read the whole article.