The bottom line
Computing is becoming less visible as intelligence moves into the environments, devices and objects around us.
Why it matters
As sensing, connectivity and AI converge, interaction shifts from opening an application to living inside systems that anticipate context. That changes product design, privacy expectations, physical spaces and the definition of a digital interface.
From the foresight archive
Jim Carroll first published this as Megatrend #2 on 2025-06-25. He revisited it one year later on 2026-08-06, using the retrospective to test the original call against what had happened since.
In that retrospective, Carroll’s own shorthand assessment was: On track, and accelerating. The tech is disappearing into the fabric of daily life faster than most people have noticed — which was always the point.
This page treats the 2025 article as the original foresight call and the 2026 article as the first evidence checkpoint. Later signals and scorecards can be attached without rewriting the historical record.