Book publishing as we know it dies - No more forcing high school kids to carry around 75 pounds of 10 year old books. No more tree-killing to justify the $150.00 price tag on printed books. Books today should be interactive and "alive". Kids in a history class should be able to click links, videos and content within the book and watch the history come alive.
EVERY book in the world should be searchable and purchasable online. WE'RE NOT ASKING FOR FREE CONTENT, we are simply asking for access to all this great content at our finger tips. To allow us to purchase it and get it instantly.
Online Voting - Online voting is easy. People that complicate it are scared. Still require online voters to register and get a voting "id" number. That number is used to place your vote with all types of checks and balances worked in. Do online voting in "parallell" with the normal processes for a while.
Crowd-sourcing becomes the norm - Citizens will be able to rally together or figure out the truth about a situation using technology.
Keep inappropriate sexual content separate from the rest of the internet content. This is not simply "internet morality" I'm talking about, but as more and more content goes online and becomes the only source for certain information
So what will hold "back" this revolution. Three things: 1) Government 2) Lobbyists 3) Social Inequality
1) Government - As more citizens are "connected" and fighting for a free and open internet, the government will continue to feel pressure to somehow control this wide open communication system. Using events such as the "Arab Spring" and other crowd-sourced events, the government might see this new power as a national security threat, or as a threat to our tax system. And while they will never outright block the internet, they may fight in politically. We as a people need to make sure that we keep the internet open and free from government, to ensure that we fully support "Net Neutrality"
http://www.savetheinternet.com/net-neutrality
2) Lobbyists - Don't think that to the items I've listed above, such as television and book publishing dying as we know it, will ever happen without a huge fight. These companies pay big dollars to lobbyists to get in the ear of our congressmen. They have millions of dollars at stake. The good news is that we now have a precedent. Apple has revolutionized the music industry by forcing them to re-structure how we buy music. We no longer have to buy a crappy $20.00 CD just to get the one song we like. Artists are richer than ever because of this, so all the crying wolf about how this will destroy the music industry, or how stealing music will become the norm has never happened. These are the same excuses that the TV and book industries are using today.
3) Social Inequality - This one is a little trickier. The fact is that to fully adopt these new technologies, we can't leave the poor behind. Studies like the one in the link below show that far less poor families have access to the technologies we would need to fully adopt 100% online content. Our schools can't afford iPads for every student either.
http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2011/10/k-12/poor-kids-experience-app-gap-says-study/
Other items less significant...
Smellivision - Smells are added to television or movies
New movies are released at home - no more theaters?
Computer Viruses and Security Breaches Are Thing of Past
Revolutionize Laundry - Something that can clean and dry in 30 secs per load? Waterless, uses "electric ions" or something.
