Convergence means technologies becoming more and more similar to each other. This means that something carried over one medium can potentially be carried by any of them.
A film, a television or radio programme, a song, a message - they're all different - yet in essence all the same - they can all be reduced to a stream of ones and zeros and pumped down the line (or over the airwaves).
This revolution is still in its infancy so it's difficult to say where it might be taking us. But it is possible to trace some of the milestones passed so far.
Since the mid 1980s and the introduction of mobile telephony, the old certainties of telecommunications have been changing.
There is more life in copper wires than many people would have predicted in the mid 1980s - but an all-fibre network would transform what computer networking could do.
Increasingly, these fixed-point networks are carrying the broadband traffic - music, video, games and data.
Meanwhile, mobile is taking more and more of the voice traffic - and may soon be taking more of the Internet and e-mail traffic too.
A trend seems to be developing where the telephone traffic that was once wired becomes wireless, and entertainment that was once delivered by wireless becomes wired. This changeover is known as the Negroponte Switch, after it was first predicted by Professor Nicholas Negroponte of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
