Slide 1:
Hello again, and welcome to Lecture 15, “The Future of the Internet” - this, the last lecture in COM 333 for this semester.

Slide 2:
Well, we look ahead to the information superhighway as we look for the future of the Internet.  As we said before, we’re still on the gravel road.  The highway, though, is in sight.  And the key to developing this highway, this true superhighway, is bandwidth.  Right now, most connections are made on the Internet at 33,000 bits per second, or 44, or nearly 56 thousand bits per second.  In the future, we’ll see one million bits per second as connections.  And this will truly revolutionize the Internet.  It’ll move us from that gravel road to a multi-lane superhighway and it will begin, it will initiate, the advent of what we call the digital convergence.

Slide 3:
Where does the World Wide Web lead?  Well, in the beginning, the web was a very slow speed, 300 bit per second Internet.  And it was non-graphical, that is, it was text only and it took a certain amount of technical expertise in order to move around the Internet to obtain information and to transfer it from one place to another.  Now the Internet is moderately slow, still slow, but moderately slow.  It is graphical, and as we well know, we can see pictures and, of course, you’re listening to audio coming over the Internet, but it’s still very frustrating.  And there are upgrades all the time.  There’s a lack of standards and one browser will show you one thing, another browser will show you another thing, or nothing at all.  And one keeps putting in updates and upgrades, and plugins here and plugins there, and standards just keep changing all of the time.

Slide 4:
The turning point at this point to date has been that development of the World Wide Web.  We talked about Tim Berners-Lee and Marc Andreeson and their role in making the Internet a graphical and much more interactive and user-friendly site.  But there’s another big turning point in the future, and that is broadband access.  That truly is the key that opens the door to the easy and fluid transmission of video.  It opens the door to seamless interactivity where the user of this system can interact with what’s put up on the system with other users in a seamless and smooth way.  It opens the door to very complex programs and multimedia presentations.  The two primary possibilities that will open up this door are ADSL and the cable modem.

Slide 5:
ADSL, Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line, sometimes shortened to just DSL, uses existing copper wire telephone lines.  So it uses the plant that’s already in place - that is, the wires that are strung on poles and those that are already in the ground.  But it utilizes a digital data switch at the central office of the telephone company.  In DSL, there is an attenuation of the signal over distance, and so up to a distance of three miles, one can maintain a bandwidth or data rate of T1.  That’s about 1.5 megabits per second - actually 1.544 megabits per second.  This kind of connection can simultaneously carry voice and data, so one can be on the Internet using this kind of connection and still receive telephone calls or still call out on your phone line over those same copper wires.  The rate for this service, which is available in many parts of the country, is in the neighborhood of $50 to $100 per month, depending upon features and depending upon geographic location.

Slide 6:
Cable modems, on the other hand, use digital cable television lines that are already in place.  It drives bits directly out of the computer and onto those CATV, or cable television, lines.  The principle is not unlike a local area network with a network interface card.  But one has to stream these with more power in order to carry them to the nearest transformer and booster etc.  It does require a digital cable system, so not all cable TV systems are capable of this at the moment.  It requires the purchase or lease of a digital modem and that runs approximately $200 and commonly carries a monthly fee of approximately $50 to $100.

Slide 7:
Let’s look at a comparison between the information superhighway of the future and our current connections.  Current traffic runs at a rate of about 50 miles an hour and we’re looking at that as a 56 kilo bit per second modem.  So using the analogy of a highway, we could say that we’re traveling at 50 miles an hour.  Using ADSL or cable modems, traffic would travel at a speed equivalent to 500 miles an hour to 1,500 miles an hour.  So you can see that there’s a significant difference, a difference being from a slow car on a interstate highway and, of course, a jet airplane and a super sonic jet airplane.  So we’re passing data on the information super highway at 10 to 30 times the current rate and, in fact, even more depending upon the cases that we’re talking about.  This provides the opportunity to carry smooth video and smooth audio.  You know, right now when we look at a video screen, the images are somewhat jerky, although the audio may be smooth --but perhaps even over the course of this semester, you’ve had an occasional network congestion notice and even the audio for these lectures has slowed down.  This kind of data rate, though, does provide for smooth multimedia and it surely is a superhighway, or perhaps an airway, versus the gravel road.

Slide 8:
Well, as we look toward the future, one of the components are free computers.  You know now there are nearly a dozen firms that are giving away computers, free.  The computers are given in return for advertising being included on the monitor whenever you use the computer, or in some cases for a 2-4 year subscription to Internet.  So if you sign up for Internet, you get the computer for free.  It’s much like the current policies for cellular telephones.  You can get a free cell phone if you sign up for 2 years with the provider.  In 1998, a computer that costs $1,500, the same kind of computer with the same kind of components costs approximately $400 in 1999.  I think that we’ll see as we move forward, dedicated devices that will take the place of many of the personal computers.  We’ll find personal managers, we’ll find smart agents, devices that are dedicated to browsing and Internet, have some flexibility, but don’t have all the features of a personal computer.

Slide 9:
So if we looked into my crystal ball to Internet 2005, I would see the penetration in the United States exceeding 85%.  I would anticipate that worldwide penetration of the Internet would be in the neighborhood of 40%, the median, the most common bandwidth, would be 1 megabit per second.  And I would see the computers themselves may actually go up in price, and that would, of course, be a change in the current trend.  The features, of course, would increase as well, but I would see computers being used for computing and not necessarily for communicating.  So I see computers, which we’ve used in this interim period for communicating through the Internet as well as computing, to revert to their original purpose of computing and I would see dedicated digital devices, inexpensive devices that would be dedicated to communication.  That would include online browsers with multimedia capability that would be in the neighborhood of $200.  I would see convergence, this digital convergence in full swing, where telephones, radio, television, video, games, all of these would come together into a medium that would be accessed using these dedicated digital devices.

Slide 10:
Well, we’re nearly done with the semester.  Now it’s time for us to talk briefly about our final research paper.  I’d ask that you post it on our WebBoard by May 7th.  Now I do have a thread that has begun for that.  It says final reports and so if you would reply to my original message, then in each case you would have your report posted and so you might post it with, if you want to put the title, you could put the name of your report etc.  And I’d ask that it be equivalent of 5 pages or more.  I’m not really a stickler on length of reports.  I’m more interested in this case, in the sources of your information and the degree to which you’re satisfied with what you have found.  You may write your report in a regular word processor, in Word, or WordPerfect, or one such word processor.  Once you’ve completed typing your report into a computer, then if you would “select all” for the report, “copy” and then open up your Internet page and paste it, if possible, paste it into our WebBoard.  I’d recommend against attaching a .wpd or .doc file, that is, a WordPerfect or a Word file, because not everyone will be able to open all of those attachments.  Some of us will have Word, and some will have WordPerfect, some of us might have older versions, some of us might have Microsoft Works, or who knows what kind of word processor.  And we might not be able to open an attachment that’s saved in a proprietary word processor.  So if instead, you would simply cut and paste your paper into the WebBoard, I think that we’ll find everybody will be able to read those papers.

Slide 11:
Now in this final report you may use any citations style you choose.  You know, APA or MLA.  You don’t have to tell me, in fact, frankly, you can come up with some sort of hybrid or compromise between the variety of citation styles.  I’m not a stickler on that.  I just want to be sure that you give credit where credit is due.  So perhaps parenthetically in your text, as in APA style, or at the end of your document - wherever, I want you to be sure to give credit to the items that you include.  I also want you to include a bibliography at the end of your report.  That should have at least half a dozen Internet sites.  And in many cases, you’ll have at least ten, because we’ve gone through an exercise of looking at Internet sites.  And I’d like you to do this, again if you will, by then end of the week, so that the following week, or at least at the latest by May 15th, everyone in the class can read all of the papers, which have by then, of course, been posted on the WebBoard.  And I ask that each of you post a comment or an observation, something in addition as a reply to each paper.  So at least, in theory, we’ll have approximately 20 papers posted.  And I’d ask that each of you look at each of the 20 papers and post a comment or observation on those.  The reason that I ask you to do this is so that we all are exposed to the variety of research that’s being conducted by our colleagues in the class and that we can give words of encouragement or suggestions to them, as they perhaps may want to continue their research outside the context of this class.

Slide 12:
Finally I want to mention the course evaluations for COM  333.  If you look on the WebBoard, you’ll see our last thread.  I had mentioned, I have mentioned, the online evaluation which is available for the class.  I do have a hyperlink to it.  So all you will have to do will be to click on that hyperlink, you’ll be taken to an online questionnaire.  These include the identical questions to those, which are handed out on campus, and many of you are familiar with those questions that are used on campus.  I ask that you send in only one evaluation form.  So make sure that you don’t, you know, don’t vote more than once.  So go to that site, fill it out and when you click send, it will be sent directly to Becky Wilken.  In this case, it was an associate of the provost, the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, here on campus, and then she will keep that document.  I will not get a copy of it until long after the course is done.  Your name will not be attached in any way to this document, so we won’t know who has submitted the document and, of course, she’ll hold onto them until all the grades are submitted.

Slide 13:
Well, the end.  This is the last lecture for COM 333 this semester.  I’ve really enjoyed this experiment and I certainly appreciate you as pioneers and participating in this class.  I have to say that this comes with a lifetime service guarantee, that’s my lifetime, as long as I’m around, I invite you to e-mail me or to IM me, or phone me, or write me, and I would be happy to be of help if you have any questions or give you any advice or assistance that I might be able to provide to you.  And I’ve really enjoyed the class.  I appreciate again your tolerance of all of the challenges of pioneers as we’ve traveled this gravel road.  And finally I would encourage you to consider taking another online class.  We have quite a few of them linked to the UIS homepage and perhaps you’ll find one in the summer or next fall that might be of interest to you.  So once again, thank you very much and we’ll see you on the Internet.