Internet Everywhere.

Innovators contemplate "the next small thing."

MIT Media Lab guru Alexander (Sandy) Pentland makes a pretty good living by imagining things. The Lab he runs brings no products to market. Rather, he and his fellow brains dream up ideas about products and markets.

"WHAT'S NOT BEING DONE IN THE LABS OF NOKIA, Motorola, British Telecom, Phillips -- that's what the MIT Media Lab is doing," said Alex Lightman, chief executive of Charmed Technology, a Lab spin-off.

What's coming our way in the Internet world? From the oracle at the Media Lab: networks that recognize you; instant, wearable Internet; and universal, ubiquitous access. Joining Pentland on the dotCEO Conference panel to discuss the future were former colleagues currently carrying the concepts to market: James Monroe, chief executive of Perceptive Networks; Lightman; and Marc Blumenthal, chief executive of Microfranchise Development Corporation (MDC).

Smart networks

Tomorrow you won't need your hand or voice to sign in to your workstation. Your machine will "sense" your gestures or your face as you approach -- although Perceptive Networks makes no claim that it will wag its tail. Today, you can find Perceptive's technology for instant video communication via broadband in state motor vehicle bureaus, where it is being used to search databases and nail drivers with multiple identities. Pentland invented it 10 years ago.

First, as Monroe explained, you take presence and availability management technology (PAM), for which companies like Cisco, Lucent, Microsoft and 3Com have built hardware and software implementations. Then add Perceptive's technology at the point of interaction, using a basic Web cam and microphone built in to the computer, and you have a smart network that connects to you, not a machine. It offers clear security advantages.

Up close and personal

What if you're not at your office or home? Tomorrow, you'll toss your cell phone -- and your Rolex -- and strap on a watch that connects you to the Net via the 802.11 spectrum. The trend is toward shrinking computers, and Light-man is pioneering the smallest platform to date for Internet access. Charmed Technology will provide hardware and software for a monthly fee.

A vociferous drummer for innovative apparatus, Lightman believes that the future lies in "the next small thing. We've gone from cell phones to Internet-connected mobile phones, to the 'zero pound mobile phone,' where there's no computer. The voice comes from everywhere." He added an eerie postscript: "The shrinking keeps on going to nothingness." Charmed makes them wearable, tiny, but still tangible -- in the form of computer rings, clothes, necklaces and a wireless conference badge that will replace business-card exchanges.

Closing the digital divide

The third element of the Media Lab's vision aims to get the Internet to the poorest, remotest areas of the world. MDC plans to attack underlying poverty with a new business model that uses a micro-franchising template. Tomorrow, Blumenthal said, we can make a viable market from the untapped one-third of the world's population and have the Internet everywhere.

An altruistic proposal perhaps, but Blumenthal, who came out of the venture capital world, called it a "business approach to poverty reduction." He won't send computers. His model calls for established companies to outsource or set up operations in developing countries. It combines franchising with the micro-credit model, resulting in a micro-franchise of one person, one job. The advantages for a company: cheap labor gets your products out while you achieve brand recognition and create jobs. In the process, you create consumers. Blumenthal's challenge now lies in convincing businesses of the market opportunity in training people in self-employment skills.

The digital divide is a hot button among pundits who argue the viability of future markets in these countries. Screaming Media's Kevin Clark believes that "people may not have electricity, but many have Internet cafe's and e-mail addresses. Wireless is the hope of these countries." Kay Koplovitz, chief executive of Working Woman Network, found that people everywhere are aware of the Internet. In Tanzania, she said, "People may lack running water, but they talk to the tourists they guide up the mountain. People want to know, no matter how remotely they live in the world."

"A human society"

DotCEOs expressed concerns about where the "next small thing" -- such as wearable computers -- might lead us. What about privacy? asked one audience member. "You turn the thing off," said Lightman, flicking away Big Brother fears: "It doesn't have a bioelectronic residue that sticks with you."

Yet privacy issues regarding customer data worry many dotCEOs, who listed privacy and customer trust, the impact of mobile technologies, intellectual property and the digital divide as their most pressing concerns in a conference instant survey.

Pentland has made such stuff the subject of inquiry of the Media Lab's newly renamed Human Design Group. "We need to design where we're going and what we're going to be when we get there," he said, "because technology is changing what it means to be human and to have a human society. We'll have Internet everywhere, the whole world together, and you can be reached anywhere, losing privacy. Devices will change the way you act and will change your relationships."

Another CEO, worried about computers performing psychotherapy or having human interactions, asked, "Does the future need us?" Pentland answered, "When they invented the printing press, many warned about its disastrous effects. And they were right: there are no more kings and queens, the church isn't as powerful, family is different. But we wouldn't go back. The Internet is bringing profound change. What we must decide is what direction we want to go."