The Magical Disappearing Desktop Part 2 (the ungeek version)

I find the concept of the end of the desktop as we know it very interesting. I would like to, in this post speak using as little jargon as possible as, I have been accused of being dense and, the purpose of this blog is not to speak to the technorati as, they are much smarter than I am 

IBM pioneered the mainframe (a large computer that all other computers in a network interfaced with in order to retrieve and process information) in the 80’s. Each computer (node) on the network was essentially dumb and was subject to the will of the mainframe. The computers on the network did not run applications. They did not store very much information at all.

As the PC became affordable, information and applications were able to be stored and executed from the desktop and information was rapidly decentralized from the mainframes. This was a very powerful movement in information usage and storage.

A problem arose. What if you had more than one computer? What if you had many email clients on many different machines? What if you needed access to your computer and were without your PC?

Enter the proliferation of broadband and AJAX powered applications. It is not important that you understand exactly what these terms mean but, the bottom line is, all of a sudden information no longer need to be accessed from a mainframe or a PC. Now, information could be accessed and manipulated on the web!

AJAX allowed for word processing (or any information processing) tools to reside online and not act in the clunky manner that the static HTML web acted in. Information could once again be stored in a centralized location and accessed from anywhere at anytime. Think Gmail, Basecamp, Flikr, Picasa, MySpace, Blogger and probably 20,000 other applications that have been deemed Web 2.0 apps.

Some futurists have called for the rise of Web OS or, the web as operation system. If this were the case, why would we need a desktop?