IT has transformed itself many times over the past decade. Yet a far more fundamental overhaul is in the making: the long-predicted world of fully ubiquitous computation and communication is finally emerging. Addressing the associated challenges and opportunities may require a fundamental rethinking of the way we do design. Most notably, the semiconductor industry must abandon its traditional component-oriented perspective and adopt a system vision. To meaningfully guide this process and fully exploit the offered opportunities, an understanding of what the workloads of the future may look like is necessary. This task is possible only through a joint effort of the application and design communities. This article characterizes the essential features of what the authors consider the dominant application classes of the future. It becomes apparent that these workloads operate under different quality metrics. Instead of performance or energy per function, metrics such as system latency, useful functionality per energy spent, and reliability and liability take center stage. The authors, therefore, issue a call to action for the creation of relevant benchmark libraries, each accompanied with a clear definition of the metrics relevant to their evaluation.