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Internet Ready To Leave Home
By Dick Satran
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Now that the Internet has reached the ripe old age of 30, it's time to leave home.
Enter the era of ubiquitous computing -- the buzzword for the pervasive spread of the Internet beyond the computer motherboard where it has lived for its first three decades.
With ever smaller circuits and a rapidly expanding high-speed network, communications chips are being embedded in everything from refrigerators to Gameboys.
Internet browser-equipped mobile telephones are coming to market with the same processing power that mainframes had at the dawn of the Internet age, and 300 million mobile phone users worldwide will be able to link to the Web.
Ubiquitous computing is everywhere these days.
The largest technology companies are making networked computing their highest priority and scores of start-ups are looking for opportunity in building the devices and services that can be linked to the high-speed network.
Intel Corp. (Nasdaq:INTC - news), the world's largest chipmaker, said at the start of the year that the Internet had replaced silicon as the lifeblood of high tech, and that it was shifting its main focus to the network from the computer box
International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM - news), Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq:CSCO - news) and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) also have stepped up their development efforts to reflect the changing demands of the ''Post PC'' computing era.
But ubiquitous computing isn't all just about the bottom line. For emergency room physician Ken Zafren, in Anchorage, Alaska, it's about life and death.
Zafren's Alaskan Native Medical Center already relies heavily on the Internet and computer modems to reach patients over the frozen expanse of Alaska and the Aleutian islands. Telephone, fax and e-mail connect him to patients up to 1,000 miles (1,600 km) away -- but it's difficult to make sound judgements with the crude tools now available.
Zafren looks forward to a time when stethoscopes, thermometers and blood pressure gauges will be rewired as communications devices so patients' vital signs can be read over the Internet in real-time, and ''distance diagnostics'' can replace the crude art of ''telemedicine.''
One of the most important tools, he says, will be the simple videocam linked to a high-speed Internet connection. ''Just seeing the patient would extremely helpful,'' said Zafren, who needs to make snap judgements on whether to evacuate patients in distant locations for treatment in Anchorage.
The Alaska doctor worries how and when his financially limited health service, which relies on government funding, will get access to such services -- and in this he's not alone. But in Silicon Valley, technologists say dramatic price declines and a host of new services are on the horizon.
At the famed Xerox Palo Alto Research center, known as PARC, where many of the computer world's innovations were hatched, Roy Want, who manages embedded systems research, says, ''With new technology, we'll be able to transmit at even higher speed at lower power.'' Translation: It'll get cheaper.
The much-quoted Moore's Law, that computing power doubles roughly every two years, is just one of the factors at play. Network capacity, the bandwidth, a measure of speed and capacity of the Internet, is growing even faster than computing power. That means more data can be sent for less money.
''There's so much bandwidth becoming available, even with all of the multimedia coming online, we'll reach a point where there is still a surplus,'' said Want.
How all this bandwidth will be used will be seen over time. One use, Want says, will be an increased use of ''sensors'' hooked to the Internet: in cars, buildings and appliances, wherever they can be put to intelligent use.
The expanded use of voice recognition will also have an impact in making computers much more ubiquitous.
Picture driving home on a chilly evening and being able to get a readout of your living room's temperature and being able to raise it from the car with a voice command. Not happy with the result when you get home? ''Too hot; make it five degrees cooler,'' might be all you have to say to the wall sensors.
Business is already moving furiously to shift for the totally networked world, working to provide new products, but also trying to avoid getting blindsided by competitors using new technology to compete.
''The Internet is going to do more than anything to create an intense period of global prosperity,'' said Halsey Minor, chief executive of Internet technology company CNET Inc. (Nasdaq:CNET - news) ''We've only just seen the beginning of it.''
Not everyone, however, is sold on the idea of a global network that reaches everywhere. Some see an Orwellian nightmare with Big Brother's role played not by repressive governments but by techno-crazed marketers.
''People are becoming ambivalent about technology. The ubiquity of computing and communications is convenient at the time they want it but invades the personal space many times over,'' says Jason Catlett, of the Green Brook, New Jersey-based consumer advocacy group Junkbusters Corp. ''The more connected the society, the more interruptions it brings. Private space is disappearing.''
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