This column starts with the $3.4 billion acquisition of SuccessFactors by SAP, ties together “the cloud” with mobile computing, throws in a dash of futurism and somehow winds up with a reference to Glee.
Want to give your CEO an iPad? You probably also need web-based applications so she can do something with the tablet besides play Infinity Blade II. And that’s where the cloud comes in.
Of course, it helps that our mobile devices have unheard-of amounts of computing power. As Michio Kaku wrote in his book, Physics of the Future, a musical greeting card has more computational power in its tiny, disposable chip than all of the Allied forces commanded in 1945. A cellphone has more processing power than NASA had in 1969, and the PlayStation 3, which costs $300, has computing power comparable to a multi-million-dollar military supercomputer in 1997.
Kaku’s book came out in March, so those analogies are probably already obsolete by now.
“The old paradigm (a single chip inside a desktop computer or laptop connected to a computer) is being replaced by a new paradigm (thousands of chips scattered inside every artifact, such as furniture, appliances, pictures, walls, cars and clothes, all talking to one another and connected to the Internet,” Kaku wrote. “The destiny of computers is to become invisible.”
Read the whole thing: Dylan’s Desk: Pick up the phone now! Supercomputers are standing by | VentureBeat.