The Internet as a Collective BrainDrawing a comparison from the development of a human baby – the human race has just commenced to develop its neural system.
The Internet fulfils all the function of the Nervous System in the body and is both functionally and structurally, pretty similar. It is decentralized, redundant (each part can serve as functional backup in case of malfunction). It hosts information which accessible in a few ways, it contains a memory function, it is multimodal (multimedia – textual, visual, audio and animation).
I believe that the comparison is not superficial and that if we study the functions of the brain (from infancy to adulthood) – we will end up perusing the future of the Net.
1. The Collective ComputerTo carry the metaphor of “a collective brain” further, we would expect the processing of information to take place in the Internet, rather than inside the end-user?s hardware (the same way that information is processed by the brain, not by the eyes). Desktops will receive the results and communicate with the Net to receive additional clarifications and instructions and to convey information gathered from their environment (mostly, from the user).
This is precisely the philosophy behind the JAVA programming language.
It deals with applets – small bits of software – and links different computer platforms by means of software.
Put differently:
The future servers will contain not only information (as they do today) – but also software applications. The potential user of a Word Processing application will not be forced to buy it. He will not be driven into hardware-related expenditures to accommodate the ever growing volume of latter day applications. He will not find himself wasting his scarce memory and computing resources on passive storage. Instead, he will use a browser to call a central computer. This computer will contain the needed software, broken to its elements (=applets, small applications). Anytime the user wishes to use one of the functions of the application, he will siphon it off the central computer. When finished – he will “return” it. Processing speeds and response times will be such that the user will not feel at all that it is not with his own software that he is working (the question of ownership will be very blurred in such a world). This technology is available and it provoked a heated debated about the future shape of the computing industry as a whole (desktops – really power packs – or network computers, a little more than dumb terminals).
In the last few years, scientist put the combined power of the computers linked to the internet at any given moment to perform astounding feats of distributed parallel processing. Millions of PCs connected to the net co-processed signals from outer space, meteorological data and solved complex equations. This is a prime example of a collective brain in action.
2. The Intranet – a Logical Extension of the Collective ComputerLANs (Local Area Networks) are no longer a rarity in corporate offices. WANs (wide Area Networks) are used to connected geographically dispersed organs of the same legal entity (branches of a bank, daughter companies, a sales force). Many LANs are wireless.
The intranet will be the winner and will gradually eliminate both LANs and WANs. The Internet offers equal, platform-independent, location-independent and time of day – independent access to all the members of an organization.Sophisticated firewall security application protects the privacy and confidentiality of the intranet from all but the most determined and savvy hackers.
The Intranet is an inter-organizational communication network, constructed on the platform of the Internet and which enjoys all its advantages.
The company’s server can be accessed by anyone authorized, from anywhere, at any time (with the costs associated with local – rather than international – communication). The user can leave messages (internal e-mail or v-mail), to draw information – proprietary or public – from it and to participate in “virtual teamwork” (see next chapter).
By the year 2000, a standard intranet interface will emerge. This will be facilitated by the opening up of the TCP/IP communication architecture and its availability to PCs. A billion USD will go just to finance intranet servers – or, at least, this is the median forecast.
The development of measures to safeguard server routed inter-organizational communication (firewalls) is the solution to one of two obstacles to the institution of the Intranet. The second problem is the limited bandwidth which does not permit the efficient transfer of audio (not to mention video).
It is difficult to conduct video conferencing through the Internet. Even the voices of discussants who use internet phones come out distorted.
All this did not prevent 95% of the Fortune 1000 from installing intranet.
82% of all the rest intend to install one by the end of this year. Medium to big size American firms have 50-100 intranet terminals per every internet one.
At the end of 1997, there were 10 web servers per every other type of server in organizations. The sale of intranet related software was projected to multiply by 16 (to 8 billion USD) by the year 1999.
One of the greatest advantages of the intranet is the ability to transfer documents between the various parts of an organization. Take Visa: it pushed 2 million documents per day internally in 1996.
An organization equipped with an intranet can (while protected by firewalls) give its clients access to non-classified correspondence. This notion has its own charm. Consider a newspaper : it can give access to all the materials which were discarded by the editors. Some news are fit to print – yet are discarded because of considerations of space. Still, someone is bound to be interested. It costs the newspaper close to nothing (the material is, normally, already computer-resident) – and it might even generate added circulation and income. It can be even conceived as an “underground, non-commercial, alternative” newspaper for a wholly different readership.
The above is but an example of the possible use of intranet to communicate with the organization?s consumer base.
3. Mail and ChatThe internet (its e-mail possibilities) is eroding the traditional mail. The part of the post office in conveying messages by regular mail has dwindled from 77% to 62% (1995). E-mail has expanded to capture 36% (up from 19%).
90% of customers with on-line access use e-mail from time to time and 50% work it regularly. More than 1.5 billion messages traverse the internet daily.
E-mail is disseminated through freeware and is included in all the browsers. Thus, the internet has completely assimilated what used to be a separate service, to the extent that many people make the mistake of thinking that e-mail is a feature of the internet. Microsoft continues to incorporate previously independent applications in its browsers – a behaviour which led to the 1999 anti-trust lawsuit against it.
The internet will do to phone calls what it did to e-mail. Already there are applications (Intel?s, Vocaltec?s InternetPhone) which enables the user to conduct a phone conversation through his computer. The voice quality is still unacceptable – but this is real speech. The discussants can cut into each others words, argue and listen to tonal nuances. Today, the parties (two or more) engaging in the conversation must possess the same software and the same (computer) hardware. In the very near future, computer-to-regular phone applications will eliminate this requirement. And, again simultaneous multi-modality : the user can talk over the phone, see his party, send e-mail and transfer documents – without obstructing the flow of the conversation.
The cost of transferring voice will become so negligible that free voice traffic is conceivable in 3-5 years. Data traffic will overtake voice traffic by a wide margin.
This beats regular phones.
The next phase will probably involve virtual reality. Each of the parties will be represented by an “icon”, a 3-D figurine generated by the application. These figurines will be multi-dimensional : they will possess their own personality, communication patterns, special habits, history, preferences.
Thus, they will be able to maintain an “identity” : consistent communication which they will develop over time.
Such a figure could host a site, accept, welcome and guide visitors, all the time bearing their preferences in its electronic “mind”. Visiting sites in the future is set to be a much more pleasant affair.
4. E-cashIn 1996, the four undisputed giants (Visa, MasterCard, Netscape and Microsoft) agreed on a standard for effecting secure payments through the Internet : SET. Internet commerce is supposed to mushroom by a factor of 50 to 25 billion USD. Site owners will be able to collect rent from passing visitors – or fees for services provided within the site. “Serious”, intent, visitors will not be deterred by such trifles.
5. The Virtual OrganizationThe Internet allows simultaneous communication between an almost unlimited number of users. This will be followed by the efficient transfer of multimedia (video included) files.
This opens up a vista of mind boggling opportunities which are the real core of the Internet revolution : the virtual collaborative (”Follow the Sun”) modes.
Examples:
A group of musicians will be able to simultaneously compose music or play it – while spatially and temporally separated;
Advertising agencies will be able to co-produce ad campaigns in a real time interactive mode;
Cinema and TV films will be produced from disparate geographical spots through the teamwork of people who will never meet, except through the net.
These examples illustrate the concept of the “virtual community”. Locations in space and time will no longer hinder a collaboration in a team : be it scientific, artistic, cultural, or for the provision of services (a virtual law firm or accounting office, a virtual consultancy network).
Two on going developments are the virtual mall and the virtual catalogue.
There are well over 300 active virtual malls in the Internet. They were frequented by 32.5 million shoppers, who shopped in them for goods and services in 1998. The intranet can also be thought of as a “virtual organization”, or a “virtual business”.
The virtual mall is a computer “space” (pages) in the internet, wherein “shops” are located. These shops offer their wares using visual, audio and textual means. The visitor passes a gate into the store and looks through its offering, until he reaches a buying decision. Then he engages in a feedback process : he pays (with a credit card), buys the product and waits for it to arrive by mail. The manufacturers of digital products (intellectual property such as e-books or software) have begun selling their merchandise on-line.
Yet, slow communications and limited bandwidth – constrain the growth potential of this mode of sale. Once solved – intellectual property will be sold directly from the net, on-line. Until such time, the intervention of the Post Office is still required. So, then virtual mall is nothing but a glorified computerized catalogue or Buying Channel, the only difference being the worldwide variety.
Websites which started as “specialty stores” are fast transforming themselves into multi-purpose virtual malls. Amazon.com, for instance, has bought into a virtual pharmacy and into other virtual businesses. It is now selling music, video, electronics and many other products. It started as a bookstore.
This contrasts with a much more creative idea : the virtual catalogue. It is a form of narrowcasting (as opposed to broadcasting) : a surgically accurate targeting of potential consumer audiences. Each group of consumers (no matter how small) is fitted with their own – digitally generated – catalogue. This is updated daily : the variety of wares on offer (adjusted to reflect inventory levels, consumer preferences and goods in transit) – and prices (sales, discounts, package deals) change in real time.
The user will enter the site and there delineate his consumption profile and his preferences. A special catalogue will be immediately customized for him.
From then on, the history of his purchases, preferences and responses to feedback questionnaires will be accumulated and added to a database.
Each catalogue generated for him will come replete with order forms. Once the user concluded his purchases, his profile will be updated.
There is no technological obstacles to implementing this vision today – only administrative ones. Big retail stores are not up to processing the flood of data expected to arrive. They also remain highly sceptical regarding the feasibility of the new medium.
The virtual catalogue is a private case of a new internet off-shoot : the “smart (shopping) agents”. These are AI applications with “long memories”.
They draw detailed profiles of consumers and users and then suggest purchases and refer to the appropriate sites, catalogues, or virtual malls.
They also come back with price comparisons and the new generation (NetBot) cannot be blocked or fooled by using differing product categories.
In the future, these agents will refer also to real life retail chains and issue a map of the branch or store closest to an address specified by the user (the default being his residence). This technology can be seen in action in a few music sites on the web.
6. Internet NewsInternet news are advantaged : the frequency of the updates and the resulting immediacy and freshness, the unlimited access time (similar to printed news).
The future will witness a form of interactive news. A special “corner” in the site will be open to updates posted by the public (the equivalent of press releases). This will provide readers with a glimpse into the making of the news, the raw material news are made of. The same technology will be applied to interactive TVs. Content will be downloaded from the internet and be displayed as an overlay on the TV screen or in a square in a special location. The contents downloaded will be directly connected to the TV programming. Thus, the biography and track record of a football player will be displayed during a football match and the history of a country when it gets news coveage.
Terra Internetica – Internet, an Unknown ContinentThis is an unconventional way to look at the Internet. Laymen and experts alike talk about “sites” and “advertising space”. Yet, the Internet was never compares to a new continent whose “soil resources” are infinite.
The Internet will have its own real estate developers and construction companies. The real life equivalents derive their profits from the scarcity of the resource that they exploit – the Internet counterparts will derive their profits from the tenants (the content).
Two examples:
A few companies bought “Internet Space” (pages, domain names, portals), developed it and make commercial use of it by:
renting it out
constructing infrastructure and selling it
providing an intelligent gateway, entry point to the rest of the internet
or selling advertising space which subsidizes the tenants (Geocities, Focus-Asia and others).
Internet Space can be easily purchased or created. The investment is low.
Then, infrastructure can be erected – for a shopping mall, for free home pages, for a portal, or for another purpose. It is precisely this infrastructure that the developer can later sell, lease, franchise, or rent out.
At the beginning, only members of the fringes and the avant-garde (inventors, risk assuming entrepreneurs, gamblers) invest in a new invention. The invention of a new communications technology is mostly accompanied by devastating silence.
No one knows to say what are the optimal uses of the invention (in other words, what is its future). Many – mostly members of the scientific and business elites – argue that there is no real need for the invention and that it substitutes a new and untried way for more veteran and safe modes of doing the same thing (by implication : so why assume the risk?)
These criticisms are founded:
To start with, there is, indeed, no need for the new medium. A new medium invents itself – and the need for it. It also generates its own market to satisfy this newly found need.
Two prime examples are: the personal computer and the compact disc.
When the PC was invented, its uses were completely unclear. Its performance was lacking, its abilities limited, it was horribly user unfriendly.
It suffered from faulty design, absent user comfort and ease of use and required considerable professional knowledge to operate. The worst part was that this knowledge was unique to the new invention (not portable).
It reduced labour mobility and limited their professional horizons. There were many gripes among those assigned to tame the new beast.
The PC was thought of, at the beginning, as a sophisticated gaming machine, an electronic baby-sitter. As the presence of a keyboard was detected and as the professional horizon cleared it was thought of in terms of a glorified typewriter or spreadsheet. It was used mainly as a word processor (and its existence justified solely on these grounds). The spreadsheet was the first real application and it demonstrated the advantages inherent to this new machine (mainly flexibility and speed). Still, it was more (speed) of the same. A quicker ruler or pen and paper. What was the difference between this and a hand held calculator (some of them already had computing, memory and programming features)?