Replace The Internet?

The Internet seems to have just arrived, so how can we possibly imagine what will replace it? In truth, early versions of the Net have been around since the 1960s and '70s, but only after the mid-1990s did it begin to have a serious public impact. Since 1994, the population of users has grown from about 13 million to more than 300 million around the world. About half are in North America, and most--despite significant progress in rolling out high-speed access--still reach the Internet by way of the public telephone network.

What will the Internet be like 20 years from now?

Like the rest of infrastructure, the Internet will eventually seem to disappear by becoming ubiquitous. Most access will probably be via high-speed, low-power radio links. Most handheld, fixed and mobile appliances will be Internet enabled. This trend is already discernible in the form of Internet-enabled cell phones and personal digital assistants. Like the servants of centuries past, our household helpers will chatter with one another and with the outside help.

At some point, the armada of devices we strap to our bodies like tools on Batman's belt will coalesce into a smaller number of multifunction devices. Equipped with radio links, a pda can serve as an appliance-control remote, a digital wallet, a cell phone, an identity badge, an e-mail station, a digital book, a pager and perhaps even a digital camera. There is sure to be a catchy name for this all-purpose Internet-enabled thingy, perhaps Wireless Internet Digital Gadget for Electronic Transactions, or WIDGET.

So many appliances, vehicles and buildings will be online by 2020 that it seems likely there will be more things on the Internet than people. Internet-enabled cars and airplanes are coming online, and smart houses are being built every day. Eventually, programmable devices will become so cheap that we will embed them in the cardboard boxes into which we put other things for storage or shipping. These passive "computers" will be activated as they pass sensors and will be able to both emit and absorb information. Such innovations will facilitate increasingly automatic manufacturing, inventory control, shipping and distribution. Checkout at the grocery store will be fully automatic, as will payment via your digital wallet.

The advent of programmable, nanoscale machines (see "Will Tiny Robots Build Diamonds One Atom at a Time?" in this issue) will extend the Internet to things the size of molecules that can be injected under the skin, leading to Internet-enabled people. Such devices, together with Internet-enabled sensors embedded in clothing, will avoid a hospital stay for medical patients who would otherwise be there only for observation. The speech processor used today in cochlear implants for the hearing impaired could easily be connected to the Internet; listening to Internet radio could soon be a direct computer-to-brain experience!

The Internet will undergo substantial alteration as optical technologies allow the transmission of many trillions of bits per second on each strand of the Internet's fiber-optic backbone network. The core of the network will remain optical, and the edges will use a mix of access technologies, ranging from radio and infrared to optical fiber and the old twisted-pair copper telephone lines. By then, the Internet will have been extended, by means of an interplanetary Internet backbone, to operate in outer space.

How will this pervasive Internet access affect our daily lives? More and more of the world's information will be accessible instantly and from virtually anywhere. In an emergency, our health records will be available for remote medical consultation with specialists and perhaps even remote surgery. More and more devices will have access to the global positioning system, increasing the value of geographically indexed databases. Using GPS with speech-understanding software that is emerging today, we will be able to get directions from our WIDGETS as easily as we once got them at a filling station. One can imagine driving in the car, asking our WIDGET for the name of the nearest Thai restaurant, getting an answer, asking for reservations and then for directions. Indeed, the car may be smart enough to handle the entire transaction and drive us there itself.

Is there any downside to a society suffused with information and the tools to process it?

Privacy will come at a premium. Enormous quantities of data about our daily affairs will flow across the Internet, working to make our lives easier. Despite our penchant for giving up privacy in exchange for convenience, our experiences online may make us yearn for the anonymity of the past. Who should have access to our medical records and our financial information, and how will that access be controlled? Will we be able to search and use the vast information stored online without leaving trails of personal cookie crumbs scattered across the Net? How will business transactions be taxed, and in what jurisdictions will disputed electronic transactions be resolved? How will intellectual property be protected? How will we prove that contracts were signed on a certain date, or that their terms and conditions have not been electronically altered? There are technical answers for many of these questions, but some will require international agreements before they can be resolved.

Perhaps even more daunting, in the face of Internet-wide virus attacks, is the realization that we will depend in larger and larger measure on the network's functioning reliably. Making this system of millions of networks sufficiently robust and resilient is a challenge for the present generation of Internet engineers. Failure could portend an increasingly fragile future. But I am an optimist. I believe we are going to live in a world abundant with information and with the tools needed to use it wisely.

Vinton Cerf (and not Al Gore) co-invented the Internet protocol called TCP/IP. He is a senior vice president at MCI WorldCom