Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.
Popular Mechanics, 1949

Dear Vorticians,

I love that prediction from Popular Mechanics because it shows the dangers of trying to extrapolate our future condition from our current knowledge base, although it seemed like the first 'portable' computer that I used regularly - the Teleram PortaBubble - still weighed about 1.5 tons in the early 1980s. The PortaBubble (did anyone else use one of these?) was about the size of one of your rolling suitcases today and had a screen the size of a postcard. It also had the very, very annoying habit - particularly for a long-winded writer - of seizing up when its tiny memory was consumed. You'd have four-fifths of a great (well, in my opinion) story written and ... suddenly, the only thing you could do was shut the PortaBubble off and start from scratch.

If you dig back a few years, you'll probably find similar types of quotes from similarly smart sources about the limitations and disadvantages of VoIP, commentary that seems equally quaint and silly in this era of VoIP's rapid adoption. A couple of things I witnessed at this week's DEMO Mobile conference in La Jolla indicated just how quickly VoIP is eating up the telecom landscape.

You may recall that just about one year ago, I first wrote about Skype, the company offering free software that enables calls over the Internet. Skype celebrated its first anniversary in August and is close to celebrating the 22 millionth download of the software. Without any advertising, the company has 10 million registered users around the globe, and it now supports Windows, Pocket PC, Mac and Linux clients. At DEMO Mobile, where the Pocket PC version was released, Skype employees, using wireless devices, set up a conference call with London-based CEO Niklas Zennstrom - co-creator of KaZaA. Just click and talk, with pretty good quality.

Skype users can only call other Skype users today but the company is working on software that will enable users to call regular phones (at a low cost). The company plans to make money by charging for value-added services, such as voicemail, and as the user base grows, Skype's got a heck of an audience to sell into. Asked by DEMO Mobile host Chris Shipley whether they've used Skype, about a quarter of the audience members raised their hands. One great application: Avoiding the telephone charges in fancy hotels like the one hosting DEMO Mobile.