My two cents.

The advice given to the young and resourceful used to be: "Go West, young man." Later, this recommendation became less geographical and more geological: "Plastics, young man. Go into plastics." Today it is more geophysical: The future is digital. The only problem with this latter statement is that it's an oxymoron. Digital is not the future, it's the past. Today we're beyond digital. Way beyond!

The challenges society now faces are the result of two powerful elements, digital and the Internet, which, by being blended together, create what is the true calling, of the future: something that I call "metavergence"--from the Greek word meta (beyond) and the Latin "vergere," as in "to converge."

But before we can really appreciate the extent of this "perfect storm" and start to tell kids: "Metavergence, young man. Metavergence!" lets look at the digital phases we've historically gone through.

It started as science in the 1930s, then technology in the 1940s, later it became the "digital revolution" of the 1980s, then moved to the "digital age," which was followed by a "new digital age." We even entered into a "digital divide" and, finally, progressed toward "digital information." Each phase represented a particular aspect: from the technological (digital revolution) to the consumerist (digital age), to the social (digital divide), up until we reached the very fabric of humanity (digital information).

With digital information, also called the "information age," came "Information Technology" (IT), a broad expression concerned with the process of information, and integrated into the concept of the "post-industrial society" (not involved in the production of tangible goods). IT has now evolved into a "geospatial Web": As you move through the world, a device can retrieve information about your area.

During those phases, whatever was "digital" was easily interchanged with "Internet," like the "Internet revolution," "Internet era," etc. Digital and Internet are two different elements, but in the mind of the public at large, they became one and the same.

Today, however, it doesn't make sense to talk about "digital" since everything electronic is digital: our television sets, our radios, our phones, our computers; plus, video, cinema, photos, clocks, DVDs, audio-recorders, address books. You name it--it's digital.

Continuing to interject the word "digital" at every turn would be like always adding "analog" when talking about radio and television before 1990. Can you imagine? "Analog television is here!" or "Let's move to analog recorders!" Did it make sense then? Of course, not! That's why it wasn't used. Analog technology was there and we simply didn't question it.

Understandably, in the beginning of the digital age one would mention "digital" just to be specific, but nowadays adding "digital" to anything no longer makes any sense.

Realistically, today, we are well beyond digital. We've entered into a post-digital era, which is not yet clearly defined, but close to what "metavergence" could generally illustrate.

Convergence, as it is understood today, cannot be what lies beyond digital, simply because, nowadays, if a company needs convergence, it can buy it. But, this cannot continue forever. News Corp. can buy as many MySpaces as it likes, but new and improved ones will continue to pop up on a weekly basis.

Thus, convergence, as it can be envisioned, cannot be synonymous with "merging" or vertical and horizontal integration, but rather something like "metavergence," which is outside the realm of traditional business models and the current scope of academia.

Even in the academic world, and especially in the field of cybernetics (or in the sub-culture that is cyberpunk, which is so fond of dystopia), I was unable to find a single paper about what lies beyond digital, and yet, the understanding of what lies beyond the world created by the "metavergence" of digital technology and the Internet could offer solutions to the challenges of the future.

There are lots of academic and trade talks about the "future of ..." digital television, digital cinema, etc., but they focus on technological innovations. Molecular Information Technology and quantum computers are not really what I'd consider post-digital.

At its most basic, digital technology--which first appeared 75 years ago--is of utmost simplicity, being made up of one of two digits: 0 or 1. Perhaps science cannot move beyond this or it is possible that talks about what lies beyond digital are now taking place within the military, possibly spearheaded by the danger posed to society by EMP (Electro Magnetic Pulse), and what emerges doesn't go beyond warfare analysis. But it could be a start, since EMP generated by a nuclear explosion above ground, would, in effect, cut transportation, power, communications and all other sectors dependent on digital technology. Interestingly, the old vacuum tube-based equipment is much less vulnerable to EMP, so, it is possible that what lies beyond digital is ... analog.