I think smart device are finally going to push the success rate of the Apocalypse
It has all the signs of being the worst bubble in the entire history of humanity. It's the equivalent of the first successful car being a factory on wheels like a trailer the size of a mansion. Yes the cities could have even been more efficient but besides the environmental damage, humanity would be more accepting of harsher conditions and smokes billowing through their houses in order to make way for the juggernaut on wheels society that would take place. Where those houses would have ushered in squatters 2.0, these smart devices would usher in maintenance sweatshops 2.0.
It will destroy the cloud: Further segmenting the e-bay sellers/blind affiliates/mass marketing district of the web with that of the information highway but now at a mass social level. The greeting cards people who was able to reform the tradition of gift giving would be reforming our social lives to be more like this (minus the satire and over the top environmental head bashing):
With the cloud destroyed, the post-apocalyptic era of the internet will arise It won't be like a nuclear fallout or any bleak setting outside of our houses but the internet will have their own real cyberpunk, nuclear fallout, jungle low tech division. It would be like what the stereotype for 4chan is or the stereotype for Facebook and Facebook's fallout is but this time it's real. The glory days of a startup competitor replacing a previous service would all but disappear and be replaced with the post-smart device society of it's version. Much like television changed with the advertising in-between every show phenomenon, the internet would redefine the internet in a form of tradition. Not just with increased appearance of ads or with increased pop-ups and spam that used to plague the early days of the internet. This time the change would be internet exclusive (much as the ad model for TV where TV exclusive despite ads existing in radios).
For example the crap with the internet today in mass society is commonly found in TV shows. News reporters acting like they're twitter users. TV serials using the still stale Timmy Turner found his wished up toy from the internet but with more CSI, NCIS, Government Mindmaps and Text to Text cellphone tricks.
In the future, this would be the average (non-parody version) of our kid's cartoons and what TV will pick up, the internet will drop and it will be a future depleted of the special youtube of the week/month, twitter news of the week/month and be an entirely different sub-breed altogether.
If DRM was for videogames, Smart Device would be for web sites. Not even the draconian laws promoted right now to capture torrent users would hurt the internet as much as Smart Devices would if the laws were passed today.
Complex OS-wise, it will come but not in the geographic convenience that came with the appearance of the mass available TV set, mass available refrigerator, mass installed air conditioner Life would become more like a labryinth, becoming closer to this (even the exaggerated parts)
It would be a weird transformation that no one would see coming. Households would become closer to dark internet cafes. The neon tech cities like Tokyo would become brighter airport style/expo event style hubs. The average street corruption would be turned into a stewardess themed haven rather than the ghetto style stereotype plaguing today. Dark would be the new safe haven. Bright and clean would be the new ghetto. Smart device usage would be like labryinth to shop navigation devices. The fancy parties would be more like Steve Jobs type tech presentations. The raves would be more like cyberpunk depictions of plugged-in/plugged-out movements minus any cyborg/android implants.
Finally the cherry on top of this Brave New World would be an inverse/reverse Cold War. A state where we all think the end of the world is no longer coming or have been staved off because tech redefined the problem. The first major solution, the first true experiential leap to believing that the 2000 rocket space age in fiction would be truly forthcoming but then the next unlikely to succeed World War. The Invisible World War would finally succeed. The signs will literally be there but we will wait on our doorsteps because it's not a plague, a typical doomsday scenario or even a major disaster. It would just fall apart. No sudden Rapture style bright light. No Great Depression surprise. We'd all just wake up and find out, life sucks. We're screwed. We've overlooked something about the war.
