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Photo by Chris Sutton
Leonard Kleinrock, who created the basic principles of
packet switching, the technology underpinning the Internet,
believes that the Internet still has many surprises in store
in the years to come.
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Innovators see exciting future for the Internet
BY AJAY SINGH
UCLA Today Staff
The Internet has come a long way since the first message was sent
into cyberspace by a clunky computer at UCLA under the guidance
of Professor Leonard Kleinrock on Oct. 29, 1969. Yet for all the
amazing developments since then, the Internet is essentially in
its Stone Age, said experts at a UCLA symposium last month marking
the Internet’s 35th birthday.
“The Internet is everywhere, always on and always accessible,”
said Kleinrock. But if it is to establish a truly global information
infrastructure, he added, the Internet must also be capable of “nomadic
and invisible computing.”
Those two characteristics, Kleinrock said, would define the Internet’s
future. Nomadic computing refers to the ability to disconnect laptops
at homes or offices and take them anywhere — deep into the
Mojave Desert, for example — without losing any of the Internet’s
services. Invisible computing is an even more futuristic application:
“Cyberspace lies behind the screen,” explained Kleinrock.
“We want to take it outside and deploy it in our physical
world, possibly within our own bodies.”
All of that would eventually result in the “mass customizing
of the environment,” said Kleinrock, offering an example:
“If I walk into a room, the room will know I walked in because
it will be a smart space.” The security implications of smart
buildings that recognize humans are enormous. But so are privacy
issues.
The Internet’s potential reach is so huge that it is expected
one day to connect all humans on earth. “We’re about
3% to 4% there,” said Patrick Gelsinger, CEO of Intel Corporation,
“and we’re just getting started.”
Wiring the entire planet will become possible because of the continuing
validity of Moore’s Law, Gelsinger and several other speakers
predicted, referring to Intel cofounder Gordon Moore’s 1965
observation that the computer power available on a single chip doubles
every 18 to 24 months, helping create ever-smaller, cheaper and
“smarter” electrical devices.
For now, the information revolution is progressing slowly but encouragingly.
In India, many villages lack electricity, so innovative entrepreneurs
provide satellite-linked community PCs mounted on tricycles powered
by a simple pedal-driv-
en device, said Gelsinger.
Meanwhile, a fascinating trend toward seamless convergence of applications
is taking place: Messaging, e-mail, Internet access, calendar, camera,
music and much more are available over a single device.
“The smart phone is the best invention since the wheel,”
said Henry Samueli, a UCLA professor of electrical engineering,
chairman of Broadcom Corporation and the philanthropist for whom
UCLA’s engineering school is named. But convergence also poses
huge problems, Samueli cautioned, mainly in the areas of software
and battery technology.
Another challenge is to make the Internet a widely accessible and
efficient tool of education. “The trick is to use the Internet
as much more than an instrument of pop culture,” said Alan
Kay, an adjunct professor of computer science at UCLA.
As just about every nation embraces or acknowledges the Internet’s
importance, there is an urgent need for some authority to regulate
our expanding cyberworld, not least to combat the growing menace
of spam and identity theft. “Many people think the United
Nations ought to be in charge,” said Robert E. Kahn, chairman
of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives, a not-for-profit
organization.
Kahn predicted it would take the “better part of the century”
to make the Internet indisputably ubiquitous and secure. But others
were more sanguine. “Maybe we’ll get there by the 50th
anniversary of the Internet,” said Samueli.
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