.NET and the Individual User
I'm aware that there are a billion or so people in the world living on less than 1 dollar per day; the effects of computers, let alone .NET, on them will for a long time be peripheral.
.NET operates in a particular technology space. One reader commented that home users without Internet connections would have little use for .NET. He's right — today. It's aimed in its first incarnation as a business tool.
But what would a not-connected home user do with a browser? At first blush, it's also an irrelevant tool — but it turns out to have huge value as the visual surface for documentation and help, among other uses.
Likewise, it's possible that .NET may play a role in the future on such computers. For example, I have a complicated thermostat that is almost impossible to program without a manual (and some practice), because the interface is so limited; if it could be driven by my home computer, I could reset the heat in response to my six-year-old's complaints. Note that I'm not suggesting that the PC should necessarily control the heating system, just that it could provide a much improved interface for programming it; the dedicated thermostat would still do the real work.
In Part 1 I wrote about using .NET to auto-schedule my next appointment at some point in the not-so-distant future. Today, my dentist's office is highly computerized. Even so, I can't yet take out my Pocket PC after a cleaning and have it negotiate my next appointment.
But I used the dentist simply as an easily understood example. In reality, scheduling an appointment three or six months out isn't a big deal. As a former consultant at Microsoft Consulting, however, I would have found such a tool invaluable in scheduling a follow-up meeting with a client, especially when there are more than two parties involved. I think .NET will benefit individuals directly over time, but I believe the initial apps and initial value will be found in the business world, B2B or internally.
Sometimes we do make it all sound so simple and ready-to-go; of course, there's real work to be done to realize any of this. .NET will reduce that work, I believe — or allow you to accomplish much more for your business with the same resources.