For better or worse, I think the economics of it mean this is what will happen in future.
As it gets possible to build very large and powerful computers more cheaply, they'll still be expensive and only the biggest corps will deploy them. And the experience deliverable from virtualized apps in those clouds will be vastly better than anything that can be run on a device. Considering the impact and requirements of AI only makes this more likely.
So after briefly becoming all about "edge computing" and "fat clients" in the recent past, I think the future is going to see a swing back toward massive centralization. This will also only be compounded by the next advances in wafer process and quantum, and the increases in bandwidth to allow richer experiences over 5G.
Our pocket devices might be "supercomputers" but the real supercomputers are still going to be in the cloud and capable, I think, of running everything.
TL;DR - the next big advance in computing tech will disproportionately allocate towards the cloud rather than the device, is my bet. And we'll all have "dumb" terminals streaming us VR/AR + AI experiences all the time.
Disclaimer: that future is not why I made this, I still think it is some time off and it just seems obvious this will happen. Rather than becoming all about "more powerful devices, less powerful servers", I think the future will be the other way round. :)
I don't doubt it for a second, but if you can make one happen why _not_ the other? if you already have a very powerful video compressor with low latency, why not do hosted applications?
Totally makes sense because you unconstrain yourself from supporting all web-browsers, rolling out features gradually, and it unconstrains you from javascript too.
Imagine instead of google docs you had microsoft excel but surrounded by a browser window, everything else is the same. I know people would pay for that. (even if I personally prefer google docs)
