University Times

The international network of computer networks called the Internet has the potential to produce "the ultimate open society" — a world in which virtually everyone will have access to a computer and, therefore, the power to communicate almost instantaneously with anyone else regardless of geography and even language barriers, said the keynote speaker at Pitt's Founders Day symposium on Feb. 27.

Anthony Rutkowski is executive director of the Internet Society, an international organization that fosters development of Internet technologies, networks, applications and use.

Rutkowski's organization doesn't regulate or control the Internet. No one can, he pointed out.

One of the reasons the Internet represents a profound revolution in human communication, Rutkowski said, is that it is history's first example of a "bottom-up" communication infrastructure. No company, government or lone genius invented or imposed the Internet. Despite elaborate plans by U.S. government agencies and other official entities, the Internet evolved essentially through a combination of rapid technological advancements, commercial competition and individual initiative, Rutkowski said.

"Information infrastructure today is no longer what you get handed by the telephone companies or big computer companies. Today, the most significant information infrastructure is likely to be what you put in your shopping basket at the local computer supermarket, and then go boot up and operate yourself," he said.

"This is not to say that all top-down infrastructure is meaningless or frivolous, any more than it is to say that all bottom-up infrastructure works. But we've discovered that bottom-up infrastructure succeeds very efficiently and quite spectacularly." Since 1973, when the first rough outline of the Internet was sketched on a restaurant napkin, the Internet has grown exponentially: 1,000 connected computers by 1984, five million by January 1995, and a projected 100 million by the end of the century, Rutkowski said. This last projection is "very realizable," he said, because virtually all of the popular computer operating systems now have Internet capability built into them. And nearly every telecommunications service in the world offers Internet service or soon will.

"These developments will allow anyone with basically any kind of personal computer to plug into the Internet," said Rutkowski.

Ninety countries now have at least one Internet "backbone" (the United States has six) and another 70 have some limited connection to the Internet, said Rutkowski. Mongolia, one of the countries not yet connected, soon will be, he said; 400 Mongolians have applied for hookups.

Among the world's "netplexes" (metropolitan-scale "cybercities" of Internet users), Pittsburgh ranks 21st with 235 registered networks as of mid-1994, Rutkowski noted.

For the foreseeable future, he said, Internet growth won't be limited by shortages of the fiberoptic cable and satellite technology that transmits messages among the tens of thousands of Internet networks. "The underlying, basic physical transport capability, by and large, is not an issue, although cost often is." As for the World Wide Web of Internet linkages, Rutkowski noted: "If the current growth pattern persists, it is calculated that in three years, World Wide Web traffic will exceed the entire world voice communication traffic." The Web transcends time zones and national borders. Within a decade or so, cheap software may be available to translate typed messages, almost instantly, from one language to another; Japanese companies are leading the way in translation software research, according to Rutkowski.

"The effects of large-scale networking on enterprises, institutions and people are only now being realized," he said. "Traditional barriers, whether they are reporting hierarchies, institutions, countries or geography, are being obliterated." As for the future, Rutkowski said: "I think it seems meaningless to talk about what's after the Internet, which is not an uncommon question. It's not any more meaningful than to ask what's after the telephone. As long as we have computers speaking to other computers and we have distributed networks, we'll have the Internet.

"Indeed, 100 years from now, history may well record the emergence and implementation of the Internet as a profound turning point in the evolution of human communications, of much greater significance than the creation of the printing press. No other form of human communication other than actual meetings allows people to actually interact with other people, in a collaborative fashion, in such short time scales." Based on Rutkowski's presentation and the brief question-and-answer session that followed, the standing-room-only audience in the William Pitt Union Assembly Room was packed with Internet true believers. Nothing was said of the Internet's possible downside: its implications for personal privacy, "cyberporn" and free speech issues, or the likelihood of "cybercash" transactions fostering the kind of rogue financial dealing that sunk London's Barings PLC last week.

One audience member did ask about the Internet's potential for deepening divisions between the world's haves and have-nots. The poorer the country, Rutkowski acknowledged, the less likely it is linked to the Internet. Even in the United States, poor people and residents of rural areas have less Internet access, he noted. Access inequities are "difficult to get around," although special subsidies and private or government programs could help, Rutkowski said.

— Bruce Steele