It is likely that this trend will continue along the same lines as other technologies; just as telephones, the Internet, and cell phones each individually became more or less essential parts of living in Western society, the web-enabled cell phone will almost certainly be just as essential to conducting business and daily life in the next decade.

For the majority of citizens in the Western -- and as increasingly the case, Eastern -- world, there are some obvious up- and down-sides to these trends. The ability to access and be accessed by almost anyone, no matter where they or you are, is ridiculously convenient and more than a little annoying. But there are other effects to this trend that will have the Internet and computers playing a much more prevalent role in Western society as a whole. The "digital divide" that is being created between those that have computers and...
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