The Fifth Generation

Nobody noticed the first generation as a distinct entity except in hindsight. The second generation was heralded as a "revolution". The third generation was an "evolution". The fourth generation has mostly come out of the research stages and is used in production. The fifth generation... is where things get interesting.

Generation	Programming languages	Computing Hardware	War	Cryptography
0	Switches and punch cards	Abacus	Random fights	Plain text
1	Machine code (stored-program)	Vacuum Tubes	Organized army	Alphabetic ciphers
2	Assembly	Transistors	Tactics and discipline	Vigenere cipher
3	LISP, Fortran, ALGOL, C, ...	Integrated circuits	Total War, attack supplies as well as defenders	Enigma
4	Haskell, Ruby, ...	Cloud computing, many-core, ...	Terrorism, propaganda, disinformation	Public-key

Do any of these have clear successors? There are hints, of course, but we might just have run up against a wall. Maybe there is no fifth generation. On the other hand, the world keeps progressing... so something has to follow them. Perhaps development of new ideas will just stop and we'll start fixing bugs instead of researching. Or computing will go from commodity to necessity as it becomes integrated with more and more technologies, perhaps even of our bodies. But something has to break...