Building the seamless technology web

One of the big ideas driving new technology development today is the concept of an interconnected planet, where people, computers and machines all communicate seamlessly and effortlessly with each other. This "seamless web" (not to be confused with the World Wide Web we know today) will become an essential part of our working culture as technology drives more and more of our activities and defines our lifestyles.

As wireless technology spreads over the next few years, we`re likely to see a proliferation of new devices that will communicate over the web and its secure wireless extensions in ways that we cannot imagine today.

One of the most important ways to accelerate this process is to draw on the expertise of many different people: not just technologists, but the people who will use these devices in their everyday lives at work, at home, on the road and at play. As our skills become increasingly specialised, it becomes even more important to do effective "human networking" to create a virtual neural network with enormous inventive capacity.

The biggest barrier to these fantastic new ideas is the limiting factor of our past experience and concepts of how things `should` be done. We need to communicate across disciplines and apply creative and lateral thinking to create new and innovative devices.

It is easy to say "I knew that!", but do you really apply this process to produce innovative solutions to everyday problems? It is imperative for non-technical people to brainstorm their ideas, no matter how seemingly trivial, with specialists who can develop the concepts, assess their merits and develop solutions.

Communication technology has developed to the point where any person or device can connect to anything, anytime and anywhere, using standard communication protocols. There`s a dizzying range of technologies available for achieving this, from the good old local area network (LAN) through Bluetooth, ZigBee, WiFi and a host of others. In fact, I see wireless technologies like GPRS, EDGE and 3G increasingly taking over existing metropolitan area networks (MANs) and wide area networks (WANs).

This is going to create massive opportunities for countries, like South Africa, that have large geographical areas with widely separated pockets of high development. In these conditions cable infrastructure is a poor option: it`s not only expensive to install and to maintain, the problem of cable theft has made it increasingly expensive to protect and unreliable.

The cellphone companies have done us an enormous service in providing data communication capabilities over the GSM infrastructure. This provides vast coverage, making it relatively easy to monitor, control and communicate with devices in some of the most remote and inaccessible areas.

I am passionate about integrating technology into our everyday lives with such perfection that it becomes almost invisible. The ultimate aim is to create an environment that intelligently responds to you and your needs, be they work or play. We already have the capability to gather vast amounts of data from around the world in an instant with search engines such as Google on a host of different devices. We also have the technology to monitor and control computers, machines and devices in remote locations.

This will ultimately lead to a better quality of life with more information and control at our disposal. The possibilities are limited only by our own imaginations and inventiveness: we are a civilisation in our technological infancy and our capabilities will continue to grow exponentially for a long, long time.