I think the idea that every piece of software will run in parallel in the future is nonsense. Hardware vendors are just trying to create a need where there is none.
Clearly, someone will find applications where this power is needed (graphics, simulation, robotics), but there is no way that MS Word will run in parallel in more than a few processors. The biggest change in multicore is in enabling new applications, not in changing the way current applications are developed.
I did not say every piece of software will run in parallel, or that it should. The subject is the runtime environment of a programming language. If Python is going to be used in these new applications you brought up, it would help if they were able to remove the GIL.
I've heard that argument since we started having dual CPUs 5-10 years ago. I don't buy it really. Netbooks are so popular mainly because we don't need so much cpu power on our local thin clients to the web.
Most processors in the future will be parallel architectures of some kind. Even my current laptop is a multicore.