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The Futurist: The Intelligent Internet

The Intelligent Internet The Promise of Smart Computers and E-Commerce By William E. Halal

Information and communication technologies are rapidly converging to create machines that understand us, do what we tell them to, and even anticipate our needs.

We tend to think of intelligent systems as a distant possibility, but two relentless supertrends are moving this scenario toward near-term reality. Scientific advances are making it possible for people to talk to smart computers, while more enterprises are exploiting the commercial potential of the Internet.

This synthesis of computer intelligence and the Internet is rapidly creating a powerful new global communication system that is convenient, productive, and transformative: the Intelligent Internet. Here are three simple examples of what should become common soon.

* The UCLA Cultural Virtual Reality Laboratory has developed a Web site that recreates ancient Rome. Visitors are able to virtually walk around 3-D images of reconstructed temples, monuments, and plazas as though they were living in Rome 2,000 years ago. The head of UCLA's lab calls it "a kind of time machine."

* Amtrak has installed speech recognition software to replace the button-pressing menus that drive many people mad. Now you can talk to a virtual salesperson named Julie to get train schedules, make reservations, pay for tickets, and discuss problems. Customers are happier, and Amtrak is saving money.

* The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City leases out a five-by-seven-foot videoconferencing system that allows guests to hold virtual meetings with other people at remote locations. Business people find it so useful that the system is always busy.

It may seem foolhardy to claim that the Internet will soon thrive again when economies around the globe struggle out of recession. After all, it was the unrealistic hype of endless growth we heard during the dot-com boom that caused today's economic pain. But forecasts conducted under the TechCast Project at George Washington University indicate that 20 commercial aspects of Internet use should reach 30% "take-off" adoption levels during the second half of this decade to rejuvenate the economy. Meanwhile, the project's technology scanning finds that advances in speech recognition, artificial intelligence, powerful computers, virtual environments, and flat wall monitors are producing a "conversational" human-machine interface.



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