People love to speculate about the future. I'm not sure if it's because of our human desire to know what's going to happen or we're just impatient, but it seems like everyone has a vision of what the world will be like in 50 years.  If you look back at what the past thought today was going to be like, it's often humorous.  A lot of what the past's future holds today hasn't come to pass.  But every now and then you'll run across a prediction that seems to have panned out.

We're doing the same things today.  Google sees a future of cloud computing in which all data is stored and manipulated on central clouds of computers (like those owned and operated by Google).  Users can access and use their data anywhere an access point exists.  A lot of sci-fi movies seem to follow this paradigm as well as characters "patch in" to "access terminals" and can do just about anything from one location.

Greg Papadopoulos, chief technology officer for Sun Microsystems, sees a different future dominated by 5 (or six) computers that all business is conducted through, according to an interview with CNet News.com.  In Papadopoulos' future, several big companies (eBay, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Salesforce.com, and "the Great Computer of China) will provide services to everyone from individual users all the way down to other corporations.  And while he put no set time frame on the realization of his vision, he says that we're already starting to see the trend.

The interview offers an interesting look at one version of what the future might hold.  It reads a bit like a manuscript for a sci-fi book that uses companies and services we're all familiar with as the main theme.  It really does make for a great read.

What do you think the future holds?  Do you think we're headed for a Google future?  Papadopoulos doesn't think the cloud model will work in the long term.  Do you see the future more like Papadopoulos' 5 central computer version?  Or something totally different?  How does any of this effect your business or your very life?

Now is your chance to share… let's hear what you think.