Trends in user/society needs and future wireless standards

This section offers a view on trends currently characterizing the ICT world, with special focus on wireless technologies in line with the NEWCOM++ research objectives. To approach this complex task, the activities carried out withinWPI.6 are considered as a reference. At first, an attempt to classify personal needs is provided in order to present the rationale towards which ICT trends and technologies are growing and evolving. Then, an overview of ICT trends is presented through an original metaphor of the current ICT picture and biological DNA. Continuing our analysis, cutting-edgestandards and technologies in the ICT wireless context are recalled, providing for each a mapping onto ICT trends, showing which trends are embodied by the technology and which personal needs can be satisfied in this manner. Finally, we conclude this section discussing the impact of ICT pervasiveness on society, human relations, and even individual psychology: a new phenomenon is created, which we identify as the information divide, which includes both the digital divide affecting all those who have no or limited access to the Internet, as well as the psychological divide, related with the information overload which impacts upon all those who do have access [1].