I recently bought a keyring-sized 256Mb USB flash drive. These things are really cheap right now, and it quite handily solves the "data I want both on my desktop and laptop, whether I have net access or not" problem. I could use my iPod, I suppose, but the keyring is just that bit more convenient.
Alan mentioned just after I bought it that one common use for such gadgets is as a boot disk: you stick one of the smaller Knoppix distributions on it, and then you can plug it into any PC that is able to boot from a USB drive. Voila, Linux in your pocket.
This, of course, got me thinking. Right now, the keyrings seem to max out around 512Mb. This means in a few years, you'll be able to get affordable several-gigabyte keyrings. This opens all sorts of possibilities as far as data-transfer goes. You'll essentially be able to carry around not only your data, but your software with you wherever you go. Think of going into a net.cafe, and instead of sitting down at a strange computer, you're sitting down at your own computer, set up exactly how you want it.
It solves all the annoying problems related to "roaming profiles", too.
We were told that the network was going to solve this problem for us, but the network is a bumpy thing. It's not always there when you need it, and when it is there it's full of impediments to the free-flow of data like firewalls or backhoes. Sneaker-net is still a lot more efficient in many cases.
It doesn't surprise me that Intel have been having ideas along the same lines, although their idea is more iPod-sized than keyring-sized. Intel are looking at the "Personal Server", a portable hard-drive/low-powered server/WiFi combination that (ignoring all the standard sci-fi marketing dithering about walking past things and having them recognise you) finally separates the "computer as the thing you sit in front of and type on" from the "computer as the thing that holds all your information".
I also love the assumption in that article that in the future we'll all be walking around with video cameras mounted on our shoulders, recording everything that happens to us. Does that mean we'll also one day be recording ourselves watching ourselves watching a recording of ourselves?
