In a keynote speech in London before a European Technology Forum audience, Gage said that the nature of data, devices and networks had changed almost without anyone noticing. While he said that the new paradigm offers exciting new opportunities, he also said that it creates new challenges for enterprises, industries and even the world’s economies to consider.

Here’s what I think will happen in the next 10 years, he said. There will be more change in the use of networks. 80% of traffic is now image. You can have a 5 Megapixel camera in your pocket, and a 54-Megabit network. You imagine 100,000 people in the stands at the next Olympics, sending their friends and families pictures.

Something new has happened, he continued. Since the first dream of computers in the 40s and 50s, of things combining to make up the network – we’re finally making it happen. We’re seeing some sort of man-machine symbiosis.

Sun, IBM, HP – we’re all saying that what was a dream can now become reality. These systems can self-organize, he added. But sounding a note of caution to counteract the utopian vision of self-configuring devices and networks, Gage said, Why is this important? Because we have built the economy and industry on these fragile devices. We need to take these unreliable components and make them reliable.

He added: In the next 10 years we will see even more seamless weaving together [of devices and networks]. As these devices become autonomous, we have to ask, ‘are they doing the right thing?’ Then you get into the ‘do what I mean, not what I say’ kinds of arguments.

Gage also held out hope for valuable applications to come from the world of quantum computing and nanotechnology. We’re getting to the stage of solid state quantum entanglement, he said, [but this essentially means that] in 10 years’ time, we will be doing things in the quantum computing world.

Sun’s Bill Joy, co-founder and chief scientist, shone a little more light on these ideas way back in 2000 at a JavaOne conference, when he said: Devices will have enormous amounts of storage. The molecular computing devices will be almost infinitesimal at an almost quantum level of power.

We could have devices sewn into our clothes, added Joy at that event. Instead of the black box of a plane, you could have the black box in the paint on the plane, so it is present in every piece of the plane, so that if you found one piece, you have the information you need.

Gage joined Sun in 1982. He is responsible for Sun’s relationship with world scientific and technical organizations, for internal policy and governmental relations in areas of scientific and technical policy, and for alliances with the world’s leading research institutions.

Source: Computerwire