Wireless 2025: A look at wireless in the year 2025

McGuire, however, admits that mobility isn't everything. Those devices have to work in unison, not as individual actors. Many of the technologies and applications that will inform the wireless world in 2025 are with us today, McGuire said. The key is connecting them in meaningful way.

“Let's say I have an appointment in half an hour with Joe Smith of Galacticom Enterprises,” McGuire used as an example. “So I go and get in my car. My mobile device, of course, has my calendar, my address book and everything. As soon as I get in my car, my mobile device starts talking to other specialty devices in the car — maybe the navigation system, maybe the car radio — and they start sharing information. Immediately as I start the car, the car radio comes on, and it might ask me ‘What would you like to hear?’ Knowing I'm meeting with Joe Smith, it might ask me ‘Would you like to hear Joe's 10 most recent status updates from Facebook, or would you like to hear the latest quarterly earnings results from Galacticom?’ It would tap into information available in the cloud based on information it just received from my mobile device on where I'm going. At the same time the navigation system pops up and says, ‘Do you want me to route you to Galacticom Enterprises?’

“As I drive, these pieces are working together to inform me and prepare me for the meeting I'm about to have. Perhaps when I'm halfway there the navigation system comes on and says, ‘Based on traffic, you're probably going to be about 15 minutes late for your meeting. Do you want to call Joe and let him know?’ It interacts with the mobile device to start that call, probably working through a Bluetooth connection to the audio system. These three pieces plus the cloud all work in a way that's synchronized, integrated and, I'd say, pretty different from how our world works today. It's an experience that's seamless, transparent and natural, yet significantly enhancing how we interact with the world.”

Just because two devices are linked together doesn't mean they know what information to share. In McGuire's example, it isn't enough for the car's onboard computer to have access to the phone's calendar and address book. It must intuitively know which appointment is pertinent. It has to distinguish the Joe Smith, CEO of Galacticom, from the thousands of other Joe Smiths in any given American city. It has to understand that the meeting with Joe Smith is a face-to-face meeting, not a conference call. It has to reach out to the Internet cloud and communicate with dozens of databases, and then it has to filter through reams of data for relevance. The navigation system in the car not only has to retrieve a destination from the phone and access real-time traffic data, it has to understand that McGuire is on his way to an important appointment, not running an errand.

All of that information would be easily accessible today with a Web browser and, say, 15 minutes of research time. That information in turn could be tediously entered into those devices, which then could be programmed with safeguards and alerts. But the technology that could intuitively link all of those disparate bits of data together still isn't in place. What's needed is a “social grass” that identifies the relationships between those now-stranded bits of information; has the intelligence to contextualize it and decipher what pieces are relevant at any particular time, place or situation; and once filtered, synchronize it with dozens of devices over multiple networks, McGuire said. Much of the innovative effort of the next decade will be spent growing that grass.