Unified Access

I wrote this in summer of 2001. It is another of those which I could never find time for. It is interesting to note that even now, not a lot of progress has been made. Pervasive computing was introduced in the past couple years as a hot topic. A lot of research is going on, but not everything has made way into production just yet...
Any ways, have fun reading this...

Introduction
The web is here to stay. The information super highway is slowly becoming all pervasive in our lives. However the mechanisms used to access the highway have related remained primitive. This is because the focus uptil now was on getting stuff onto the web. It was more of proving that the web is a very powerful medium. This aim has been achieved. Now it is time to better the things peripheral to the actual web so as to make the entire usage experience more satisfying.
Current Situation
At this point in time, the mechanisms for interacting with the web are pretty limited. They are limited to using the mouse and keyboard for navigating through the web. The display mechanism is primarily through a monitor like interface. With advancement of technology, these interface mechnims will change.
The Future
In my opinion, the future will be dominated by smoother man machine interfaces and pervasive computing. No longer will people be able to distinguish if they are communicating with a person or a machine. One of the important technologies that may be used to achieve this aim will be Speech recognition. Another important thing will be context recognition.
Web browsing shall be no exception to this. The way peope interact with the information on the web shall also be influenced. Thus, the way web sites are constructed and organized shall undergo a lot of change. In addition to this, media used to access the web sall also undergo changes. Where te PC was the only interface to the web, now all sort of devices shall become web aware. Soon, we might see neclaces that beep on receiving email!!! Taking a more practicall view, all communication mechanisms may be used to access the information superhighway, including the telephone (voice browsing), wireless devices (voice browsing, data enabled phones), kiosks, car GPS sysems and other undreamt of devices.