Forget The Web, Make Way For "X Internet"

Businesses remain focused on selling their customers on the dead hypertext and primitive animation on the World Wide Web, but the Web’s tenure as the driving instrument of info-revolution is waning, a new Forrester Research report says.

In its place is emerging a new version of the Internet, which Forrester analyst Carl D. Howe dubs "X Internet."

It sounds mysterious – and in some ways is. But anyone who has read their Nicholas Negroponte has an idea of what Howe is talking about. In his seminal short 1995 book, "Being Digital," Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab Director Negroponte sketched out a world where the Internet pervades every aspect of daily life. Say your refrigerator notices you’re out of milk. It simply sends a message to your car, which nags you not to forget about stopping at the store on your way home that night.

That’s exactly the future Howe sees for a fast-coming iteration of the Internet that he calls "the extended Internet" (or "X Internet"). This version, he says, will begin achieving prevalence by 2005. By 2010, according to Forrester projections, there will be a whopping 14 billion devices connected to the Internet. Relatively few of them will be computers, just chip-powered appliances - even objects like car tires. By way of context, there are only 93 million computers hooked up to the Net right now, Forrester says.

"I think ... that the Web can only go so far in satisfying users," Howe said. "What this report tries to articulate is that the Web is not the Internet, that there are more applications on the Internet – specifically ones that both delight users and that connect the Internet better to the real world." Or, as stated in Howe’s report: "The Web brought users pages to read. The executable Internet will deliver interactive experiences."

Howe’s report sees an interim step between the Web-dominated Internet of today and tomorrow’s extended version. Forrester calls this "the executable Internet," and expects it to dominate by 2005. With the executable Internet, Amazon.com customers trying to buy four CDs won’t have to wade through eight pages of text and graphics to execute their purchase. Instead, the Net will make the experience more like buying from a store. The customer would select the CDs, drag-and-drop them all together into a purchase form, and seal the deal immediately.

Napster, which allows for something similar by allowing users to choose wanted items from other users and to download them immediately, is an early executable-Internet application, Howe’s report says. Such utilities will captivate users far beyond the static Web, which Howe’s report condemns as mostly "dumb" and "boring."

Nonetheless, X Internet will shortly trump even the executable version, Howe predicts. When it arrives, consumers will begin to see smart devices pushing the limits of the Internet far beyond its present PC-based capabilities. It will lead to Internet devices and applications "that sense, analyze and control the real world," he writes.

The report uses the example of a home in New England, where people are reticent to leave in winter for fear of freezing, bursting pipes. X Internet would make it possible for a device – say a car – to detect from thousands of miles away the temperature at home, and automatically adjust the thermostats. Service providers like utilities could be in on the action, too, monitoring homes and lowering rates if customers will let them automatically adjust their energy consumption during peak periods.

"The evolution of the X Internet will usher in a new phase of technology change," his report says. "The good news? Most firms already have their Internet connections. The bad news? These changes will require deeper knowledge of technology than the Web did."

There’s at least one other piece of bad news for businesses, the report says. Right now, consumers pay on average $4,000 to purchase, equip, maintain and plug their computers into the Internet. When the Net is extended and driven by cheap micro-processing chips, those prices will dive to about $200 per device, the report said.

"With the unrelenting cost pressure on every device and connection, the boom will feel like a never-ending price war," the report says.

Forrester is at http://www.forrester.com.