LOGGED ON; INTERNET CHANGING THE WORLD; ALL ASPECTS OF LIFE WOVEN INTO WEB.

Byline: Michael L. Rozansky The Philadelphia Inquirer 

The networking revolution is here.It can be seen in gradual changes permeating the business world. For example, corporate customers of Rosenbluth International, a travel agency, cut the cost of booking hotels and flights by dialing into a special Internet site and making the arrangements themselves with software that knows their preferences.

Wheels Inc., a Philadelphia medical transportation company, uses wireless phones to call its drivers, transmit written pickup orders and track vehicles to ensure they don't get lost.

The changes are obvious in large enterprises. For example, Cisco Systems Inc., the network-equipment giant, fields most customer service questions right over the Internet and uses a sophisticated internal network to let employees electronically file expense reports, enroll in health plans or check up on their stock options.

The connection is the connection.

We're in the midst of a radical expansion in the electronic connectivity of people with people, people with machines, and machines with machines.

``There is a fundamental change taking place in the nature and role of technology in business and society,'' said Don Tapscott, author of ``The Digital Economy.''

``In business, we're moving to new models of how to create wealth. In the consumer market, we're moving to new models of how to play and learn and conduct social discourse.''

The Internet, of course, is a huge part of it.

In the early 1990s, cable television and telephone companies were scrambling to figure out just what - video-on-demand, gambling, shopping - subscribers would want enough to pay for improvements to their networks. And all the while they were looking for the ``killer application,'' the real one was blossoming behind their backs: the Internet.

The number of Internet users worldwide, about 49 million last year, is likely almost to quadruple to 193 million in 2000, according to analysts at International Data Corp., in Framingham, Mass. In that time IDC predicts the amount spent on all types of Internet commerce will skyrocket, from less than $3 billion to nearly $120 billion.

The networking explosion doesn't end there. Consider the proliferation of extensive corporate networks - intranets, extranets and the like. And millions are being spent to boost the capacity of the public telephone networks and to redesign cable television systems into high-speed two-way networks.

Think wireless - 50 million people with cellular phones, nearly 50 million with pagers, new personal communication systems and multibillion-dollar satellite systems with futuristic names such as Teledesic and Iridium, designed to speed voice, video and data around the globe.

Consider the growing popularity of e-mail and of videoconferencing and of telecommuting.

Kevin Kelly, executive editor of Wired magazine, describes this profound revolution as creating the network economy. ``We are now engaged in a grand scheme to augment, amplify, enhance and extend the relationships and communications between all beings and all objects,'' Kelly writes.

What is behind these changes? First, the remarkable transformation of the computer from a desktop number-crunching tool into a communications device. ``In all our strategic thinking, we start with the premise that all PCs are connected,'' said Frank Gill, executive vice president and general manager of Intel Corp.'s Internet and communications group.

At the same time, the falling price and escalating power of computer chips have made it possible to put chips into a lengthening list of appliances and objects. Even if you're not connected to the Internet, in a matter of years your microwave oven or light bulbs might be.

Two other tools have accelerated the spread of networking. One is TCP/IP, the Internet protocol used to send packets of information from computer to computer, which has made it possible for computers at businesses and homes to communicate.

``All of a sudden you can make a lot of assumptions about what the other side has if you want to communicate with them, and we never had that before,'' said Audrey Apfel, an analyst at the Gartner Group, consultants in Stamford, Conn. ``This explosion starts with some very basic networking technology.''

Analysts credit the language of the World Wide Web, otherwise known as HTML or hypertext markup language, for creating a common tongue. ``The Web is a universal standard,'' said Bob Michelet, a spokesman for Cisco in California. ``It's what Esperanto was supposed to be for voice - the universal way of accessing information.''

Apfel, the Gartner Group analyst, predicts there will be a huge wave of investment in business networks over the next five years as companies strive to stay competitive. ``Immediate access to live data is what's going to allow your company to make better deals,'' she said.

The connectivity boom reaches into the consumer world as well, linking not just computers but many other kinds of devices.

Tapscott, who chairs the Alliance for Converging Technologies, a think tank funded by 40 companies and governments, takes this idea even further. Next year, he says, some shirts will have computer chips sewn in to track their manufacture and distribution. Potentially, the shirts also could be tracked to the purchaser, raising a host of privacy questions.

What happens when the shirt gets cleaned? ``The shirt'll talk to your washing machine, probably,'' Tapscott joked. ``It'll be something like, `Excuse me, you're not washing me right.' ''

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Photo

Photo: Employees at Wheels Inc. in Philadelphia use a wireless phone system to call drivers, transmit orders and make sure vehicles don't get lost.

Knight-Ridder Tribune Photo Service