Despite showing occasional signs of strain, the Internet has become an integral part of all kinds of business and consumer technologies. How will it change in the years ahead to meet with new demands? We identify some key areas to watch out for.

Published in Technology & Business, January 2003

The Internet is, of course, a unified entity only at a very basic level, where the need for common standards and protocols has managed to overcome the industry's determination to promote proprietary technologies (sometimes talked of foolishly as "market-driven standards"). Once you move beyond a few core concepts, however—IP networking and the widespread use of varying sub-flavours of XML—it all becomes a bit diverse, to say the least. As a result, speaking about "the future of the Internet" as if it was a singular path makes about as much sense as speaking about the future of paper shortly after the invention of the printing press.

No one had any idea what had hit them when Guttenberg built his first press in 1440, and no one made any real money out of printing anything for several decades, but once things got going, they never stopped. Even now, people continue to develop new concepts for exploiting the printed word for profit (idiotic miniature gift books, Dummies guides, Oprah Winfrey). On top of this problem, the future requirements of most business Internet users (more speed, more opportunities for profit, better interoperability) are still rather different to those of consumers (more speed, naked pictures, Oprah Winfrey). Some future developments are eminently suited to both markets; some enhance the experience of one sector at the expense (often direct) of the other.

With those cautions in mind, we've identified below seven areas where the Internet is likely to evolve in ways that will change your overall experience of being networked, and highlighted some of the questions you should be asking about them. Some of these will prove to be significant; others may ultimately fall by the wayside. But at this stage, they've all got a shot at changing the Internet as we know it today.

1. Internet2

In seeking out the future of the Internet, any project called Internet2 seems like a good place to start. However, it depends how jingoistic you're feeling. The consortium of 200 US universities and various commercial entities backing Internet2 are certainly happy to talk up its virtues, but makes no bones of the fact that the group wants to develop leadership for the United States rather than enhance the general state of world communications. A note in the Internet2 FAQ makes this clear: "A key goal of this effort is to accelerate the diffusion of advanced Internet technology, in particular into the commercial sector. In this way, Internet2 will help to sustain United States leadership in internetworking technology."

Despite that rather narrow-minded approach (which was, admittedly, also typical of the original deployment of the Internet), similar projects from around the world have affiliated themselves with Internet2. Locally, AARNet, the consortium which supplies high-speed Internet services to universities and the CSIRO, has deployed its own connection to the US to allow interoperation between Internet2 and the local high-speed system, GrangeNet, which provides connections of up to 10Gbps between universities on Australia's East Coast. There's also a little jingoism involved here. "By supporting Australia's research communities, GrangeNet will showcase Australia's advanced research and computational capabilities," communications minister Senator Richard Alston noted at the program's launch.

When not posturing over issues of national supremacy, major issues being investigated by these groups include improving videoconferencing systems, creating networks with more predictable performance, and evolving systems for collaboration across networks in real-time by both machines and individuals, including grid computing systems. Many of these issues will require totally new technologies, but some require more basic solutions. "We implemented for a number of the sessions compressed video linking a lot of sites together and found it was very difficult to get the discipline in place so that all of the sites that were participating had their microphones muted, so we wound up getting a lot of spurious audio," academic Douglas E. Van Houweling noted in a 2001 interview following a virtual meeting of Internet2 backers. "But in the long run, if this stuff is going to work, we have to figure out how to deal with that. These are precisely the sort of seemingly mundane issues that are required to really take the next step."

2. Will browsers die?

It's now generally conceded that for most users, the browser wars are over, bar a few minor skirmishes. Despite the obvious flexibility and speed of Mozilla and continued interest in other solutions from the Linux community, this is a market that Microsoft has pretty much locked up with Internet Explorer (IE). According to ongoing research from Janco Associates, IE has commanded at least 50 percent market share ever since late 1997. While Netscape has enjoyed something of a comeback in the last year, it remains very much a niche player. However, the broader issue of how users will browse data when they are not actually using their PC remains somewhat less defined. In particular, the question of whether a full-blown browser is needed for smaller devices remains open, and it isn't clear that IE will dominate this market (as a browser, it has many virtues, but slimness is not one of them). Sun has made some inroads in this market with Java-based technologies, despite its own varying approaches to standardisation.

Even Microsoft itself doesn't see IE as the final endgame in all circumstances. It has long promoted the argument that the browser is actually an integral part of Windows, not a separate piece of software. And much of its future development effort is concentrated not on Internet browsing (the last couple of releases of IE have been roundly attacked by critics by adding very little to the browsing experience beyond larger installation files), but on more fundamental means of input. "You can imagine having speech as a new modality for your desktop experience as well," Microsoft Research Asia speech group manager Eric Chang noted recently. "You could use it to read your e-mail or a paper or page."

3. Thanks for all the XML

The last four developer conferences I have attended have all had one thing in common: before too long, the presenter has begun showing off raw XML code in a text editor. XML has been held out as the nirvana for information sharing for quite a while now (the original XML specification was finalised in February 1998), and has been the source of numerous derivative standards, but it has taken widespread support for XML as a core data source in developer tools to really cement market acceptance of XML as the way of the future.

That way now seems clearly marked; IDC estimates that the market for XML development tools will be US$395 million annually by 2006. The demand for XML servers will be galloping along at an even more rapid pace, and will top US$3.7 billion a year in the same period.

Much of XML's appeal also derives from the fact that it provides a means of recycling and repackaging existing content, which is always a popular strategy during tough economic times. "The demand for utilising existing content and the creation of new content on the Web is driving the need for authoring tools that can address personalisation, content delivery channels, and management of vast quantities of content," says IDC researcher Susan Funke.

Ideally, most of this XML activity will be invisible to end users, who are rather more concerned with the final format in which data is presented than with the esoteric details of how it arrives on their devices. For anyone on the other side of the delivery wall, however, it seems clear that a solid working knowledge of XML will be a key prerequisite for future development (to say nothing of employment). Key standards derived from XML, such as Web Services Description Language (WDSL), will also become increasingly important.

4. Political problems and TV fun

One of the most cherished beliefs about the Internet is that it is essentially unable to be censored. That belief took something of a beating when, despite widespread concern, the Australian government managed to introduce Internet censorship laws in 1999 without the entire digital economy collapsing. (Well, OK, a lot of the digital economy did collapse, but even a hardened cynic like this writer thinks it would be grossly unfair to lay the entire blame for this at the feet of Senator Alston.)

But if Australia's attempts at Net censorship ultimately ended up as a very minor blip on the digital radar, the same can't be said of recent developments in China. A six-month study by researchers from Harvard Law School found that Chinese authorities routinely blocked access to up to 19,000 Web sites. And while Australia seemed largely concerned with limiting access to pornography and bomb-making instructions, China only blocked 15 percent of adult sites accessed in the test, concentrating on restricting sites with information on political subjects deemed unsuitable for the general populace. This demonstrated ability to control Internet access on a massive scale suggests that the ongoing battle between freedom-of-speech advocates and those who believe that greater control over content available online is needed is not going to slow down any time soon.

One key advocate for the latter argument is the entertainment industry, which continues to launch lawsuits against peer-to-peer file sharing systems as fast as they can pop their heads above the digital parapet. To date, those efforts have proved ineffective at stopping the phenomenon of mass content sharing, and have resulted in counter-suits from consumers who object to being characterised as thieves. However, music industry executives will doubtless be encouraged by the example that China provides, even as they struggle to work out how to stop the country's rampant pirating of physical entertainment media.

Not that China is alone when it comes to piracy. A recent study by Gartner G2 found that 82 percent of US consumers believed it should be legal to make back-up copies of DVDs, music CDs, and games software, and court cases in Australia have upheld the rights of consumers to modify games consoles to enable them to play copied discs. Combine this with increasingly cheap broadband services and it doesn't look like there'll be a clear resolution to the problem of how the Internet might become an industry-sanctioned entertainment medium, and what laws will govern it if it does.

5. The five senses

Internet services have long provided visual stimuli in the form of text and images, and have also proved useful in the distribution of audio materials. However, they have lagged behind when it comes to delivering on the other sense modalities of touch, taste, and smell. While there have been some minor smell-o-vision style prototypes to deal with the last area, the most promising developments have been, perhaps surprisingly, in the area of touch.

In a recent demonstration, a surgeon in Australia was able to guide a trainee in Sweden through a virtual gall bladder removal operation using a standard Internet connection. "The trainee could feel the instructor guiding his hand around the scene, even though they were on opposite sides of the world," says CSIRO virtual reality researcher Chris Gunn. "They could also co-operatively feel, stretch and manipulate a simulated gall-bladder, liver and bile duct, and guide each others hands as though they were in the same operating theatre," he says.

This was partly achieved using a CSIRO developed "haptic workbench", which allows the manipulation of 3D objects using touch-sensitive tools, but network control issues were also important. "Our software is able to handle the problems of network latency and jitter," says Gunn. "A collaborative virtual environment such as this one contains a lot of information. The trick is to decide what information to pass between the two computers and make sure that only the most vital information gets high-priority. The demonstration runs over a standard Internet connection that travels at least 22,000km across two oceans and one continent." While immediate applications for the technology are being developed in the health arena, it could also be applicable to a wide range of other training applications. There's also probably a healthy market in the adult services area, but we'll let that pass for now.

The problems of transmitting touch data also highlight one of the key areas where advances need to be made in Internet technology: the ability to guarantee quality of service (QOS). QOS has traditionally been a problem for standard IP networks, which prioritise the eventual and complete delivery of information over providing consistent connection speeds. As telcos introduce support for technologies such as MPLS (multiprotocol label switching), predictable QOS should become achievable, opening the possibility of more reliable virtual private networks and high-quality videoconferencing.

6. Cut those wires!

Everyone can see the appeal of wireless Internet access—who wants to festoon their living space with cables just so they can surf the Net from every room in the house? Two distinct areas of development have emerged: local wireless access to fixed line networks using standards such as Bluetooth and WiFi (802.11b), and more ubiquitous wireless broadband services via third-generation (3G) mobile phone spectrum.

The only real restriction on rolling out 802.11b services has been lingering concerns over the ease with which these networks can be accessed by intruders. However, most observers agree that this is a procedural rather than a technological problem. "Security for wireless networks isn't a problem, provided people remember to switch it on," says Richard Miller, an enterprise consultant with VeriSign.

Despite initial enthusiasm, wireless access via 3G hasn't lived up to its early hype, and certainly hasn't been adopted at the same rate as local wireless networks. Having invested billions of dollars in purchasing 3G spectrum, the actual future of the services is far from clear, as telcos struggle to come up with services that corporates are willing to pay for. (At current pricing levels, only insanely well-off consumers would even consider most 3G services.) "Rolling out a 3G network to provide multimedia applications to a large number of people over a wide coverage area requires huge investment and, as things stand, this looks to offer a fairly poor return," notes Ovum analyst Julian Hewett. "Instead, operators must roll out 3G gradually in traffic hotspots, such as capital cities, where many 2G networks are already feeling the strain.

"It comes down to deploying 3G as a critical complement to the 2G network, not as a replacement nor as a standalone premium service platform," says Hewett. By 2007, Ovum estimates that 3G will account for 14.3 percent of global mobile connections. This is a major leap from the current penetration of 0.3 percent, but hardly a dominant position. Having already failed to excite users with the potential of WAP, telcos are taking advice such as Hewett's to heart. The recent launch of multimedia messaging services (MMS) will provide perhaps the first clear indicator of how willing consumers are to pay extra money for enhanced communications services.

7. And what about the Internet fridge?

For many years, the notion of an Internet-enabled fridge has been a staple of discussions about how Net technologies will become pervasive in our lives. LG Electronics, which was the first company to actually get one of these broadband-enabled food cooling devices onto the market, has even gone so far as to posit that an Internet-enabled fridge will serve as the hub for all of a house's digital activities. "In the future, everything in the house will be tied together through the refrigerator since it's the only appliance on 24 hours a day," predicts LG vice president Sonny Marak. (Personally, we thought the PC might do that as well, but never mind.)

"The Internet refrigerator does more than just chill food and dispense ice cubes," Marak continues. "Consumers can use the Internet refrigerator as a TV, radio, Web appliance, videophone, bulletin board, calendar, and digital camera." This enthusiasm for Net access with a side order of bacteria-free salad has even infected the minds of normally staid companies such as Telstra. "In terms of telecommunications, the fridge is a wonderful thing. It's a data bank, messaging system, notification device, scheduler . . . and a number of other things," Telstra manager of mobility services Garth Price predicted at the launch of an Internet fridge prototype in 1999. To date, the fridge-based-data bank remains in the lab, and those "other things" remain tantalisingly undisclosed.

The question of whether you'd want to take a fridge with you on holidays to use its photographic capabilities aside, the main danger of obsessing over the Internet fridge is that it's actually one of the least useful appliances to add Internet access to. While futurists have been happy to discuss the notion that a suitably equipped fridge could automatically order new items of food as they get eaten, that concept is meaningless until supermarkets themselves become equipped to accept such orders. Having an air conditioner or heater which you can send an e-mail instructing to heat the house for your imminent return is actually rather more useful, but for some reason Internet air conditioners just don't get the column inches. To be fair, an Internet-enabled fridge still makes more sense than another concept, the Internet-enabled washing machine. Do you really need to download specific wash cycles for every new piece of clothing you buy?