Honey, I'm Home. Where's Our CIO?

But if we're going to build this environment, we have to recognize that there can't be a CIO for the home. And as consumers and businesses interact with each other in the Internet environment, there can't be a CIO for the world either. Enterprise computing has had a big assist, in terms of how we use and deploy the technology, from the professional IT organization. There's always been a dynamic balance, almost a tension. Before we could add more technology, we had to have more trained people to use it, and that becomes a limiter to how fast we can deploy technology. It's easier to add technology than it is to get people to adopt it. As we take this out of the enterprise, where there are IT professionals to help with that process, and put it in everybody's life, it's clear that people will look at the network and all these devices as they look at the power grid today: there's just a jack in a wall, you buy a lamp or a fan or a toaster, you plug it in, and it just works.
In the home, you can't demand that people install new wiring infrastructure. So we have to piggyback the networks on the wiring infrastructure that's already there, or use technologies that allow wireless connectivity. Occasionally there will be new wires added, particularly for very high-quality video distribution in the home. But, by and large, the power line, the phone line, and the air will be the dominant ways in which most of these devices in the home get connected.
So personal computers and other specialty devices will become a bridge between the broad Internet environment and this quite sophisticated set of devices that people will have in their homes.