This generation’s contribution to technological progress lies mostly in information technology (IT). Rather as electrification changed everything by allowing energy to be used far from where it was generated, computing and communications technologies transform lives and businesses by allowing people to make calculations and connections far beyond their unaided capacity. But as with electricity, companies will take time to learn how to use them, so it will probably be many decades before their full impact is felt.

Brands and retailers are moving away from the idea of the site as a destination solely for e-commerce, the mobile site as a destination solely for m-commerce, and for those that have them, the brick and mortar stores as destinations solely for in-store shopping. Now, the goal is to create a seamless browsing, researching, learning, sharing and shopping experience across all these platforms. The site will encourage the in-store, the in-store will call on mobile, and so forth.

Remember watches? Point-and-shoot digital cameras? Day planners? We don’t see very much of these products anymore because they’ve been replaced by smartphones, with their confluence of multiple services into one piece of plastic. But some of these old industries are coming back from the brink by incorporating the same wireless technology we find in smartphones, says IBB’s Wang. Expect to see more wireless-enabled wearable devices in 2013, including watches that track your fitness levels, (like the bluetooth-enabled smart watch that Apple and Intel are reportedly working on) or digital cameras that can connect to to the web and take a better photo than your smartphone can.