Windows Phone Thoughts: Cringely Thinks This Week Changed Everything

"It's an expression made popular in Silicon Valley years ago by Andy Grove of Intel: "inflection point." It's that abrupt elbow in a graph of growth or decline when the new technology or paradigm truly kicks in, and suddenly there is no going back. From that moment, the new stuff takes off and the old stuff goes into rapid decline, whether it is a new standard of modem, a new video game, a new microprocessor family, or just a new idea. I think we've just hit such an inflection point and -- though most of us still don't realize it -- the personal computer, video game, and electronic entertainment businesses will never be the same."

Robert Cringely is one of the most brilliant minds in technology today, and I'm always eager to read his weekly articles. This one really floored me though, because I happen to agree that this week saw the introduction of technologies, and implementation of technologies, that will profoundly shape the technology world over the next decade. The Xbox 360 is the first step in a complete upheaval of the computer industry, and Google's Web Accelerator is a sign that the way we access the Web may be in a for a big change a few years down the road. Read his column and weigh in.