Tim O'Reilly Identifies Emerging IT Technologies
Tim O'Reilly wrote an article called "Inventing the Future" where he identifies emerging Internet and computing technologies. His article focuses on the following trends: 802.11b networks, next generation search engines, weblogs, instant messaging, file sharing, grid computing, and web spidering.
It's interesting to note that O'Reilly still lists file sharing as one of the emerging technologies-- particularly since the RIAA and other representatives of publishing companies have repeatedly tried to use the legal system to quash public file sharing networks.
The web spidering trend describes the construction of customized web clients (i.e. robots) to traverse web sites and gather data which is assembled and displayed differently from the original presentation. Good examples are search engines like Google, software survey sites like Netcraft, and price comparison sites like ISBN.nu. O'Reilly suggests that many of these spiders could be eliminated if major database-driven web sites built SOAP or XML-RPC interfaces and published APIs to them. But, we would argue that this is unlikely because there is no revenue model for many such interfaces, and unless one emerges, it's hard to imagine large sites willing giving up the ability to display ads directly to the site visitor.