What's Next?

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates did a joint interview with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher early last year at the AllThingsDigital conference. I'm linking to it now, because I've watched and thought about it more than a few times over the past year, and it's shaped a lot of my thinking about the developing state of technology, media, digital entertainment, sharing of information, etc.

One of the things that's remarkable about the talk -- besides the remarkable collision of brains, and the relative but still surprising absence of ego -- is how it manages to be both pretty accessible but still imaginative and thorough. There's a frank discussion about the past of personal computing and the developing vision for what can be done. Both of these guys have seen the incremental-yet-radical development of this world for the past thirty-plus years, and they're also tapped in to more research and cutting-edge stuff than virtually anyone. They're not necessarily visionaries, but it's a remarkably clear vision of the possibilities ahead for the next revolution.

Given all the talk about Kindle, etc., this is a talk that's worth checking out -- especially if you have over an hour to kill.