“Mobile” computing no longer exists

The reason our phones, tablets and PCs are increasingly interchangeable is that the services we depend on aren’t running on them at all. They’re running on the cloud.

More and more, our devices don’t store our data, handle our security or share—directly at least—with our friends and colleagues. As time goes on, the highest aspiration of most of our devices—be they phone, notebook, smart watch or face-based computer—will be as fast and responsive local caches—copies, that is—of our cloud-based existence. In this cloud-based world, the question becomes, what is “mobile” computing? If it’s just a name we give to screens that are small enough to carry around, it’s not a terribly useful distinction.