The offline cloud

I've spent last couple days in jolly old London England engaged in a variety of meetings as well as to attend the first ever CloudCamp London which took place earlier this evening. The event was again a total success with more then 250+ attending. The beer and wine was flowing and the audience was a great mix of experts and novices alike. One of the more ironic parts of the evening was when we lost the internet connectivity for our Crypt on the Green venue. (Located in the basement of an old church) Given the event was for cloud computing the irony was not lost on anyone.

The network going down did bring up an interesting topic of discussion. What happens with cloud apps when the internet goes down? When I use my blackberry on a plane I can still check my previously downloaded email but at the same time I can't twitter my latest updates or check our CRM, SVN or any other hosted services. There are a number of projects attempting to address this offline cloud problem. Most noticeably Google Gears.

My question is; are we moving toward a future where the desktop is nothing more then a local cache? Or will we soon reach a point where technologies like Wi-max, 3G and wifi on planes make the internet a ubiquitous part of our everyday life where local storage isn't needed at all?

I guess only time will tell.