Weaving a better Web

The Internet goes Interplanetary

In 1999, Vint Cerf pitched the idea of an interplanetary network that would extend the Internet's reach beyond Earth. Even though it came from the man who had co-developed the Internet in 1973 and was at that time a spokesman for MCI, the idea seemed far-fetched to many in the industry.

Almost a decade later, Cerf, who is now chief Internet evangelist at Google, has not wavered in his belief in the idea. "By the end of this decade, we'll have a two-planet Internet in place. We'll have software on orbiters that allow new protocols to make the Internet work across the solar system. This is a very exciting prospect," Cerf says.

You need only look at the billions of dollars the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has spent in the past few years to explore Mars to see that Cerf's vision is creeping closer to reality. "It's only been eight years for this interplanetary idea to evolve. When you think how long it took the Internet - 10 years just to get the basics in place - this is moving quickly," he says.

Cerf is just one of many luminaries placing bets on what the future holds for the Internet and the Web. And although other predictions are not as out of this world as Cerf's, they offer a glimpse into what we can expect from the Web in the next few years.

The Web as a platform

Tim O'Reilly, who co-developed the idea of Web 2.0, a vision for the next generation of software, says the biggest change we'll encounter is a move away from traditional network architectures to having "the Web as a platform."

"The first thing we need to realize is that this isn't just a software revolution," O'Reilly says. "It's a revolution in the way we capture and coordinate data."

O'Reilly says there's a misconception in the industry that today's databases will be sufficient to handle all the user- and machine-generated content - petabytes per year for some companies. "Google's not managing their data using [traditional databases]. They're developing very new types of tools," he says.

"Other companies must develop competencies in managing, visualizing and extracting information from massive amounts of data to take the Web to the next level," O'Reilly says.

One thing to expect is a whole new crop of applications that will be generated from data. "Applications will now be built on stacks of data services," O'Reilly says. Map applications are a crude example of what's to come. They are formed as they draw content from a bunch of different providers, he says.

O'Reilly says the key to succeeding in this data-focused world is to find new ways to harvest the massive amounts of data that will be generated. For instance, he says cell phone companies soon will figure out a way to use the vast amount of data they hold. "They know who we've called, but they don't know how to harvest that information to create a business. There will eventually be people who realize how to mine that data in the same way Google does Web searches," he says.

One obstacle to O'Reilly's vision is a fear in the industry about the dangers of openness and data sharing. "You have to figure out what pieces you get to control and own to gain a competitive advantage, and what you can give away," he says.