In an English class years back, we were introduced to Jonathan Swift’s Modest proposal and satirical prose, and we were then asked to craft a satire about technology in the year 2030. I totally botched it – I just couldn’t think of worse things that technology would do beyond humans procreating with Robots -- and breeding a new Homo-digitus species.

Businessweek dispassionately informs of " Venice Project " -- the latest assault on the universally accepted order of television viewing by the same WWW brigands some of us have come to genuinely love or seriously hate. Yep – same bunch of guys who wreaked the KazaA music file sharing havoc – the freebie music download/exchange device was welcomed with wide open arms by most Netizens, until record producers started screaming blue murder. And they started hauling pre-teen KazaA patrons (as well as other free file sharing device patrons) off to court , kicking and screaming for their mommies! Yep – these are same guys who unleashed Skype on the world not too long ago (before Ebay acquired it.) Skype has of course slashed long distance phone expenses for many of us, but it’s causing some serious heartburn for some traditional telecommunication operators.

For every new breakthrough (read: Disruptive ) technology – there are always winners and …victims – not losers. First the World Wide Web (WWW) gave us "email" and we all went Hurrah! But the postal services went Ouch! Then we got voice over IP (VoIP) along with videoconferencing capabilities, and corporations laughed all the way to the bank with savings from cutbacks in employee travel expenses. Yeah, back in my Nortel days people flew into Brazil twice a week for meetings and some others flew to Ontario from North Carolina almost daily. Then in 2001, Nortel discovered they had blown a huge chunk of the previous year’s earnings on too many internal shindigs – including travel, they reined in hard. Away with frivolous jaunts, in with videoconferencing instead -- dial up Brazil and Ontario on VoIP phones with video gear, and jaw-jaw your hearts out. But while every other corporation was raking in travel expense savings, commercial airlines were left holding the bag – they endured a steadily declining volume of their bread and butter clientele of corporate travelers.

Then of course, there is the 10million-dollar headache in the US tech job market today – overseas outsourcing of jobs – enabled mostly by emergence of high bandwidth channels and technologies. Again there are the winners, namely: US-based outsourcers (like IBM, Microsoft, etc., reaping cost savings in lower operating costs,) and then the "outsourc-ees" (like Indian Tech professionals enjoying the income boost.) But most Americans are swearing up and down at the outsourcing perpetrators (IBM, Microsoft, etc.,) and their accomplices (WIPRO, etc.,) for lost jobs. Some other Americans however, argue that the perceived net "opportunity shift" observed in "off shoring" is not necessarily a zero-sum game . Either way, we live in awe of the speed of Internet-based technology change these days – the speed of technological convergence over the WWW is simply overwhelming – if you don’t mind my obsessing about this so much! Empires are made and destroyed right before our very eyes – in a space of months and a few short years, not decades and centuries. In contrast to previous technological paradigm shifts – it feels like it took a gazillion years to go from locomotive engines to cars as primary means of transportation, and several centuries to go from home transistor radios to colored TV sets as primary home entertainment gadgets! In the past 5 years, we’ve leaped from Skype to Youtube , to the "Venice Project," to packing all the capabilities (and culpabilities) of your laptop, TV, Radio, Camera, Camcorder, VCR, DVD player, mobile phone, into a single handheld device – with all features guaranteed to work anywhere courtesy of Wimax or WWAN or whatever means of connectivity you choose! You can be everywhere at the same time – you can hold down a telecommute job from home, you can peep in on your child at school via the Internet video cam. And if you live in a really bad neighborhood and really want to keep track of the child’s real-time whereabouts – you could step up to child RFID tags – little chips embedded in child’s clothing or under the skin that emits signals that can be tracked via GPS or Cellular triangulation . Oh … get a lowjack service for your car too while you are at it – lowjack works along same principles as RFID – a chip is embedded in your car and if it gets stolen, it can be tracked via GPS – most car dealers offer this service now. And computer aided surgery techniques can now enable a doctor (with other doctors participating remotely/virtually) place stents in your heart to prop open blood vessels via a tiny teleguided probe inserted in your leg. A same-day, minimally invasive surgery which a few years ago, the only option would have been an open-heart surgery with all doctors physically present to participate in the butchery, and if you lived, you’d be parting with beacoups of cash and still be pretty useless for weeks while recovering.

It’s a great future -- marvel at the presence of the WWW, I friggin do!