The following timeline charts the history of the digital revolution facilitated by the spread of the Internet as a “publishing” platform in the early 1990s towards a “sensing” Internet of today, and our belief of a trend towards a “feeling” Internet in the 2020s.
The era of the personal computer reaches maturity and the Internet is used primarily as a simple emailing and content publishing network using early-generation markup and web browser technologies
improvements in network and computing infrastructure and evolving browser capabilities enables a web of interactive content and services through growth in online databases and directories and the ascendancy of “search” and online advertising
integration of the web with traditional business systems through gateways and APIs along with growing penetration of consumer fixed and mobile broadband leads to the rise in use of of the Internet for government services, economic transactions and commerce
the rise of social and multimedia publishing networks leads users of the web into mass-market content-creation, consumption and sharing, disrupting traditional economic models for media in entertainment and advertising
increases in bandwidth and computing capacity, rising economies of scale and ubiquity and reliability of fixed and mobile access, redistributes computing resources from the “edge” into the “cloud”, and from the “desktop” into the “pocket” which in turn brings new forms of consumption and collaboration to consumers and business
the growth in volume of devices with embedded capabilities fuelled by advances in mobile technologies leads to the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) and a world of sensors generating vast quantities of data related to the behaviour of humans and the environments in which they live, work and play
increasing use of AI, machine and deep learning systems leads to the rise in adoption of personal virtual assistants, robots and physical environments that sense human emotions and adapt accordingly, which in turn leads to growth in availability of “feeling-aware” consumer products and services