Portable computers. Limits are:-
- Energy source - batteries are limited in that you can also shrink it so far and to increase the capacity, you'll have to increase the size and so the weight.
- Which leads to the weight issue. Pdaphones are great in that they're small and highly portable but in terms of processing power, well, it's rather limited. So we still have to wait for Intel or whatever to come up with better chips that utilize less energy and process at much greater speeds.
- Price. If you got the battery and the advance chips and components, they'll charge a bundle for it because at the end of the day, it's the profit that matters.
If we really want everyone to adopt it, it will require a company to forgo short term profits (10 years) for long term benefits. Making it so cheap that almost everyone will buy one or governments will provide it for their citizens. Investors are not gonna like that. Who wants to lose out on 10 years worth of money and get it when you're old and grey?
But it will propel mobility to the far corners of the earth and usher in a new age of technology that will see in the introduction of new industries, new jobs, new businesses.
I do agree that having a virtual secretary is VERY important in mobility. Consider that it doesn't work well with a PC because the point of a secretary or personal assistant is to help you at any time and constantly during their working time and we can't have the PC with us all the time. But with advance mobile computing, it will help everyone to be more productive, efficient and organized.
You might think that, it was what PDA's promised but flopped big time, but with greater computing power, you're able to utilize better software, more personalization as well as increased communication between users.
Even if the virtual secretary can't motivate you enough, you can always have your physical secretary, personal coach, mentor or even friend to help you out by syncronizing calendars, location info, task list and by communicating either through voice, video, sms, mms, etc. The point of accountability (an option, not a must) is to increase productivity and discipline to reaching goals whether corporate or personal.