Each week in this space I report on the latest developments in politics and technology. This time, I'm turning it over to the people who make this column so worthwhile: Wired News readers. Keep reading for a bold list of predictions of what's ahead in the new year.
Sonia Arrison, director, Center for Freedom and Technology, Pacific Research Institute:
The three most important tech issues of 2001 will be free speech, privacy and e-money.
ISPs will continue to be the targets of governments such as France who want to control what their citizens see and read.
Privacy in all instances will be contentious, especially when it comes to genetics. E-money will appear back on the scene as countries other than the United States (for example, Japan), begin to experiment and succeed with viable e-money systems.
Jacob Palme, professor at Stockholm University:
Intelligent search engines answer with just what I am searching for. More and more new pharmaceutical drugs giving much more value for much more money.
Microsoft merges with Sony and Disney to provide the ultimate entertainment provider. Increasing use of telecommunications gets more people who live and work in rural areas.
Richard Stiennon, research director, network security, Gartner:
The Internet has seen several waves of adoption. Tech companies led the way. Communication companies followed in their path. Manufacturers, insurers and banks are finally getting into it. Terrorists and criminal elements are the last to get wired.
As organizations get online their security measures tend to lag behind their e-business ventures, but they get pretty good grades overall. Governments and universities, however, are woefully unprotected.
In 2001, we will see cyber-terrorism and cyber-criminals exploit the gaping holes in these institutional networks.
The cyber terrorists will destroy computer resources and shut down networks. The criminals will pilfer information and resources and shut down networks and use stolen identities to accumulate huge amounts of money.
Not a meltdown, just the first shots fired in the new info wars.
Larry Sanger, editor-in-chief of Nupedia:
I believe the "open content" concept is going to enter the public consciousness more fully this year. Currently, the concept is understood by only a handful of people online; by the end of the year, "open content" could be nearly as much a common buzzword as "open source" is now.
Jeff Ubois, co-founder, Disappearing:
Privacy services provided by corporations, such as those described in the Senate Judiciary Committee's Know the Rules Use the Tools booklet, will become economically viable, and widely used. There will be a consolidation of the smaller privacy companies into one or more larger firms that offer more comprehensive services.
The need for transient forms of electronic mail and other data will become more apparent as a result of copyright owners' desire to control their intellectual property, corporate needs to limit the lifetime of old e-mail, and the desire by individuals to prevent the kind of embarrassing fiasco Claire Swire just experienced.
Yves Thiran, Internet journalist, Brussels:
The Creative "Compilator" – an upgraded JukeBox, 60 gigs miniature Hd, 2000 CD, all the music you could possibly wish, a Virgin Megastore in your hand w/FireWire Connection for speedy classroom download – will be 2001's big hit. And it'll be a big consolation for Napster, after the lost trials. Technology is stronger than pettiness: Happy New Year.
Stan Emert of Tangis Corporation:
Wearable computing will begin to mature into "assistive" computing as functionality becomes key. Software advances (i.e., from Tangis Corporation) will force hardware OEMs to develop smaller, more powerful units, as people demand the new benefits that assistive (wearable) computing software can bring.
The year 2001 will be the beginning of using computers to assist us, rather than to just create documents. We will be able to protect our privacy better; we will be connected more easily; we will work more efficiently with this new software. The shift will start first in the mobile workforce and then spread to the general population.
Chris Hunter, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania:
In the upcoming year we are likely to see the age-old cyberporn debate heat up once again. Congressional passage of the Childrens' Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which will require all public schools and libraries receiving federal funds for Internet access to install some form of content filtering software (such as CyberPatrol), will spark an intense public and legal debate about how to protect children from the "scourge" of Internet pornography, hate speech, etc. Already, the ACLU has promised to challenge the new law as an unconstitutional abridgment of the First Amendment.
Also the ushering in of the Republican Bush administration will likely result in a new round of highly politicized obscenity prosecutions. The Congressionally appointed COPA Commission has already recommended stricter enforcement of existing obscenity laws, and the National Academy of Sciences' Protecting Kids from Pornography panel will likely make similar recommendations. There's only one problem: What the hell does a community standard mean on the Net!?
Jon Zittrain, assistant professor of law, Harvard University:
I think the peering arrangements by which packets are neutrally passed from one private point to the next, as they make their way from source to destination, are up for grabs. We may see the beginnings of specialized information toll roads running parallel to the familiar Net we have now.
Mark Northern, host of "Hard Drive" on WGOW-FM, Chattanooga, Tennessee:
The dot-com shakeout will prove to be a good thing for the IT industry and the global economy.
Everyone knew the tech sector was overvalued, but everyone watched the emperor parade by naked and kept playing the margins. Tech stocks carried the global economy for the better part of two years and finally yielded under the weight.
Well-capitalized, well-managed industry leaders will mop up the mess, hire the best and brightest from among the casualties, and develop leading-edge technologies such as the "X" (executable) Internet.
Mr. Lizard, online commentator:
We'll see more censorship attempts!
Especially by the United Nations and other global agencies. Prepare to hear the phrase "pedophiles and nazis, pedophiles and nazis" repeated so many times it makes you want to produce fascist kiddie porn out of sheer spite.
More technology trumping the censors. Usenet will still be here. Apple will release a computer shaped like dodecahedron, made of glow-in-the-dark translucent green plastic. Search engines will still suck.
Whiny Luddites will have more to whine about as "pharming" and stem-cell technologies take off, boosting biotech in general.
Fortunately, since Luddites will refuse genetically engineered life-extending drugs, stem-cell technologies will take off and boost biotech in general. Fortunately, since Luddites will refuse genetically engineered life-extending drugs. We'll outlive them all.
Jim Halpert of Piper Marbury Rudnick & Wolfe:
Ex-senator John Ashcroft, confirmed by the Senate after a contentious nomination battle, pulls the plug on Carnivore and announces a major initiative to crack down on child porn and obscenity on the Internet.
Randy May, senior fellow at the Progress and Freedom Foundation:
I predict that, as emotions cool in the New Year, the majority of Americans will come to accept the Supreme Court's decision effectively deciding the presidential contest.
This is because, even though ordinary Americans do not speak the language of lawyers, they understand intuitively that what courts do best in our constitutional culture is ensure adherence to the notions of fair process and equal treatment that are at the heart of the Bush v. Gore decision.
Mark Plotkin, attorney in the technology practice group of Morris, Manning & Martin:
I predict that in 2001 people will stop thinking of the Internet as the equivalent of the Wild Wild West and will begin to accept its transformation into a highly regulated "space."
Richard Thieme, commentator on the human dimensions of technology:
When Clyde Tombaugh discovered the planet Pluto, he announced the coordinates of its orbit. Astronomers around the world retrieved old photographs and – sure enough, there was Pluto, right in front of their faces. But nobody had seen it because they didn't know where to look.
The same is true of the aggregated data for multiple realities behind UFO phenomena. The evidence hides in plain sight, but we don't see it because we don't know where to look.
2001 will be a "tipping point." The aggregated data will resolve into clearer patterns and we will see what is right in front of our faces.
Jim Warren, senior columnist, MICROTIMES:
Bush and Attorney General Ashcroft will honor their debt to Microsoft, for its prepaid purchase of legal assistance, by settling the massive anti-trust findings against the operating system monopoly with some trivial, look-good slap on the wrist.
Bush and right-wing ideologue extremist Ashcroft will make pervasive use of the FBI's mass e-mail-snooping software, Carnivore, developed by the Clinton administration, to conduct massive, warrant-less surveillance seeking all "feelthy" content on the Net; conduct selective high-profile prosecutions, especially of well-known liberals; and generally seek to impose proper Christian fundamentalist censorship on Net content.
They will also use Carnivore, the IRS and other government surveillance and non-judicial punishment tools to spy on and attack their political opponents. But that's been customary for generations, as well-documented in Congress' Church Committee hearings, decades ago.
Abraham Santibanez, professor at the Universiodad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile:
2001 will be the e-government year in Chile. Studies indicate that this South American country is bound to be a pioneer country not only in Latin America, but in the world.
In the last local (municipal) election, 254 Chileans living abroad sent their preferences via e-mail. It had no legal effect but demonstrated that it can be done, and that there are people interested in expressing their preferences this way.
Eugenio Tironi, a sociologist, a former government officer and business adviser, believes that 2001 will be the e-government year and that Chile can become "an experimental field in electronic government."
Chris Shira, distance education professional:
As consumers become familiar with distance education, the lack of significant content available on many of these systems will become apparent.
Those sites that do feature significant content, such as traditional textbook publishers, will surely dominate the market. The additional burdens imposed by COPPA will further alienate potential consumers as education providers are forced to employ complicated and inconvenient schemes to remain COPPA compliant.
Rodney Thayer, a network security consultant:
I'm looking ahead at the area of network security. First of all, I don't see any reason that, as a general rule, people will become more interested in security.
Short passwords, post-it notes with passwords stuck to terminals and use of your mother's phone number for your ATM PIN will all continue to be popular. Internet sites will continue to accept and send clear-text sensitive information such as social security numbers.
What I do think will change is that some parts of the commercial world will decided that security is worth doing, for business reasons.
So, for example, I think we'll finally have enough stolen credit card numbers that Visa and the other credit card issuers, including the banks and maybe the government, will start to assert that more serious security is needed.
Nathan Wilcox, online campaign manager, Public Strategies:
In 2001 we'll see the following:
Venture capitalists and the hucksters who fleeced them will stay away from politics for a while.
Steve Forbes' Internet consultants will be busy spending their money well into the 4th quarter of 2001.
Anyone waiting for broadband to make the Net a big factor in politics will be still waiting on Dec. 31, 2001.
Bush will attempt to use the Net to take the Clintonian "Perpetual Campaign" to the next level. His many opponents will have the same idea.
Lawrence Hecht, Internet Public Policy Network:
The Federal Government will embrace Web streaming as a way to "open government."
Congress will stream live audio broadcast of all committee hearings on the Web. Telecommunications lobbyists will support the infrastructure costs needed to provide quality video streaming of government activities because it will generate new demand for broadband.
By year's end, advocacy groups will be actively demanding huge new expenditures to put public broadcasting's video content online.
Don Marti, technical editor, Linux Journal:
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is entering 2001 in crisis. USPTO is losing budget and laying off patent examiners at the same time that it is facing a torrent of new software patent applications. Even the agency's director warned of an imminent "reduction in patent quality" in a letter to Congress.
Expect to start signing away your right to sue for patent infringement in order to do business. It'll be the only way that companies can defend themselves against the tide of bogus software patents.
Christopher Simpson, School of Communication, American University:
Dozens of flashy "technology-is-god" magazines will fail as the economy slips in the United States and other wired countries. As it happens, Argentina is on the block at the moment.
One or more of the Top-10 public relations firms will purchase major shares of South Africa-based partnerships that lease paramilitary mercenaries for low intensity wars. The integrated corporations will discretely cross-market themselves as "full service" crisis management specialists.
Stephen Lawton, chairman, Planning Commission, City of Hercules:
"Bricks and mortar" is no longer a term of derision. Having control over your infrastructure is now a critical success factor. And so, Internet-driven firms are in turn driving innovation in the business of place-making.
Commercial real estate will enter the auction market, with the market owned by the big technology vendors. Programmers' cubes, engineers' labs, server farms, sales offices – spaces will be commodified and traded like pork bellies among the New Economy firms that generate demand-spikes on tempos that outpace leasing or construction cycles.
Bob O'Neil, Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression:
The now clear split among federal circuits on the constitutionality of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act makes Supreme Court review highly probable.
If and when that occurs, the Court may well uphold the virtual child pornography provisions by giving them (as did the First Circuit) a somewhat narrower scope than Congress almost certainly intended.
Of two other petitions pending before the Court, I doubt very much that they will take either Urofsky from the Fourth Circuit or ACLU/Reno II from the Third and will thus give COPA a decent burial, while leaving standing Virginia's ban on state employees using state owned or leased computers to access sexually explicit material.
Danny Yavuzkurt, Penn State University:
The Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring will be the highest-grossing picture of 2001, if not of all time.
The Two Towers, in 2002, will do nearly as well, but not quite.
The Return of the King, in 2003, should bring out legions of fans unheard of since ... well, since ever.
The movies will be so highly sought-after and hotly anticipated that somehow, someone will get the scripts – or perhaps even copies of the films themselves – on the Net before release, most likely in 3iVX or ProjectMayo format.
A huge brouhaha will result, and when the person responsible is caught – if he/she is – he'll be hung out to dry, as the most despised copyright breaker of all time.
