The dignity and capacity of humans would remain central.

Modern sensor systems, such as smart dust and MIT's Project Oxygen, scoop up data somewhat indiscriminately, while the projected uses of this new "Internet of things" suggest computers switching each other to new tasks without human intervention. It's all kind of scary, suggesting a world out of our control, a kind of science-fiction Terminator reign of the machine. (To be fair, the designers of Project Oxygen claim their mission is to be human-centered.) If we already had a highly interactive network centered on human interaction, with people tied closely by wire, we could build the new capabilities asking at every turn, "How are we enabling people to do more of what they are best at doing?"

Protocols might be in place for the integration of new instruments.

Click around your computer system--or the web sites of many organizations, including the internal ones they establish perportedly to increase the productivity of their employees--and you'll come across a lot of information with no apparent use. Even the experts will admit that some of it is pointless. Sensors and other participants in the Internet of things are likely to suffer from the same problem. If we had established a human-centered network over the years, we might know more about what knowledge we need and provide frameworks for incorporating valuable new devices.

User interfaces would be richer and more subtle.

Right now we're stuck with the legacy of the Bell telephone system and that of the typewriter, a nineteenth-century mechanical device with a bias toward the characters of the English language. Had we stressed communication and the contributions of individuals to each other's endeavors, we might have a plethora of different ways to react with the computer by now.

Perhaps we might even have adaptive interfaces, which watch what users do and change over time to present each user with the functions he or she is more likely to want. I'd be very reluctant to use an adaptive interface in our current state of computing, because our knowledge of human-computer interaction hasn't achieved the sophistication an adaptive system needs to be productive rather than annoying.

We might have new solutions to the storage and retrieval of massive amounts of data.

For a long time, the focus of the computer field was on providing applications. Now we've shifted toward a focus on services, which are more fine-grained and can be combined in innovative ways by the users. I tracked this evolution in an article titled Applications, User Interfaces, and Servers in the Soup.

Each shift in the use of data--as well as the amount collected and searched--has brought with it sophisticated research into databases and storage. We're seeing another leap in size and search requirements as people become used to storing images and videos. The Internet of sensors will lead perhaps the biggest scaling problem we've ever had. But a network based on communication might have given us a head start in understanding and adapting to the onslaught of data.