The rogue wave has been the bane of seafarers (and the joy of surfers) since time immemorial. Rogue waves happen when the crests of two or more wave patterns happen to synchronize, momentarily producing a much larger wave than any of the participating wave patterns could have produced alone. Rogue waves are the bane of seafarers because their energies can be tremendous, and therefore potentially very destructive to a ship holding to a particular course-detrimental not just to the ship's ability to hold the course, but to the very ship itself. The inertial energy of the status quo joins with the momentum of the wave patterns, stressing the vessel in unexpected and massive ways.

But to surfers and sailboarders, the rogue wave is a dream come true. Rogue waves can take you farther and faster than any normal wave, providing a much wilder and more satisfying ride, but only if you are ready to ride when the moment comes to catch the wave.

Contrary to our perceptions, ocean waves involve the movement not of water but energy. There are wave patterns in society as well-energies that move through our existence, turning the status quo on its head. Technologies, religious and ideological movements, population bulges and dips, economic boom and recession, all are examples of the wave patterns buffeting human society.

In this chapter, we will discuss how disruptive technologies and socioeconomic forces are combining their energies to create a synergistic convergence of multiple disruptive information technologies. Technology enthusiasts have a long tradition of creating acronyms to represent complex phrases; we took one look at the acronym SCOMDIT we have decided not to go there. Instead, we will call this powerful effect the Rogue Wave. In the next decade or two, this wave of changes will wash over us. It will make the upheavals of the Twentieth Century seem like pond ripples.

The Rogue Wave is coming, ready or not, like it or not. Investors, entrepreneurs, and executives face a stark choice: Either surf or drown.

The Rogue Wave will affect every aspect of society and every region of the globe, but we need to narrow the scope for the purpose of this paper. Because he is an information technologist, entrepreneur, and investor, the author has chosen to explore possible alternative futures for the technology of the Web as shaped by the Rogue Wave over the period 2002-2006. The results of the exercise are stories told about the past from a future perspective. The "past" described in each of the stories is one possible way the next four years could play out.

As we developed these scenarios, we considered many different factors, but our attention focused on the following questions:

• How have the recession and the tragic events of 9/11/2001 affected the evolutionary forces driving software architectures, mobile connectivity, and the World-Wide Web?
• What, if anything, will trigger the long-predicted boom in the wireless data market?
• What will be the relative importance of the machine-centric embedded Web vis-à-vis the "traditional" human-centric World-Wide Web?
• What will be the tangible effects of the newly emerging profoundly distributed systems and application architectures on people's everyday lives?

The scenarios in this document provide some answers to these questions, not in the form of solid predictions of what will happen (nobody knows) but of how things might turn out, depending on the outcome of critical uncertainties with respect to driving forces.

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