As we look out a few years one tremor looks inevitable: the digital big bang. The point at which the tipping trend to connected networks and devices explodes us into a new dawn. Today there are 3.5 billion mobile phone users each connected to one network or another – in cities across the globe many using 3G. There are 2 billion TV viewers, a bunch waiting for the fully connected TV. There are 1.5 billion PC Internet users increasingly tethered via broadband. Tens of millions of cars are connected via GPS. Tens of millions of new generation games console addicts and over a 100 million iPod and iPhone users are glued to iTunes today, Spotify tomorrow. You get the picture.

As broadband seeps across each of these connections and connected devices a tipping point of interconnectivity will occur. Sometime between 2010 and 2012. Software will no longer focus on device-centric or point applications, but instead focus on inter-connectivity, leveraging the combined intelligence of each of our devices.

Wi-Fi, electrical and media hubs will connect anything that comes into contact with the home network, your personal (mobile) network or transport network (car or plane). Software will finally run anywhere and everywhere. Google Apps and MobileMe are today’s raw pioneers. The breakthrough will come when the network and network based software predicts the information and applications that we need and makes them automatically appear on the nearest available screen. Tuscan recipe’s launched to my phone when I holiday in Italy. Relevant, tagged images squirted to my laptop as I blog on the move.

The combination of unlimited, universally available broadband, neural networks, data-driven network apps, GPS and totally connected devices will unleash the next generation of endlessly tethered systems – right out to wearable computing. In my glasses, my watch, purse, jacket pocket and beyond. Each enabling us to become that free-lance road warrior we have so long heard about.

The very nature of software development and packaging will alter. Software as a service will become software as atom, waiting to find its place in the digital, molecular minefield of mass-market, any-app-you-can-ever-imagine universe. Software will integrate and large software vendors and universal software suites will get attacked from all sides by shoals of mini-apps combining seamlessly to take them down. Inter-locked like lego pieces. Find something new you prefer – just switch the old piece (app) out. This approach will usher in the next phase of Web 2.0 – the 2010 Web.

And once hundreds of millions of PC’s can truly inter-connect with hundreds of millions of iPhones, Android devices, Blackberry’s or Windows Mobile devices – then tens of millions of PC’s and phones will in turn connect to intelligent TV’s, games consoles or cars and the tipping point will be reached – by 2012. Altering the way we work, live, socialize and adapt.

Health checks will happen at terminals, not in a doctors surgery. Movies will be watched anywhere, paused and played from one device to another. Music will never leave your ear, always on demand. News will become the ultimate commodity – media companies only making money from its vital interpretation, never again its dissemination. Print will dry up.

People will meet online, network online, communicate online. Families will share Sunday video chat sessions not lunch. Content will mash together presented to you as and when youneed it. The mobile phone will become the universal remote control for our lives. Music will appear from power sockets in our homes, not clunky speakers. Data will effortlessly converge to give us bundles of perfect information and media right when we need it – sometimes even before we think we need it.

Start-ups will require little more than good ideas, drive and great marketing. Capital costs for almost all new ventures will be close to zero. Software, media, publishing, healthcare, energy, services and all intellectual property driven entities (which will be more than 80% of future start-ups) will incubate in garages and kitchen tables – with set-up costs of a few thousand dollars. Democracy will come to the venture universe. Revenues and cash will drive growth again – not venture investors. Fund managers, banks, VC’s and private equity firms that do not provide considerable value add (way beyond what they imagine today) will become disintermediated. Stock exchanges, art auction houses and digital exchanges will gain power and serve the consumer more directly. Hedge Funds will become tomorrows investment banks.

The cost of developing businesses will implode as marketing goes online and becomes increasingly intelligent and cost efficient. Ultimately marketing tools will only charge you when you win a customer or key customer behavior and not before. Micro-payments will be the currency of commerce throughout the globe and banks will have to learn service. Technology will get simplified to the point where almost anyone will be able to write software or digital services – no engineering skills will be necessary – just design skills; designing the next concept, business, product, charity, service or lifestyle alternative.

Organizations will regroup – large organizations will organize around cell based structures and small organizations will compete with large ones as massive shoals of tethered fish attacking the corporate sharks. Size will no longer matter in the connected universe. As such the world order will shift and the concept of super-power will languish. Conglomerates of power will dictate – true conglomerates of work, trade, currency and politics. The EU pioneering a new model that will be replicated in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, South America and beyond – leaving the US, China and Russia as rare, independent objects.

The design-driven revolution will take over product development and launch – even businesses as we know them, fashion, media and the arts. The design-driven revolution will converge arts and media with fashion and architecture. The employee of tomorrow will be designer first. By 2020 one third of the Western worlds work force will be designers. Content will be king and the original content creators king maker. ‘Artists’ will find their true worth – if they can lift their game to become creator and marketer. And knowledge will be everything.

Analogue will go the way of the dinosaur and culture will be digital. Digital in creation, consumption and dissemination. Government will follow people and people will have power. Every facet of our lives will change and society will forever be marked by pre and post digital big bang – the ultimate line in the sand. A universe altered for ever. The Internet our single new reality. Change the only mantra. And from this new dawn will emerge a new panorama of opportunities and entrepreneurs. Where will you be?