Technologists
predict big things
for Internet
BY DAN GILLMOR
Mercury News Technology Columnist
Now that the Internet bubble has deflated, we
can get on with what makes the technology
world so fascinating and its prospects so limitless. Smart people are
getting back to the basics -- coming up with great new ideas that may,
just may, change the world.
The old Internet is dead, says Bob Metcalfe, but ``long live the
Internet.''
Metcalfe, a networking pioneer and host of this week's ``ACM1:
Beyond Cyberspace'' conference in San Jose, made an early but
correct prediction that many investors would regret buying into the
Net mania of the late 1990s. Now he's looking ahead, both as a
pundit and newly minted venture capitalist, and he sees plenty of
interesting developments ahead.
``The next big thing will be the Entertainment Internet, which of course
means the Broadcast Video Internet, which of course includes
production values appropriate for the Education Internet,'' Metcalfe
says in an e-mail when I ask him to name a major development in the
next half decade. ``Not that communication (e-mail) and commerce
(dot-coms) will decline, but that entertainment uses of the Internet will
take over driving it.''
For the conference, the Association for Computing Machinery -- one
of technology's oldest membership organizations -- has invited
luminaries in science and technology to look beyond mere cyberspace
as they contemplated our future.
I put the same question to them that I put to Metcalfe, and got some
intriguing e-mail responses. (I'm printing excerpts here, but will post
full replies in my eJournal,
weblog.mercurycenter.com
``Within five years, we will begin to see full-immersion,
visual-auditory, virtual reality shared environments,'' says Ray
Kurzweil, CEO of Kurzweil Technologies and one of the
acknowledged far-seeing people in the field. ``The images will be
written directly to our retinas from our eyeglasses and, eventually,
contact lenses. We will have wireless high-bandwidth connection to
the Internet at all times. We will have sensors that detect the position
and movement of our body. The electronics for all of this will be so
small that they will be woven into our clothing. We can then project an
image of our body to someone else over the Web and visit in a virtual
environment.
``So you and I could sit together on a virtual Mediterranean beach or
virtual Mozambique game preserve (or a virtual office in a virtual San
Jose Mercury News) and it would seem very real. It would be just
like being there. By the end of this decade, this type of virtual reality
experience will be a ubiquitous way to meet with other people. Web
sites will offer a panoply of virtual environments to experience.''
At ACM1, Kurzweil is planning to demonstrate how someone, even
now, can almost literally be someone else using virtual reality. He's
created an alter-ego, a female rock musician, and plans to
demonstrate her act.
ACM1's ``beyond cyberspace'' theme heads into the realm of natural
science. Marcia K. McNutt, president and chief executive at the
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, sensibly worries about
global warming and pollution, and she sees a positive change in the
works.
``I think the most important development that can be expected within
the next 5 years is to figure out how to sequester carbon from the
burning of fossil fuels in order to mitigate the effects of global
warming,'' she says. Business as usual, she adds, will create a severe
and unacceptable result.
Business as usual in the information technology world isn't acceptable,
either, says Martin F.H. Schuurmans, executive vice president and
CEO at the Philips Centre for Industrial Technology in the
Netherlands. He says he has to look further than five years ahead to
explain his vision of our future, even though we've already created
much of what we need to get there.
``I believe that ambient intelligence, which refers to an electronic
environment that is sensitive and responsive to people and will truly
serve people without `Control-Alt-Delete' tricks, will become a reality
in 10 to 20 years from now,'' he says. ``Most of the technology exists
today, but is mostly immature and too expensive.''
Hardware won't be enough, says Schuurmans. We also need more
``intelligent social user interfaces that will go beyond the current
graphics paradigm on a PC.'' These will be personalized. They'll work
in many environments, and they'll give humans what he calls a ``warm
belly feeling'' when they use the machines. All of this is part of an
inexorable trend toward what Schuurmans calls an ``experience
economy,'' balancing work and private lives.
Technology will also revolutionize learning, predicts Ruzena Bajcsy,
assistant director of the National Science Foundation and head of the
foundation's directorate for Computer and Information Science and
Engineering.
``In the same way that information technology research helped fuel the
biotechnology revolution, advances in education will be just as
dependent on IT,'' she says. ``The scalability of our cutting-edge
infrastructure for research means that it can be deployed more broadly
to serve students of all ages in the 21st century.''
Those students -- and everyone else -- will have some increasingly
amazing tools, says Vint Cerf, senior vice president of Internet
architecture and technology at telecommunications giant WorldCom.
One of the early creators of what became the Internet, Cerf is
particularly excited about some of the cross-breeding of technologies
into what is often called a world of communications convergence.
``I think the introduction of speech-understanding computers will have
a significant effect because, coupled with a huge influx of
Internet-enabled appliances, we will have the ability to manage these
devices with spoken commands,'' he says. ``Moreover, as we
cross-couple various media, we will be able to ask questions orally
but get back answers in visual form on our PCs or PDAs, etc.
Internet-enabled picture frames already exist -- they become
interesting outlets for Internet-sourced content.''
Couple that with a system in which we create ``self-organizing
networks of radio-linked devices'' along with genuine security and
authentication of users' identities. Of course, he adds in a ``lesson
learned'' echo of the heady '90s. ``The scenario for making this
happen in a business-sensible way is still not entirely clear.''
Whatever happens, he says, ``There's an Internet in your future;
resistance is futile.'' |
