An addressing syntax is required which will be able to encompass existing physical address spaces and be extendible to any future protocols. This requires that it contain an identifier for the protocol in use. The format of the rest of the address will necessarily depend to a certain extent on the protocol.
A security architecture must be developed at the outset to lay the foundation for protections of privacy, security and intellectual-property rights.
To yield the greatest economic and social returns, an Open Data Network should be open to all users, open to all service providers, open to all network providers, and open to change. This vision would blend features and benefits demonstrated by the Internet with others advanced or contemplated by the entertainment, telecommunications and cable television industries.
As protocols evolve, gateways can allow global access to remain possible. As data formats evolve, format conversion programs can preserve global access. There is one area, however, in which it is impractical to make conversions, and that is in the names and addresses used to identify objects … a universal syntax which can be used to encapsulate a name in any registered name space … will allow names in different spaces to be treated in a common way, even though names in different spaces have differing characteristics, as do the objects to which they refer.
Thus far we have only seen good internetworking for the computer professionals. The big challenge is to do this for other markets such as entertainment and business-to-business transactions.
The vast majority of print journals will disappear or be transformed into electronic journals in the next 10 to 20 years.
Standardized spheres of encryption, organized geopolitically, within which government-approved encrypted communication is possible but between which the links are unclear.
The federal government, which spawned the Internet, has one foot in the organization and one foot out, clouding the issues of governance and, especially, the network’s commercial potential … Major questions, like: “Are any forms of communication to be restricted?” [and] “What about individual privacy rights?” have hardly been discussed, much less resolved. Protection of intellectual property rights is extremely difficult, a situation disliked by those whose primary interest in the information superhighway is commercial, but applauded by advocates of the unrestricted flow of information.
As we move into the world of mobile code, of secure systems, of network payment, the new principles are being, silently or not, laid down. These principles will define the behavior of a new machine, a new anthill, a new brain, which is the sum of ourselves and our creations. Vannevar Bush’s MEMEX was described as a complex machine. We see it now as a cog in a larger system. We feel fairly proud that we have built MEMEX-like machines. But now we have links, do we know what to do with them? When it comes to designing larger machine, we are still banging the rocks together. But we are at a time of great creativity, of great potential for change for better or worse, and there is a feeling that in fact we may be able to bring our collective teamwork up to a level at which we can ensure our survival.
The number of business e-mail messages [will] quintuple in the next decade.