Towards a Future Internet

Final Brussels workshop

Ian Brown — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 04:01:51 +0000

In June we held our final project workshop in Brussels. You can now read our report of the proceedings.

MIT workshop report

Ian Brown — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 10:03:03 +0000

Here is a short report on the expert workshop we held at MIT earlier this year. Many thanks to the participants for their time and for contributing their notes on the event.

Tokyo expert workshop

Ian Brown — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 13:15:10 +0000

Image: Mac Funamizu

Our third and final expert workshop happened last month at Keio University in Tokyo. It followed the format of March’s event at MIT, with twenty invited experts from east Asia analysing our draft future scenarios and their implications for future Internet research. Thanks to team member Prof. Motohiro Tsuchiya and his Keio colleagues for putting this together. You can now read his report on the event.

Interim report published

Ian Brown — Mon, 17 May 2010 12:32:38 +0000

We have now completed our interim report. This contains a wealth of information on the project so far, including the results from the first round of our online Delphi survey and our nearly-finalised scenarios. We look forward to your comments!

MIT workshop slides

Ian Brown — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:42:46 +0000

Our MIT expert workshop went very well earlier this week. Thanks again to our participants: David Clark, Karen Sollins, William Lehr (all MIT CSAIL), John Wroclawski (University of Southern California), Karmen Guevara, Chris Marsden (University of Essex), Andrea Matwyshyn (University of Pennsylvania), David Reed (MIT Media Lab), Atanu Ghosh, Ken Carlberg (SAIC), Michael Geist (University of Ottawa), Eddan Katz (EFF) and Andrew Odlyzko (University of Minnesota). (Jonathan Zittrain was unavoidably detained, but happily now seems to be on the mend!)

Here are the slides I used to introduce the event:

Towards a Future Internet workshop

View more presentations from Ian Brown.

We will be posting a short summary of the event once it is written.

Talking net neutrality at EuroCPR

Ian Brown — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:36:25 +0000

I’m looking forward to the 25th annual European Communications Policy Research Conference in Brussels later this month. My colleague Dr Alison Powell will be presenting the paper we have co-authored with Alissa Cooper on US and UK discourses of network neutrality. This is timely, since net neutrality is a key policy variable in our Future Internet scenarios. I will also be responding to a paper on identity as a concept for policy design.

The State of the Internet

Ian Brown — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 10:26:52 +0000

Jesse Thomas animated this short databurst about today’s Internet:

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from Jesse Thomas on Vimeo.

MIT expert workshop

Ian Brown — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 09:33:13 +0000

Later this month MIT are kindly hosting our second expert workshop. Twenty invited participants from across the Americas will be analysing future Internet trends and technology based on the draft scenarios we are developing around Europe’s future Internet needs.

Many thanks to Karen Sollins and Sue Perez for facilitating, and to all of our participants for sharing their expertise. It’s exciting to be running this Future Internet event at one of the birthplaces of the ARPANET.

You can read a draft report on our first expert workshop, held last September in Brussels with a similar number of European experts. In May we will be holding our third and final expert workshop in Tokyo.

Agenda

0900-0930	Welcome and overview of project
0930-1000	In pairs/threes: review of four scenarios
1000-1030	Whole-group discussion (plenary room)
1030-1045	Coffee break
1045-1230	In three groups: isolating the key social, economic, technical scenario trends, and identifying their inter-relationship. How does the Internet need to develop to support positive trends and minimise negative trends?
1230-1300	Sandwich lunch
1300-1315	Groups report back
1315-1400	Plenary discussion
1400-1415	Overview of European Commission Future Internet actions
1415-1530	In three groups: identifying Internet-focused R&D and policy actions that promote positive trends and minimise negative trends identified earlier in day
1530-1545	Coffee break
1545-1600	Groups report back
1600-1630	Plenary discussion

Fighting over the Future of the Internet

Ian Brown — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 16:00:03 +0000

Interesting short article from Dave Clark in IEEE Computer: Fighting over the Future of the Internet.

For much of the Internet’s life, it has coevolved with the PC. The relative maturity of the PC could thus lead to the erroneous assumption that the Internet itself is mature. But as computing enters the post-PC era over the next decade, with mobile devices, sensors, actuators, and embedded processing everywhere, the Internet will undergo a period of rapid change to support these new classes of computing.

Trends in connectivity technologies and their socioeconomic impacts

Ian Brown — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 15:51:08 +0000

Lots of goodies from RAND Europe today. Here is another just-published report, summarising their study on Policy Options for the Ubiquitous Internet Society:

This report has discussed and linked together technologies, connectivity technology trends, socio-economic impacts, and policy challenges, ending with recommendations for possible policies and approaches. It launched the concept of the ‘Internet of X’ as a generic description of the multiple of concepts that express the trends of converging information infrastructures, increasing computing power and its embedding in everyday objects, the convergence of humans and machines and the growing intelligence of the web. The report should provide policymakers with a rich account of what the Internet of X may entail and what can be done to support its socially and economically beneficial development.