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I abbreviate the Next Generation of the Internet as NGi for a reason. The capital
letters of next generation are to signify that the focus is on what is coming next
because it is so profound. The word Internet is generally capitalized to signify the
collection and interconnection of many networks around the world into a single
Internet. I use the small i in NGi to signify that the Internet will become such a
natural part of our lives that we will take it for granted.
Fast: Adam Smith's invisible hand is at work on bandwidth (the speed of the
Internet). Competition among cable, telecom, satellite, and other media to
provide Internet access, as well as technology advancements will assure the
rapid expansion in bandwidth. Using the NGi will be a dramatically different
experience compared to using the Internet of today. High quality full-screen jitter-
free video will enable experts to appear on video walls in hospitals and
classrooms from thousands of miles away.
Always on: no more logging on; you will just be on. You don’t log on to the power
grid to use your toaster; you won’t long on to the Internet to tap the vast
resources that it offers. They will just be there. We will begin to think of the
Internet as a powerful communications network that is not just for surfing the
web, but since it will be Always on, we will use it to monitor real time data from
weather stations, industrial processes, and even medical monitoring equipment
attached to real people.
Everywhere: the Era of the PC as the center of the Web is over. Mobile phones,
kiosks, PDA's, pagers, and new wireless devices will enable the Internet to be
everywhere; not just where our PC is. Digital signatures will enable us to wire
money, transfer securities, and sign contracts electronically from wherever we
are: at home, on a train, walking down the street, or from an airplane moving at
500 miles per hour. When we walk down the Champs-Elysees in Paris our
mobile phone will vibrate and remind us that we are walking by a store that
happens to have that rare wine we have been looking for.
Natural: envision a real-time multilingual intercom for customer service.
Integrated telephony and voice recognition within web pages will enable us to
ask a question of customer service in the language of our choice and have that
question be routed to the most knowledgeable expert who will answer the
question in their native language and then enable us to hear the answer in our
own language. All forms of media, in fact our entire collection of pictures, sound,
and movies, will be able to be carried around in our pocket
Intelligent: A new web standard called XML (extensible markup language) will
add context to web pages that will enable people to find things and will enable
application software programs to be seamlessly integrated with each other.
Finding things on the web will no longer be an exercise in frustration. Instead of
millions of matches, we will get a few relevant ones. A new design for computers
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