Most homes have DVDs and a digital camera

This classic combination of technological advances caused what many people call an inflection point - when all the conditions are right for a major new advance. Nobody really predicted the explosive growth of the internet. As late as 1994, even Bill Gates called it a transitionary technology "that doesn't even have a billing system" (Gates is into billing systems). But the inflection point hit hard in the mid '90s, leading to a frenzied tech boom and some of the biggest changes we have ever seen in the effects of technology on society. Falling prices and vastly improved ease of use switched the focus of technology from corporations to the individual, and to the home. The biggest changes have been in personal communication - the internet, the mobile phone and pay TV. In April this year, research company Connection Research Services released the results of a major survey into the digital usage habits of Australian households. CRS interviewed more than households, and found that 65 per cent were connected to the internet. More than one-third of these were on broadband, with the proportion predicted to grow to half over the next two years. Ten years ago less than per cent of homes were on the internet. All connections were dial-up - the concept of broadband didn't even exist. The CRS study also found that more than 80 per cent of Australian homes have at least one mobile phone, and most own more than one. Most homes have DVDs and a digital camera. They also have multiple TVs, and 80 per cent have at least one computer. Home theatres, driven by the plummeting cost of new TV technologies, are now found in nearly per cent of all homes, often in rooms dedicated to the purpose. For a glimpse at the future, look at Korea. Nearly 80 per cent of Korean homes have broadband connections - and Korean broadband is truly Rosetta Stone Chinese broad. Most connections are at 2 megabits per second (2Mbps) or higher (a typical residential broadband connection in Australia is 5kbps). The Korean Government expects that 70 per cent of internet connections will exceed Mbps by the end of 06 and that most will be at 100Mbps by the end of the decade. At these speeds, and with this level of penetration, the internet pervades Korean society to an extent unknown in the rest of the world. But with success come problems. In Korea, cyber crime is out of control, and a quarter of all teenagers are classed as internet addicts, many with behavioural problems. New cultural tools have appeared, such as "avatars", digital characters used to identify yourself online. There exists in Korea a digital world, of the kind predicted in Tad Williams's sci-fi trilogy Otherland, which is as real to its inhabitants as the corporeal world. Gangs of cyberyouths roam the net, stealing cybergoods from unfortunate avatars and disrupting things. There are other challenges. What is the future of intellectual property when music, films and software can be transmitted around the world in an instant and copied an infinite number of times? How can we make the virtual world as secure as the real world? Can we even distinguish real life from cyberlife? In , we already have the sub-$ notebook, the terabyte (1024 gigabytes) of storage on our video recorder, and the video camera in our phone. Ten years from now, everything we have now will be cheaper, smaller and easier to use, and a lot more mobile. The phone network, pay and free-to-air TV networks, and the net itself will all merge into a larger network, which some are calling the Supernet.

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