Things looked bleak when the dot-com economy of the late 1990s collapsed, and information technology spending plummeted; but most longtime technology executives weren't terribly worried. They were confident that the "next big thing" would spur excitement and industry growth soon enough. After all, in the 40 years since the information technology industry began, this boom-bust-boom-again cycle had repeated itself quite predicta­bly. Before the Internet, there was client/server computing; before that, PCs; and before that, minicomputers and mainframes. When the bubble popped, many information technology experts remained confident that a new wave of technology would sweep the market and bring success to those vendors who persevered.

But four years later, domestic growth in technology spending is still stagnant. No next big thing has emerged -- at least not one that you can sell. Finally, however, technologists are in agreement about what that next big thing will be.
Call it "pervasive," "ubiquitous," or "invisible" computing, it will make intelligence as common as electricity. While it remains difficult to quantify the market for invisible computing, analysts now predict that it will reach $675 billion by 2008, and that by 2012 there will be an estimated 16.4 billion networked devices around the world.