The next generation of the Internet recently received a boost from three companies that will contribute an ultrafast data pipeline and some of the needed network equipment. Vice President Al Gore announced the contributions worth more than $500 million. Direct benefits will be restricted largely to academics and other professional researchers. Internet2 will be able to transmit the contents of the 30-volume Encyclopedia Brittanica in one second, compared to about 27 hours over a conventional 28.8 kilobit modem. Qwest Communications International, Cisco Systems and Northern Telecom are the contributing companies. The companies plan to treat the project as a research platform.

Nicolas Negroponte, founder and director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Laboratory predicts that as more aspects of life become digitized, we will increasingly live interconnected lives with everything: our utilities, clothes, etc. and that they will be able to relay important messages to us. Our news will be personalized to our needs and interests and will one day be sent to a magical, paper-thin, flexible, waterproof, wireless, lightweight, bright display that we can leaf through. He also predicts that the economic divide between computer owners and non-owners will be no greater than the divide between television-owners and non-owners as costs come down. The only divide, he says will be between the generations, with young people way ahead of parents and grandparents. The advice he gives is - if you want to understand the digital revolution, "Get a kid."
(AARP April Newsletter, pp. 1 & 12-15.)