will emerge as a big barrier to cross-border commerce over the Net. Only local companies, or U.S. companies highly adapted to the local environment, will thrive. - Evan I. Schwartz
Globalization pressure will not come from First World countries, or even from emergent Third World countries, but rather from a kind of digital Fourth World represented by the explosive proliferation of the Web itself. - Christopher Locke
Will we see an online world centered on such devices as Internet appliances this year? If we are, what will it be like?
There will be different sizes and shapes of access devices, and the Web will have to be engineered so that it is just as accessible from any of them. - Tim Berners-Lee
Where people should expect more Internet activity is in the simplification of existing communication products: games and e-mail. Enhancing games with more Internet features will be the norm. Likewise, special e-mail units that simply plug in to the phone or cable TV system, at a price point near that of regular phones, will become the primary access method by the end of 2000. - Roy T. Fielding
Increasingly, intelligence and telecommunication capacity will be embedded in a wide range of everyday objects and devices. We will not think we're going online or interacting with computers when we use these devices; it will just seem [like] our everyday surroundings are more intelligently responsive to our needs. - William Mitchell
The first prevalent things will be set-top boxes and cell phones on the Internet, then more automobile Internet-enabling technology will show up, then much more wireless. - Vint Cerf, senior VP of Internet architecture and technology at MCI WorldCom and a developer of TCP/IP
The desktop will migrate to cheaper hardware that is cost-competitive with (and coexists with) supplementary special-purpose hardware like PDAs and Web toasters. - Eric S. Raymond
How will the rise of "always-on" connectivity change the way the average consumer interacts with the Internet?
Most of the time, we will not even be conscious that we're interacting with the Internet, just as we're not particularly conscious of interacting with the electrical supply grid. - William Mitchell
It will mean that most people will at last be able to use the Net under the same assumptions as the academics who spread it: that a computer is constantly connected and can send a packet whenever it wants. It will mean we will want our computers to be instantly on so that we can push an icon and get the weather within a second. - Tim Berners-Lee
It lowers the threshold of how valuable a site has to be in order for people to visit it. The always- on model is more forgiving in what a site must offer to get your attention; it just takes a second to go there and see if anything is new. This should produce a more varied Net niche culture. - James Fallows
It makes interaction more casual and more convenient, rather like the Star Trek "Computer!" commands. - Vint Cerf
Even with advances in video and audio technology, the Internet is largely a words-on-screen interface. Will that change substantially in 2000?
It won't. Words have compelling advantages over point-and-click; they're a much richer mode of communication. And communication, of course, is what the Internet is about. - Eric S. Raymond
Nothing will replace words, as they map to thoughts so well. I see the future as a wide range of media from pure text (may it live forever) to the wildest 3D and live video media. - Tim Berners-Lee
Words and images on screen are the most efficient way to transfer information. Entertainment will continue to occur in appliances. The computer may become part of the TV,
