Resumen
The infotech revolution is 50 years young, yet despite all the innovation and surprises to date, it is quite clear that far greater change lies ahead. It is marveled at how computers have insinuated themselves into every corner of people's lives, knowing all the while that in a very few years, today's marvels will seem quaint compared to what follows. Amid all this change, a half century of history provides with one important constant a clear trajectory of innovation and consequence revealing important insights about the nature of surprises to come. It turns out about once a decade a new technology comes along that completely reshapes the information landscape. In the next decade, analog is going to be the great new unexplored frontier, and digital will seem, well, just a bit dull. The impact of ubiquitous sensors on the digital computing order could be especially surprising. In the short term, the challenge is interfacing analog sensor devices with digital computers and computer networks.