2. The future of the internet Internet world as we know it today has undergone far-reaching and profound changes since its early days while becoming a critical communications infrastructure underpinning our economic performance and social welfare. With an estimate of 1.1 billion users world-wide today the Internet is poised to become a fully pervasive infrastructure providing anywhere, anytime connectivity. Thanks in particular to the further deployment of wireless technologies, the number of users of the Internet is expected to jump to some 4 billion in a matter of few years. This event will try to provide some answers to the challenges arising from the emerging new technologies and societal issues related to the Future Internet.
3. Communities Local communities will organize in virtual space and take increasing advantage of group communication tools such as mailing lists, newsgroups, and websites, and towns and cities will become more organized and empowered at the neighborhood level.
4. Wireless The future of Internet wireless communications is the faster wireless. Wireless frequencies has two great advantages : 1. There are no infrastructure start-up or maintenance costs other than the base stations. 2. It frees users to become mobile, taking Internet use from one dimension to three. Wireless Internet networks will offer increasingly faster services at vastly lower costs over wider distances, eventually pushing out physical transmission systems.
5. Integration The future of the Internet integration with an increasing number of other technologies is as natural as a musician's experimentation with notes. The Internet will become increasingly integrated with phones, televisions, home appliances, portable digital assistants, and a range of other small hardware devices, providing an unprecedented, nearly uniform level of integrated data communications. Users will be able to access, status, and control this connected infrastructure from anywhere on the Internet.
6. Virtual Reality Three dimensional graphics will become more sophisticated, and virtual reality interfaces such as viewers and feedback systems will become more realistic. The technology will be applied to innovative ways to navigate the Internet's information universe, for hyper-realistic gaming, and for group communications. There will come a day when you will be able to have dinner with a group of friends each in a different city, almost as you were in the same room, although you will all have to bring your own food.