A. Lizard

California

consultant

I'm dubious.

While I can *imagine* (have to, the evidence isn't compelling) the virtualization of the workforce that stays in the First World, at the current state of the art, this makes IT staff more important, not less. Maybe everybody the author knows is a knowledgable road warrior, but the average user "comfortable with computers" is the person who clicks on dubious file attachments, has no clue about file format conversion (say PaintShopPro to anything running on a Mac), is NOT going to be setting up VPN connections to the office.

There also isn't really any evidence I know of that the mass of people are looking for Internet appliances with a little word processing built in. People *expect* to be able to extend the capability of their electronic boxes, even if they (usually) have no clue what to. Not to say there won't be any Internet appliances, but they'll be things like home media centers and traditional appliances given Internet capabilities with the computer used for business and Internet connection simply becoming less obtrusive, more reliable, more secure, not vanished.