Elon University

Archives: Expert Predictions

Internet Architectural and Policy Implications for Migration from High-End User to the ‘New User’

If the Internet can provide a very-high-speed, almost error-free transmission path, and if the end-user hosts are extremely intelligent, then the ability to do very sophisticated multimedia communications can be effected by the end users directly, allowing rapid migration of capabilities in the network. If the Internet has this enhanced communications capability, then one can develop high-speed protocols that are shared among users, using the Internet as a high-speed computer “backplane” and not just as a datagram network.

Internet Architectural and Policy Implications for Migration from High-End User to the ‘New User’

If low-cost, high-speed access becomes available, then the number of hosts may expand. A host per user, or even many hosts per user, is possible. The concept of a host may then have expanded to include the new and wider variety of electronic entities, including both physical and virtual devices. In addition, wireless access devices, Personal Digital Assistants, and distributed-processing devices must be integrated into the Internet design, since they will allow hosts to be portable and move from location to location. One must be able to “find”: the host, since it will roam around the network.

Internet Architectural and Policy Implications for Migration from High-End User to the ‘New User’

[In the Internet’s next phase,] the end user may have sufficient processing power and memory capability, as well as communications access capabilities, to be a host. In addition, we anticipate that there will be a further migration to the point where there are multiple hosts per end user, rather than the prior paradigm of multiple users per host. This challenge will dramatically stress the Internet in directions not seen previously … Current protocols focus on data transactions, with some innovations allowing images and limited multimedia, namely voice and video. The future challenge will be the development of new and innovate protocols to allow new-user access to grow while enriching the capability of the information transferred.

The WELL: A Regionally Based On-Line Community on the Internet

By encouraging the formation of regional civic and commercial networks where local as well as national and global issues can be discussed, the government can help stimulate citizen involvement in the solving of problems, from the very local to the planetary. Such systems could provide affordable access to all economic levels of society, so that the discussion and debate can include more than just the affluent, white, well-educated population that now makes up the vast majority of network users.

The WELL: A Regionally Based On-Line Community on the Internet

If limitations needed to be imposed and enforced, they could best be handled from within the user population on a “local” forum-by-forum basis, rather than on a system-wide one. The creation of private forums, where local rules can hold sway, has allowed public forums to retain their openness while providing more regulated “retreat” for those who felt they needed them.

The WELL: A Regionally Based On-Line Community on the Internet

The most effective platforms … are regionally-based, Internet-connected electronic communities, where the motto ‘think globally, act locally,” can best be put into practice. These systems may be self-contained in that they pay for their own operations and Internet connections, handle all administrative tasks for their users, and develop their own local community standards of behavior and interaction.

The WELL: A Regionally Based On-Line Community on the Internet

The possibility that the future ‘Internet’ (or whatever replaces it) will turn out to be a monolithic corporate-controlled electronic consumer shopping mall and amusement park is antithetical to the idea that the individual in the electronic communications world is a producer as well as a consumer, desires to interact freely with other groups and individuals there, and is the most qualified director and creator of the medium. A future centered around a one-way entertainment model would effectively gag those who would use networks as forums to exercise the freedoms that define our democracy.

The WELL: A Regionally Based On-Line Community on the Internet

Public electronic networking offers society an important new forum for the practice of democratic principles and First Amendment rights to free speech and assembly. Its value to the nation and the world may be critical at this stage in history, when cumulative problems abound and faith in the accountability of central government is at a low ebb.