A new study from England says that, in the year 2025, 40% of Britons will still have no Internet access at home (if man is still alive). (I believe the image, from MIT, shows the Kanji characters for 2025. Could someone tap Joi Ito on the shoulder and have him check for me?

There is a faulty assumption at the base of these predictions. Those who wrote this study thought of the Internet in the way we currently think of it, as something you access with a PC, speaking with your fingers and hearing with your eyes.

As I've said here many times, that's not all there is to it. That is not the way it is going to go down. The old and the poor may never have use for a mouse and a screen. But just because that's what the Internet is, that's not what the Internet is going to be.

• When the Internet is in the air, you don't need the same interface. You ought to be able to speak to it as you do the dog.
• When the Internet is in the air, you don't have the same services. You can create automatic services, security services, home automation services, medical services, inventory services.
• Between WiFi and WiMax, I predict this Internet will be just about everywhere within 10 years. We don't need no steenkin' wires.

The moral is simple. When looking at the future don't assume that things won't change. I should think that would be obvious by now...