When I wrote 'The World Is Flat,' I said the world is flat. Yeah, we're all connected. Facebook didn't exist; Twitter was a sound; the cloud was in the sky; 4G was a parking place; LinkedIn was a prison; applications were what you sent to college; and Skype, for most people, was a typo.
People tend to think of the web as a way to get information or perhaps as a place to carry out ecommerce. But really, the web is about accessing applications. Think of each website as an application, and every single click, every single interaction with that site, is an opportunity to be on the very latest version of that application.
Microsoft has had two goals in the last 10 years. One was to copy the Mac, and the other was to copy Lotus' success in the spreadsheet - basically, the applications business. And over the course of the last 10 years, Microsoft accomplished both of those goals. And now they are completely lost.
We can't ever forget that the Internet now is just a staid utility. The exciting platforms are software applications that are very, very simple.
Each individual fact, taken by itself, can indeed arouse our curiosity or our astonishment, or be useful to us in its practical applications.
Cloud computing offers individuals access to data and applications from nearly any point of access to the Internet, offers businesses a whole new way to cut costs for technical infrastructure, and offers big computer companies a potentially giant market for hardware and services.
But, when we started our product portfolio, we focused the mixed signal requirements first for image processing devices and then in audio applications, targeting our technology into the growing use of digital technology in consumer markets.
I was one of the first people to join Facebook in February of 2004, and launched one of the inaugural applications on the platform in May 2007.
If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I've won.
There are no such things as applied sciences, only applications of science.