Internet just leaving its Stone Age - U.S. experts
By Michael Fitzpatrick
LOS ANGELES, Sept 2 (Reuters) - The Internet is just now leaving its Stone Age, scientists and entrepreneurs said on Thursday at a conference to mark the 30th anniversary of the vast network that has launched incredible fortunes and changed the way the world communicates.
''We are now beginning to move out of the Stone Age of the Internet,'' the conference was told by Leonard Kleinrock, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who is considered one of the fathers of the Internet.
It was at UCLA on Sept. 2, 1969, that Kleinrock and his team succeeded in hooking up a computer to a refrigerator-sized switch, a precursor to getting two computers to talk to each other the following month and a necessary condition for the explosive growth of the Internet.
''It was the year of a raging war in Vietnam, Woodstock ... we put a man on the moon, and the Internet was born,'' he said.
Or as UCLA said in a 1969 statement, ''Creation of the network represents a major step forward in computer technology and may serve as the forerunner of large computer networks of the future.''
Thirty years later, the Internet is seemingly everywhere. It has changed the way people communicate, shop and invest and has transformed business -- in the process, creating great wealth. Entrepreneurs said that was just the start.
''I think the Internet is about 20 percent invented, and we have about 80 percent to go,'' said Sky Dayton, chairman of Internet service provider Earthlink Network Inc. (Nasdaq:ELNK - news), who himself is younger than the Internet's beginnings.
''We ain't seen nothing yet,'' said Dayton, who recently formed an investment company to help create new Internet start-ups.
Consumers can expect to see the Internet spread beyond personal computers into a variety of devices with so-called embedded functions linked to the Web. ''Computing will change and it will change profoundly,'' said Dan Rosen, general manager of new technology at Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT - news).
As the Internet weaves itself more tightly into daily life, businesses will have to keep up with the change, panelists said.
''You have to move where the economy moves,'' said Ronald Whittier, general manager of content services for semiconductor giant Intel Corp. (Nasdaq:INTC - news). ''We have to move where the action is. Today the action is the Internet.''
''Five years from now, there will be no business that doesn't have an Internet component,'' Microsoft's Rosen said.
The Internet also means that the even big corporations have to worry about upstart rivals with new technology, said George Vradenburg, senior vice president for global and strategic policy at Internet service America Online Inc. (NYSE:AOL - news).
Asked to identify the biggest threats to an established Internet company such as AOL, Vradenburg said, ''It's probably the person we don't see.'' |
