Having watched some of the first talkies, and seen how awkwardly and horribly they were done as the first of a new generation of technology, a question has to be asked:

What will be the next generation of film technology?

Some have said that the advent of digital technology (read: 1001011101011010111010101010111110010101011) was the vanguard of a new wave of technology as CGI became commonplace, more realistic, more embedded, and light and sound was stored as a series of digits instead of captured electromagnetic maves. This certainly has allowed for creative freedoms and greater scope in both locales and characters in films (What percentage of the Star Wars prequels' characters never really existed?) It certainly shares that same awkward beginnings as sound, namely being used in inopprotune ways and to an extent that is almost dizzying, like the constant sound attack in Lights of New York.

Although, I don't think this is the next generation of revolutionary film technology. If anything, it is the advancement of technology that we already have. Whereas the swap from silence to speech was a paradigm shift of untold proportions, digital technology has done nothing more than refine and polish what we already have. So what should we look to? Smellovision like on some Bugs Bunny cartoons? Effects like the ones in 3D theaters in Disney World that puff air on your legs to give the illusion of something brushing past your legs? Maybe just a return to 3D film proper, especially since we now know how to do so in color, with the aforementioned digital refining.

Who can say? Who says there's even a new paradigm waiting to be broken?

Let's just hope it avoids this lovely little bit of Dilbertian insight:
Dogbert - "If you refuse to let my friend go, I'll wear this hat backwards! Your hardwired little accountant brains will explode at the sight of it"
Dilbert - "What was that popping noise?"
Dogbert - "A paradigm shift without the clutch"