<div id="article-header">Very Interesting -- the editor will forgive me for rearranging the order of his stories :-). Way to go Adiel, Steve!!!<br><br><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/dec/03/mondaymediasection.internet">
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/dec/03/mondaymediasection.internet</a><br><h1>Tell me the future</h1>
<p id="stand-first">We asked the godfather of the net to tell us where the technology will take us. He emailed his address book</p>
</div>
<ul class="article-attributes no-pic"><li class="publication">
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian" name="&lid={articleBody}{The Guardian}&lpos={articleBody}{1}">The Guardian</a>
</li><li class="date"> Monday December 3 2007</li></ul>
<p>When
we asked Vint Cerf, chief evangelist at Google, to guest edit
MediaGuardian, we expected him to bring us some luminaries of the web
who we don't often get to hear from. His choices transform an
often-asked question ("what's the future?"), into an insight into the
thinking of innovators and pioneers. It's no coincidence that three of
them are founders of some of the biggest web names.</p><p>Their
specialist fields (from search, to advertising, video streaming to
social networking) represent what Cerf believes to be the most exciting
areas of development on the web and in the world; notably Steven Huter
and Adiel Akplogan, who have pioneered the internet infrastructure in
Africa.</p><p>Finally, each one has had, and will continue to have, a profound impact on the future of media. </p><p><strong>Developing world</strong><br><strong>Steven Huter and Adiel Akplogan</strong><br><strong>Research
associate, University of Oregon Network Startup Resource Center; CEO,
Regional Registry for Internet Number Resources for Africa</strong><br>The
first full internet connection to the African continent was established
in Tunisia in October 1991. Over the next 15 years, the transition from
store-and-forward email networks to full internet connectivity in
capital cities all over Africa progressed steadily, with Eritrea being
the last to join the global internet in November 2000. </p>
<p>While
most of the continent's internet connections are via satellite today,
the transition to fibre over the next five years will take off as one
or more of the undersea cables currently competing to service eastern
and southern Africa become operational. However, penetration to rural
communities will continue to be limited due to the lack of
infrastructure, and the cost of a personal computer is typically more
than what the average person in a village can afford.</p>
<p>Consumer
broadband services via DSL are becoming available in an increasing
number of countries; however, service costs depend greatly on the
pervasiveness and reliability of local infrastructure. Wireless
solutions will continue to evolve as the dominant service for "last
kilometre" access due to the lack of local infrastructure. Given that
national scale fibre build-outs are not a major focus of the five-year
budget plans for most governments, most service providers will continue
to deploy a combination of wireless and leased line infrastructure from
telecommunications companies for providing internet access. Overall
progress will occur, but realistically, the limited or unavailable
national infrastructure (power and fibre) will make it difficult to
attain economies of scale, which will limit pan-African internet
development between now and 2012.</p>
<p>The explosion in mobile
telephony that has turned Africa into the fastest-growing market in the
world, at more than twice the international average growth in
subscriber numbers, will continue to drive locally-fuelled innovations.
A number of SMS and voice-enabled applications are already in use in
numerous African markets, providing financial, agricultural, health,
and other information services. Network services via mobile devices
will accelerate as mobile operators upgrade infrastructure, and cheaper
and more sophisticated handsets lower the bar for innovation. </p>
<p>The
rise of a youthful, entrepreneurial and well-educated vanguard of
Africans will lead this overhaul of the continent's communications
services. Countries that are embracing information technology today and
harnessing the power of wireless networks, mobile telephony and
low-cost technology for the end-user, along with establishing
regulatory environments to foster entrepreneurship, will evolve rapidly
over the next five years. Countries that establish and promote internet
exchange points will help to cultivate the localisation of African
internet traffic, and stimulate the creation and distribution of more
local content. </p>
<p>To take full advantage of the power of the
internet, African leaders must give rise to regulatory and political
environments that remove cumbersome barriers, encourage competition by
opening up markets to engage more access providers, and capitalise on
these positive forces that ultimately will be the dynamic impetus to
propel Africa forward.</p>
<p><strong>Social networking</strong><br><strong>Chris De Wolfe</strong><br><strong>CEO, co-founder MySpace</strong><br>In
only a few years, social networks have become a staple in the internet
landscape as the social networking phenomenon allowed people to "put
their lives online". A person's profile became a representation of who
they really were in the offline world, and allowed them to transfer
their offline world online. </p><p>More than ever, social networks are
blurring online and offline worlds, evolving into social destinations
that are driving the direction of the larger web and affecting
industries like advertising, music and politics. </p><p>Predicting the
future of social networks exclusively misses the larger point - these
evolving online social destinations are laying the groundwork for the
new social web which we believe is becoming infinitely more personal,
more portable, and more collaborative.</p><p>First, as we expand these
social destinations to all corners of the world, we must always think
in terms of the individual. With millions of people using social
websites, there's an increasing demand to make everyone's web
experience personal. In the same way a home or office is your physical
address, we expect your personal, online social profile to become your
internet address. When I give out <a href="http://www.myspace.com/chrisdewolfe">www.myspace.com/chrisdewolfe</a> to
friends and colleagues, everyone knows where to find me online. </p><p>We
expect aspects of all socially-based sites to become increasingly
portable. In terms of mobile, we expect to have relationships with
every carrier and device-maker in the world and we expect that half of
our future traffic will come from non-PC users. </p><p>Social activity
is happening everywhere and we expect applications and features to be
more fluid, based on the online population that want content where they
want it, when they want it, and how they want it. Social activity
should be portable and we expect the industry will continue to move in
that direction.</p><p>Lastly, online social destinations work best when
creativity and development are collaborative concepts. From personal
profiles, to the widget economy, to the OpenSocial standard - the
future of the social web will harness the savvy of the masses to
produce more relevant and meaningful social experiences, ultimately
pushing the larger industry to be more innovative and progressive. </p><p>Lowering
the barrier to entry for a new generation of developers will lead to a
more collaborative and dynamic web and directly affect the tools and
feature sets available on socially-based sites. Supporting a more
collaborative web creates a more global and participatory internet
experience for everyone.</p><p>The evolution of social networks is
kick-starting a broad global shift for how people, content and culture
collide on the web. Right now we're looking at the tip of the iceberg
for what the social web will look like in the future. Fundamentally,
all social destinations must expand while staying personal, they must
engage users while empowering portability, and they must work with up
and coming innovators and major web leaders to both collaborate and
contribute to the larger web community.</p><p><strong>Video</strong><br><strong>Chad Hurley</strong><br><strong>CEO, co-founder YouTube</strong><br>In
five years, video broadcasting will be the most ubiquitous and
accessible form of communication. The tools for video recording will
continue to become smaller and more affordable. Personal media devices
will be universal and interconnected. People will have the opportunity
to record and share video with a small group of friends or everyone
around the world.</p><p>Today, eight hours of new video are uploaded to
YouTube every minute. This will grow exponentially over the next five
years. Our goal is to allow every person on the planet to participate
by making the upload process as simple as placing a phone call. This
new video content will be available on any screen - in your living room
or in your pocket - and will bring together all the diverse media which
matters to you, from videos of family and friends to news, music,
sports, cooking and more.</p><p>In the next five years, users will be
at the centre of their video experience, you will have more access to
more information, and the world will be a smaller place.</p><p><strong>Advertising</strong><br><strong>Maurice Lévy</strong><br><strong>Chairman and CEO, Publicis Groupe</strong><br>Five
years is an eternity in technology, but from our vantage point a few
things are clear about what the internet and internet advertising will
look like in 2012. One, virtually all media will be digital, and
digital will enable almost all kinds of advertising. Two, online
advertising will depend more than ever on the one element which has
always been at the heart of impactful advertising, both analogue and
digital: creativity. The explosion of media channels means this is a
glorious time to think and act creatively. In art history terms, we are
at the dawn of the Renaissance after the Dark Ages.</p><p>Just as the
Renaissance broke down the distinctions between sacred and profane art
forms and between individual and community, so we are seeing a similar
exciting blurring today - and this will only intensify. Linear media is
fast giving way to liquid media, where you can move seamlessly in and
out of different settings. Prescribed time - the 7 o'clock news, the
Friday night out at the cinema, etc - is now becoming multitasking
time. People are no longer willing to put up with interruptions for a
commercial break during their entertainment experience, and so we have
to find incredibly creative solutions to interact with them and engage
them in genuine and honest ways. This implies a brave new world of
engagement and involvement between marketers and consumers and will
also mean co-production between marketers and media owners. Scale will
be critical: in five years' time, around 2 billion people will be
constant internet users and mobile internet computing will be
ubiquitous. What a great time to be in the business!</p><p><strong>Mobile</strong><br><strong>Biz Stone</strong><br><strong>Co-founder, Twitter</strong><br>As
we increasingly realise the web as a vital social utility and important
marketplace we cannot ignore an even bigger potential. The power of the
internet is not limited to the PC. Twitter has emerged to create a
seamless layer of social connectivity across SMS, IM, and the web.
Operating on the simple concept of status, Twitter asks one question:
"What are you doing?" Friends, family and colleagues stay connected
through short responses. </p><p>The potential for this simple form of
hybrid communication technology is strong. For example, a person in
India may text "Follow Biz" and get online via Twitter over SMS in a
matter of seconds. Biz might be updating from the US on a PC.
Nevertheless, the updates are exchanged instantly.</p><p>Our future
holds in store the promise of increased connectivity to a powerful
social internet which truly extends to every little spot on our Planet
Earth. We're all affected by and defined by each other's actions. What
are you doing?</p><p><strong>Search</strong><br><strong>Peter Norvig</strong><br><strong>Director of research, Google </strong><br>Yale
librarian Rutherford Rogers said "We're drowning in information and
starving for knowledge." The internet is an ocean of information and in
the near future we'll speed through it effortlessly and intuitively,
like a tuna. No, I don't mean you'll have fins. </p><p>If you haven't
been searching for [tuna tail vortices] recently, you may not know that
a tuna's body creates small vortices in the water that are then
channelled by the tuna's tail to create additional power.</p><p>This
symbiosis of tuna and watery environment forms a more efficient
propulsion system than anything designed by human engineers. </p><p>In
the future, a similar symbiosis of searcher and computational
environment will allow us to move faster through the internet than we
would have thought possible. We will not just be typing in keywords and
getting back a list of 10 web pages.</p><p>Instead, our interaction
will be more fluid, our computers will accept our requests in many
forms, and will scan our environment proactively, looking for ways to
provide us with additional power. We will get back web pages, yes,
along with existing books and videos, but also custom tables, charts,
animations, databases, and summarisations created on-the-fly in
response to our specific needs. </p><p>Today, nobody says "I need to
connect to a megawatt power station" - instead we assume that
electricity will be available on demand in almost every room of every
building we visit. Edison could see that this would be useful, but
could not foresee the range of appliances, from food processors to mp3
players, that this availability would enable. So too will information
flow freely to us in the future, and be transformed by
as-yet-unforeseen information appliances.</p><p><strong>Archive</strong><br><strong>Bruce Cole</strong><br><strong>Chairman, National Endowment for the Humanities (US)</strong><br>At
the National Endowment for the Humanities, we believe the internet and
other information-age tools, such as digital archiving, will help us
understand the world more deeply, broadly, and creatively. For
humanists just as much for scientists, the ability to mine, analyse,
and understand data, simulate complex environments, and combine
information from a wide variety of sources, is critical to 21st-century
discovery and innovation. </p><p>The exciting new tools of the digital
age also present unique challenges. With digital technologies, we can
comb through information in seconds versus years, and assimilate
knowledge from a much broader array of sources for new insights. But
the wellbeing of the infrastructure itself demands new time-frames.
Information in books can be preserved for centuries before transfer to
new "media" is needed. Information on disks, thumb drives, and other
digital media has a lifespan measured in years or even months rather
than centuries before transfer to the next generation of media is
required. </p><p>Just as physical infrastructure is a foundation for
modern life, digital infrastructure (data storage, computers, networks,
etc.) is foundational infrastructure for the information age. Attention
to the health and support of this infrastructure is critical to
ensuring that born-digital knowledge is preserved and passed on for the
benefit of future generations.</p><br>