[Wrecked944]

Just tapping the Pelican Brain Trust to see what you folks think will be the next big thing(s) in computers (i.e. where will the big $$ be for programmers?). I got involved in the financial services industry back in the late 80's when they were moving from paper securities to a completely digital paradigm and that has kept me employed for 15-odd years - enough to let me ignore the whole internet boom and bust. But that application is pretty much matured by now. I am thinking the internet is yesterday's news. Same with voice recognition systems, most animation stuff...even things like neural networks seem to be old hat these days. So where do you folks think the big dollars will be in the next five to ten years?

For example, there was an article recently about some breakthroughs in "non-algorithmic" models for artifical intelligence - mostly involving parallel processes hitting huge databases. Seems interesting. I also saw some stuff about people developing distributed processing models in order to use networks of relatively cheap pentium PC's to emulate supercomputers. Slick idea if it works.

Comments? Informed predictions? SWAG's?