The future isn't what it used to be. While it's fun to noodle over the shape of the wired world years from now, most of us are lucky if we can envision what we're going to eat for lunch. That's why The Standard asked 20 Internet experts what they thought the Internet Economy would produce over just the next year, in areas like e-commerce, technology, policy and business strategy. In the real world, you'd pay a pretty penny for this kind of advice. So sit back and enjoy the show. - Mickey Butts
What's the biggest Internet Economy trend of 2000?
The rising power of the audience. Online audiences tend to be much savvier than their offline counterparts, and are much less tolerant of traditional advertising and branding campaigns. The disparity between companies that are clueful or clueless in this respect will become glaringly obvious, and will begin to cause substantial shifts in market share. - Christopher Locke, coauthor of The Cluetrain Manifesto and editor of Entropy Gradient Reversals
Take every number from Forrester, Gartner and Jupiter, add them, multiply by two, and you'll have accurate predictions. That's not just a trend, it's my investment model. - Larry Downes, e-business consultant and coauthor of Unleashing the Killer App
There won't be any such thing as an "Internet company" as we've come to know it. All companies that want to add value to the marketplace will evolve into Internet companies. - Evan I. Schwartz, author of Webonomics and Digital Darwinism
The next decade will see, I hope, the arrival of data (such as catalogs, weather, stock prices) that will be processable and combinable by machine. It'll be the rebirth of knowledge representation, where human meets machine. At last it will be a chance for a search engine to figure out the real, logical answer to a question instead of drowning you in wild guesses. - Tim Berners-Lee, director of the World Wide Web Consortium and author of Weaving the Web
The most significant change will take place when people can conveniently use a palmtop computer to search for products online, compare prices and negotiate optional features while walking around normal retail establishments. - Roy T. Fielding, chairman of the Apache Software Foundation, creator of the latest version of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol and a doctoral candidate at the University of California (dossier), Irvine
If 1999 was the year of the dot-com, 2000 will be the year of the dot- community. Grassroots sites based on shared values and common interests will steal market share from the big portals. - Andrew Shapiro, author of The Control Revolution, director of the Aspen Institute Internet Policy Project and a senior adviser to the Markle Foundation
Dot-coms and e-businesses will be valued on the number of repeat customers, the lifetime value of those customers and the retention rate of those customers. Internet advertising revenues will be based on customer acquisition bounties and transaction fees, not eyeballs or click-throughs. - Patricia Seybold, CEO of the Patricia Seybold Group and author of Customers.com
True location independence for people. Wireless [connections] will allow for physical products - be they packages or pizzas - to be tied to you and your moving coordinates. - Tara Lemmey, president of the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Weaving the right interconnections between the Internet Economy and the plain old economy will become increasingly crucial. Success, in many arenas, will depend upon finding the right mixes of networks and software, brick-and-mortar facilities, and transportation. - William Mitchell, dean of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (dossier)'s School of Architecture and Planning and author of e-Topia and City of Bits
Linux and other open-source software will dominate server computing and make serious inroads into the appliance and desktop markets. The Microsoft (MSFT) monopoly will crumble. - Eric S. Raymond, pioneer in the open-source movement and author of The
