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The Internet itself will become less visible as it becomes more pervasive.
Information technology, too, will become less visible -- become more a backroom activity that often takes place remote from the user, that the user takes for granted and need not understand.
Users will be more aware of the access devices they interact with than the computing capabilities they connect to or the transport media used. And the quantity and variety of these devices will multiply rapidly, as entrepreneurs take advantage of the underlying standards.
While engineers will be thinking in terms of the convergence of information and communication technologies, users -- especially business users -- will see more divergence and diversity.
The boundary lines between office and home, between work life and personal life will become increasingly blurred. The same devices will be used to access capabilities and resources that are business-oriented or personal-oriented, that are private or public.
Today, every Internet user can become a publisher. In the future everyone (even those who have no awareness of what the Internet is or what computers are) will be able to be a broadcaster as well as a publisher. Here "broadcast" is meant in two senses. On the one hand it emphasizes that the modes of communication that are readily available to everyone will be multiple -- one-to-one, one-to-few, few-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many; and in both "pull" and "push" styles. It also emphasizes that the content will include not only text but also audio and video, which today we normally associate with "broadcast" media.
Enabling and encouraging interaction among users and building communities of interest will become increasingly important to the growth of new businesses.
"Content" will be much more broadly defined than it is today -- including not just information and entertainment, but also the experience of interacting with other people and also with simulation programs and agent programs in this new multi-dimensional communication environment. For example, some tasks that today are performed by computer service people will in the future be performed by interactive simulation programs with access to extensive data and with the possible help of humans. In other words, activities that today are a key element of Digital's business will become more "content" businesses and less "service" businesses.
The enabling of on-line multi-person experiences (from small meetings to conventions to games) will be big business (a "content" business).
Getting from here to there will be extremely difficult, but the difficulty will (for the most part) be masked from the user. Business imperatives -- the high-stakes profit opportunities -- will drive us there quickly, attracting the needed investment dollars and spawning the entrepreneurial and technological creativity necessary to bridge the gap.
But from the business user's point of view, things will get a lot harder before they get easier.
By the year 2002 (five years out) everyone will have gadgets galore, but only a few people, working for advanced companies, will be in a position to take advantage of them all and have them work together smoothly. (Smooth working will be possible, but not common)
Yes, there will still be clients and servers. Yes, there will be personal computers and networked personal computers and network computers. But there will also be a multitude of relatively "dumb" specialized devices that use the Internet -- communications devices and also ordinary appliances ("things that think" in the MIT lingo). And we will be well on our way toward the "utility" when users of the global communication environment rarely, if ever, touch anything that we would today call a "computer." In other words, in 2002, advanced companies will be able to offer their employees the kind of smoothly operating, integrated communications environment that won't be available to the ordinary user for another five or ten or even twenty years. And that environment should be a major competitive advantage for those that have it.
Though the end state is smooth and simple, it is not provided by some magical do-everything box. Rather you have input/output gadgets of many kinds, using various transport media, that connect you to an assemblage of gadgets and software which together perform the functions you need.
All this diversity will be mediated by systems that understand "who" you are -- your needs, knowledge, tastes, and capabilities; the resources you have access to, the prices you need to pay for the resources you want, and your ability to pay and how you prefer to pay. You -- the person lucky enough to work for such an advanced company in 2002 -- might, by extension from today's world, think of the set of resources and capabilities at your disposal as your "virtual computer" or your "virtual personal network". But even in its 2002-infancy this new communication environment will be far broader than "computing" -- this will be the space in which much of your business interaction with other people and other people's agents will take place.
The rest of the world -- the have-nots farther down the value pyramid -- will have access to Internet-based capabilities and resources far in advance of those we have today. But those capabilities and resources will be isolated and uncoordinated, and their multiplicity and immensity will make them ever more difficult and complex for the ordinary user. Hence many people and businesses will only take advantage of a small part of what is available to them, and will spend much of their time and energy trying to pull together and juggle the various pieces of their on-line existence.
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Roxbury, MA 02132. (617) 469-2269. seltzer@samizdat.com
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