The rockets are zinging in your ears, just like a famous Microsoft^® ad says they will. You dodge and weave in the thick of the action, wondering how many kills you’ll tot up for today, which of your friends will be your next victim… this is a world where everything that moves is your enemy. But suddenly, these things don’t matter any more, as attested by the shadow that has crept up behind you, by the incoming missiles that seem to have your name stenciled on them…. And then, it’s all over. Better luck next time…

This is a scene from a typical virtual-reality game of today, played by many human players over the Internet. But the message is not necessarily one of virtual violence. Through the medium of cyberspace, these people are interacting with others and are exploring a world beyond the physical reality of their surroundings – a responsive, intelligent virtual world in which physical constraints on their freedom are removed. The networking and Internet technologies that are emerging now, and those of the future, promise to blur the distinction between the virtual and real worlds, and to let loose a real revolution in our lifestyle every bit as far-reaching as the virtual revolution.

We are fast moving towards an info-centric world, where information will be the prime source of power, and access to this information will be available much more easily to a wide range of people. The Internet era has been the era of distributed computing, shattering George Orwell’s conception (in his novel "1984") of a future where huge mainframes owned by "Big Brother" (the government) held all the information, and hence they had all the power, and were able to suppress the people. Today, the Internet helps computers all over the world – in effect everyone’s PCs – to share information at the almost the speed of light. This free flow of information has thrown a spanner in the works for many authoritarian governments, who find that they cannot limit, curb or control the flow of information.

In the future, this will be taken further – access to information will characterize every aspect of a person’s life. Everyday appliances and devices that a person uses will communicate (inter-network) with other devices, in order to make his life easier. PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants), which are miniature palmtop computers, will evolve into all-purpose personal computers that will manage a person’s finances, identify him to other systems, and will let him have access to the network from wherever he is. Soon we will see much more sophisticated cousins of the humble PDA – the various mobile Internet access devices. For instance, Bill Gates’ vision of a Wallet-PC is of a full general-purpose computer, with some additional functionality. It will take care of secure monetary transfers to and from the Wallet-PC (in exchange for services), as well as will maintain information about the services so bought or sold. Personal information which can be used to identify the owner, and abstract category information like "have-got-a-pass-for-Rock-Show" or "member-of-Doomsday-hackers’-cult" which allow the owner access to some places, or some pieces of information, will also be stored. Of course, only the legitimate owner (using a password or a DNA fingerprint for identification) can operate the wallet-PC.

Cellular phones will increasingly handle more than just voice traffic. The cellular technology, after some adaptation, might be used for high-speed mobile networks that will connect most mobile PCs. Cellular phones that are capable of Internet access (such as the Nokia Communicator, made famous by the movie The Saint), are an early form of Internet appliance. We will see them offering more and more value-added features in the future, and they will become tools in the seamless flow of data through the wireless network, from one appliance to another, one computer to another.

Similarly, the computers built into cars will help monitor the performance of various parts, as well as find the position of the car on the city roads, map a route to the destination (using city maps and dynamic traffic information), avoid accidents, etc. The car’s precise position can be known using the Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite technology, which is now an important part of our network infrastructure. Besides being used in vehicles, this technology is being used to help locate oneself, track the movement of goods, access geographical information databases, and so on. In the future GPS will serve as the most reliable source of spatial co-ordinates and related information for any appliance on the Net.

By converting the traffic management systems of our cities into highly networked and computerized systems, and by installing computers in our cars, we can achieve a synergy in traffic flow and make traffic jams, bottlenecks, (and hopefully, accidents!) a thing of the past. The traffic network will feature adaptive traffic control, which will create a synchronized "green corridor" of green lights for cars on frequently used roads; will vary the frequency of light changes, increasing it for intersections with heavy traffic; and will advise cars to take alternate routes to relieve congestion. When you want to drive from point A to point B, the computer in your car will talk to those in the traffic network, and will show you a best route and several alternatives. This will help you be more productive in your road use, and will probably lower the average commuting time (by avoiding congestion). The accident rate will also be lowered due to similar advances in sensor technology.

Whereas the Internet and networking technology can help us to travel better, they can also help us do a lot by just staying in one room, in effect bringing the world to that one room. I had mentioned virtual reality earlier, which has applications like multi-player gaming, architectural walkthroughs, simulations and others. "Virtual worlds", created in a language called VRML, help to enhance the content of the World Wide Web with 3D virtual environments. VRML worlds promise to become an indispensable tool for presenting spatial information on the Internet.

Some important related applications of virtual reality made possible by the Internet are described by the terms Video-conferencing and Internet Phone. A videoconferencing system allows several parties at different locations to interact with each other using voice, text and live video. It gives the illusion of a real conference. Videoconferencing is currently a high-end high-bandwidth application, but it promises to be available to everyone as high-bandwidth transmission networks become more common and more affordable. Internet Phone allows people from all over the world to carry on one-on-one voice conversations with each other as well as also to exchange text and data, while connected to the Internet. It is likely to be used in the new Internet appliances also, as a means of communicating via voice with others anywhere in the world.

An emerging application of the Internet is to deliver high-quality video and audio to the Internet access device, on demand. New compression schemes (eg. MPEG-4) as well as expanding bandwidths will enable us to achieve this aim on a commercial scale, by the turn of the century. , A quantum improvement over present television and VCR technology, this application will have such a great mass appeal, so as to fuel the expansion of the Internet beyond all expectations, becoming in Bill Gates’ words a "killer app". Conversely, technology is being developed which will make the very ordinary TV set a powerful, intelligent Internet appliance capable of receiving video-on-demand streams as well as surfing the Web. This device, called a "set-top converter", will bring Internet access to a large number of people with television sets.

By the turn of the century we will see more and more tasks and chores being delegated to these intelligent, connected devices. The network will be omnipresent in all computing devices. The key to the miniaturization of this computing power and its diversification into different appliances will be the small, moderately powerful processors at the heart of each device, running a networked Operating System such as the Java_™ virtual machine system. The control program for the appliance will be a Java applet downloaded from the Internet, which can be easily changed or upgraded.

The data required to make these devices truly intelligent will come from sophisticated sensors as well as from sources on the Internet. High bandwidth technologies such as ATM networks and cable modems, combined with improved transfer protocols will facilitate the transfer of this data in real time. New and demanding types of data such as audio, high-resolution images, video, packetized voice, etc. can easily be transmitted over the Internet to the appliances. Wireless networks will be a key technology component, seeing the trend towards mobile computing and universal access to the Internet. Wireless networks will use the cellular phone network, as well as new "radio modems" which will be tiny card-like devices that will fit into most of the small mobile network devices.

As interface devices become smaller and more intelligent, and the Internet itself becomes more highly utilized and intelligent, it is hard to imagine any activity that would not conceivably involve these technologies in some role. Communication and information technologies will begin to resemble electricity in that they will be incorporated into almost every device, every environment, and every activity. Due to the availability of high-powered small net-access devices, people will soon be able to access the full network environment wherever they are. Information access points will be built into the walls, incorporated into our working environments, carried and worn by us, and used as an integral part of most of our daily activities.

As a result, we will need interfaces for these devices, that we can use while we're driving a car, sitting in a library, participating in a meeting, walking down the street, walking through a noisy shopping mall, as well as at a desk.

In addition, many of us will need to access our information appliance (or appliances) in very different environments within the same day. These different environments will put constraints on the type of physical and sensory input and output techniques that will work. For example, it is difficult to use a keyboard when walking; it is difficult and dangerous to use visual displays when driving a car; and speech input and output, which work well in a car, may not be usable in a noisy mall, in the midst of a meeting, or while in the library. Systems designed to work across these environments will therefore need to have flexible input options in order to work in the different environments. The techniques, however, must operate essentially the same conceptually, so users can master all of them in the same way. There will need to be a continuity in the "look and feel" of the interface, even though the devices may be operating entirely visually at one point (for example, in a meeting), or entirely aurally at another (e.g., while driving a car). As mentioned above, many users will also want to be able to change from one environment to another, from one device to another (e.g., desktop to hand-held), and from one mode to another (e.g., visual to voice), in the midst of a task.

The design of these varied interfaces to these devices will have another beneficial effect – it will allow people with disabilities to be able to use this new technology just as well as normal people. For example, a hands-free audio and voice-response based interface for the car computer will also be useful as an interface for a blind person to use the Internet from any device.

Finally, we must ask the question that while it is all very well for a plethora of networked devices to proliferate in our environment, what will happen to the classic Internet access device, i.e. the standard desktop PC, terminal or workstation? The answer is that they will still very much dominate the scene for some applications – such as game-playing – which do not benefit from a portable platform, as well as high-end processor-intensive applications. They will also be the primary – and perhaps the cheapest – Internet-access devices for most homes, schools and organizations. The important point is that people will now have a lot more choices on how to access the Internet (using any Internet access appliance), when (any time), and where (wherever they are, using mobile personal access devices, or alternatively, wherever the devices are). They will not remain tied to the desktop machines for Internet access.

Also, there will be two levels of access – the explicit or overt level, which occurs frequently, and where one consciously uses the Net to send or receive information; and the implicit or background level, which is used all the time by devices which get real-time information from the network and use it for their operation (eg. the car computers described above).

We will also undoubtedly see these new technologies spawn more and different applications - applications we have not thought of yet because they are not possible without these technologies. In the process, we will probably become as dependent upon these technologies as we are on electricity today. The development of extensive networks is a consequence of the distributed computing model of our times, and in the long run it will be beneficial to both the cause of freedom and democracy, and that of rapid economic growth and scientific advancement of the human race.