A short note on the impact of the Internet over 20 years

This week I had a client engagement in Wales, about 3 hrs from Broadsight's London base. Got there and, with sinking feeling, realised I had left my laptop back in London. Presentation to client COO early the next day, lots of last minute work to do.

Why is this significant? Well, the sinking feeling was from remembrance of times past - I've done this sort of high stress "forget the laptop" once about every 10 years - here is how it went:

1991 - Arrived at hotel near client (in Wales) at c 12pm, had a few final touches to make, no problems as meeting is at 10 am next morning but then found I had left correct "luggable" computer (with the files on) at office - in those days you didn't have your own laptop. I got up at 3am, drove 3 hours back to office, got computer, drove 4 hours back to client (more traffic by then) and then rushed into meeting and present without final touches. There was early Internet in the UK (I used it) but virtually no companies were on it, and as for storing files in the "cloud"...

1999 - Arrive in Kuala Lumpur in afternoon, meeting next morning, PC dies. Borrow another PC, spend all night desperately trying to download 2Gb of stuff we needed over a PSTN line, colleague in London and I took about 5 hours trying email, FTP etc etc - big files and PSTN modems do not get on well! Finally done, walk into key presentation with no sleep and jetlagged.

2011 - The solution? Simple, the hotel gave me one of their desks and a PC, I pulled the files I wanted off our Internet server, used the Excel and Powerpoint on their computer, updated them, emailed it to my colleague and client for the morning. Hotel even have a Costa Coffee in the foyer so I could keep my caffeine habit going. Sorted. (A shout out to the Hilton Hotel in Newport, Wales here - they were magnificent in my hours of need)

Of course, you know the end don't you - the meeting was postponed till next week .

Now, in about 1993 I wrote an article in Management Today stating that the impact of this new fangled Internet would be to replace physical travel with digital travel. It hasn't done that yet, but it has replaced the sinking feeling with a sympathetic latte from the hotel staff.
One wonders what will happen in 2021 - will laptops be disposable commodities (5 more cycles of Moore's Law means a £300 machine today will be a tenner by then) or will my laptop be hardwired into my brain, so it cannot be forgotten unless I forget my head!