Some people think that because online shoppers are buying lower-than-expected quantities of Sea-Monkeys and flower pots, the Internet now faces years of stunted growth.
The truth is, the Internet is poised for an accelerated growth spurt that will generate enough digital activity to send the managers of many data centers to the loony house.
This growth spurt is made possible by something we call the Net Effect. The Net Effect says an unprecedented improvement in bandwidth capacity will have a compound multiplier effect on previous networking and CPU laws, opening the door for a flood of data, consumer activity and technological innovation.
The Net Effect occurs when you converge the exponential nature of growth in bandwidth (Gilder's Law), processor speed (Moore's Law) and the value of networks (Metcalfe's Law). These are powerful enough innovative factors on their own, of course. Together, though, they create an exponential, upward spiral of mutual reinforcement. The Net Effect, in short, is innovation amplifying innovation.
To see the Net Effect in action, look no further than today's labs. There, a single, hair-thin fiber in an optical network can handle enough information to simultaneously stream 400,000 DVD movies. When you consider that the largest cable today contains nearly 900 of these fibers, you can see how a previously unfathomable amount of information will pulse through the Internet. Meanwhile, an increasing variety of devices will be able to digest that data - often from remote locations - as the number of subscribers using next-generation wireless technology is projected to total 250 million by 2006.
In the coming years, networking improvements will allow me to use just one wireless device to watch hockey highlights, receive personalized ads from the stores I walk past and talk with a friend 2,000 miles away - all at the same time.
In other words, the bandwidth explosion will allow thousands of companies to create smart, Web-based services using new and previously existing information in a way that is far more transparent and efficient than what we are used to today. For a glimpse of just how much stuff they have to play with, consider that the planet produces two exabytes of unique information (picture a stack of 40 billion copies of The Standard) every year. That includes 80 billion unique photographs, 2 billion X-rays and 1 million different book titles averaging 300 pages each.
If only a minute fraction of this information pulses through the Internet and into our devices in coming years, every data center on the planet will encounter a digital version of Niagara Falls, one that not only is unrelenting, but also is increasing on an hourly basis.
All this data flowing through the Net to our devices, dashboards and phones will make the world and its wonders increasingly accessible to all kinds of people. And it will spark an era of innovation unlike anything we've ever seen, affecting science, art, education, business and, yes, maybe even Sea-Monkey distribution.
Yet all this information flow will pose some very real problems for those who are paid to manage it. The sheer volume of the Internet, coupled with its ugly stepsister - mounting technical complexity - will give these folks fits. This ultimately will drive the Internet closer to the utility model of computing. No longer, therefore, must a wholesale distributor of, say, lard also become a master of TCP/IP just to stay competitive. He can focus on lard.
And isn't that the way it should be?
Scott McNealy is chairman and CEO of Sun Microsystems. Full disclosure: Sun's products include integrated systems designed to simplify the complexities outlined above.
