The tech entrepreneurs and investors on the Aspen Ideas Festival's "Next Internet" panel this week used terms like "tsunami" and "tectonic shift" to describe the magnitude of the changes the Internet is about to experience -- and the extent of social disruption those changes will bring. The driving factors? Mobile and design.
The PC could almost be considered a failure, Morin argued. Personal computers maxed out at 1.5 billion users while there are currently 6.1 billion mobile users globally.
The wave of the smart phone is here and growing rapidly. Insight Venture Partners co-founder Jerry Murdock -- who called smart phones "Swiss army knives" -- noted that over 70 percent of all Verizon and ATT contracts were for smart phones during quarter one of this year.
The mobile wave goes well beyond just smartphones. Google's vice president of location and local services Marissa Mayer called it a "sensory revolution" where devices respond to touch, have cameras, and can track a person's every move. One example is the new Google Glass. Another is the Nike Fuel Band bracelet: Nike recently announced an integration with Path, an app that acts as a private social network; the bracelet (a wearable computer) tracks and shares the user's stats on the network.