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 COLUMN
The Internet is 30 now, maybe, but what about its long-term possibilities? LAST THURSDAY was the Internet's 30th birthday. Well, maybe it was. That depends on the meaning of the words "birthday" and "Internet."
Kleinrock says the Internet was born with the installation of the ARPAnet's first Interface Message Processor (Imp) in his lab at the University of California at Los Angeles on Sept. 2, 1969. ARPAnet Imps were packet-switching minicomputers, pre-Cisco routers developed at Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN), in Cambridge, Mass. BBN, since merged into GTE, which will unfortunately soon likely be merged into Bell Atlantic, thinks the Internet was born earlier and elsewhere. There are also post-ARPAnet people who say the Internet was not born until the ARPAnet's protocols were replaced by TCP/IP in 1983. Others think the Internet is the World Wide Web, which was born (forgetting Tim Berners-Lee) with Netscape circa 1995. I think the Internet was born in 1973 with the invention of the Ethernet (CSMA/CD) LAN and the Internet (TCP/IP) WAN. And so on. But hey, there's enough credit to go around. Professor Kleinrock, thank you, congratulations, and happy 30th! On this occasion, and because we're more interested in the future than the past, let's explore some possibilities for the Internet's next 30 years. * Plumbing. Cable television modems and Digital Subscriber Lines are interim. Optical fibers and switches will be deployed in the Internet's backbones, in local access, and in homes. The always-on high-speed all-optical Internet, and an auxiliary mobile wireless overlay, will also be deployed into any office or school buildings that might be left. * Space. During the next 30 years, we'll be going to Mars and beyond. The Internet will be going with us. Vint Cerf, another Internet father, is already working on the Interplanetary Internet. I'm organizing a conference about space computing, ACM1, which is to be in San Jose, California, USA, Earth, in 2001. Cerf will be speaking there. * Travel. We've barely started substituting communication for transportation. Commuting and business travel will decline in favor of Internet telepresence. Fewer Willy Lomans. Let's wire up our homes and stay there. * Shopping. New technologies have to wait for preceding generations to die. I probably won't be around to see the Internet change what the front doors of our homes look like. But, Internet shopping will grow so important that homes will be built with large drop boxes out front so that packages of atoms can be delivered without disturbing us. Packages of bits will in increasing numbers bypass the drop boxes and come into our homes directly over the Internet. Good-bye malls. Good-bye Wal-Mart. Welcome back Main Street, as a place to socialize. * Learning. Our government-run schools are already in decline, and they've been losing learning share to television for decades now. The Internet will finish the job. We'll come to realize that schools are not buildings, but communities of learners. Instead of fighting unionized teachers to put the Internet inside schools, we'll be using the Internet instead of schools. * Language. Now, if you're French, it's probably best you stop reading here. Reading further may even be illegal in some jurisdictions where they're bitter about French being passé, no longer the world's lingua franca. The Internet will continue, and perhaps even complete, the long-term trend toward fewer languages. If you think you're in fat city with English, watch out for Chinese, or Martian, or something entirely mongrel. What do you see coming during the Internet's next 30 years? Bob Metcalfe Technology pundit Bob Metcalfe has been getting e-mail for over 30 years and still welcomes it -- except for spam, porno, French, and Linux flames -- at metcalfe @idg.net.  RELATED SUBJECTS  Web TechnologiesMORE > SPONSORED WHITE PAPERS 
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