The recent announcement of the Amazon Kindle Fire has sparked some thoughts about the future. The idea of a thin client device that is cheap enough for most people makes me wonder how many screens the average consumer will have in a few years. Right now, people are still talking about “the third screen” (mobile phones, which followed the computer and of course the television). Why aren’t we talking about the fourth screen (tablets) or really the nth screen? What would that future look like?

In my household (which admittedly is very atypical and very techy), we already have 4 screens if not more if you count redundant devices. You really can’t go into a room without a screen present but most of these screens basically run off the cloud and stream the majority of the data as well as applications used. This setup enables near frictionless movement across rooms. This already is the future come true if you believe all the past AT&T U-verse ads about continuing a tv show across multiple rooms. 

I can only imagine how the work place and home will change when device prices drop even further by relying more on the cloud. The best sci-fi equivalent I can think of would be Star Trek where people were surrounded by computing pads to read data. I would easily guess that in this multi-device future, a few tech categories will become even more important: file syncing, login/account management, security, and server-side computing technology.

But the bigger question is how will the nth device change user behavior? Will practically all work happen now on devices rather than paper or offline equivalents? What will all the data produced by such increased usage lead to?