As wireless networks proliferate, will traditional desktop workstations be relegated to the same fate as the daisy wheel printer?

By Joe Pluta

I've been on the road lately doing a bit of consulting, and I've noticed a trend: More and more of my clients have moved partially or entirely to laptops for their developers. This is in direct contrast to what I saw just a couple of years back, when companies seemed to be moving toward more powerful desktops, especially with multiple monitors. Note that these are the same types of shops--typically leading edge (but not bleeding edge) development environments using either WebSphere Development Studio Client for the i (WDSC) or Rational Developer for the i (RDi) and Rational Developer for the i for SOA Construction (RDi SOA). So it's not the development tasks that are driving them. I wondered what was causing this trend, if indeed it was a trend. And I found a possible answer in the air....

Mobile development is poised to surge forward as the hardware and software infrastructure mature and allow for collaborative application development.

By Chris Smith

The whole idea of mobile collaboration is making my head spin.

Talk about computing in a cloud! We seem to be headed toward a world similar to that inhabited by the Borg in Star Trek. The Borg, as you Trekkies recall, is a fictional race of cyborgs who are organized as an inter-connected collective with a hive mind. The society assimilates information (not to mention other cultures), and afterward all members of the Borg know everything each individual member knows.

This may not be a bad thing, and it certainly creates a force that can be harnessed for noble accomplishments. I'm not sure what it does for maintaining one's privacy, but I think the answer is self-evident.