Electricity was first billed as a dedicated lighting system. We don’t think of it as a dedicated lighting system anymore. It’s a general-purpose utility. You plug in all kinds of things. It will be the same for the information lines [in 2000] – your home-security system, PC, intelligent television will all be plugged in.
[In 2000,] communication access lines will still be owned by the telcos and cable TV companies. There is an outside chance that the electric utilities will get into the business with their own network, but this doesn’t seem rational from the point of view of the consumer.
[In 2000,] there probably will be more than one company willing to run a line to you. You’ll be able to say who your local exchange carrier will be. It may be a telco or a cable company or even an electric power company. It’s like the long-distance choices today.
Virtually no change will occur in the type of lines by 2000. A negligible number of homes will have been wired with fiber. For cable, digital will be used on some channels to deliver bits to the settop. This will only be available in half of the current homes.
Windows and other client operating systems will begin to resemble browsers. Operating systems are growing increasingly document-centric, object-oriented and Internet-aware. True document-oriented computing will come to the industry forefront with the next version of Windows.
Agents should also be able to “do real work” … such as search for, sort and interpret specified information.
The browser itself should disappear.
A single security standard eventually will emerge.
The notion that you’re going to build a terminal with limited functionality is a bunch of malarkey … Web browsing is going to be one of the most demanding, computer-intensive things you do on your PC.
Interactivity will blur the line between users and providers.