The early 1980s ushered in the age of the personal computer; then the Internet was born; then came the world of Web 2.0 (and I guess I must have missed a fourth revolution in between the entrée and dessert). Now, society is facing a new era that will be "enabled by hardware but powered by software;" one where computing components are infinitely faster, smaller and cheaper, he said.

Wireless broadband networks are practically everywhere and that innovation puts the "whole world at your fingertips, wherever you go," Ballmer said. Soon, speech, touch and language will dominate personal computing, he predicted, and technology users will want to be able to interact meaningfully with their devices.

"All information will be consumed digitally [and] everything you need will be delivered on an IP network," he told the crowd. "The ability to find and analyze information will go up an order of magnitude," he said, noting that software will morph into something that exists in the "Internet cloud."