<nettime> Michael Dertouzos

[Pit Schultz <pit@klubradio.de>]

from: businessweek (through the rewired list)

Online Extra: Q&A with MIT's Michael Dertouzos
"The same people that were overenthusiastic on the way up...
are overreacting on the way down"

  Dertouzos is the director of the Laboratory for Computer
  Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a
  position he has had since 1974. Since its inception in 1963,
  the LCS has been a hothouse of technology innovation.
  Members and alumni have been instrumental in the development
  of the ARPANet, the Internet, the first commercial spreadsheet
  program (VisiCalc), the file-sharing program FTP, and the RSA
  encryption algorithm.

More recently, the LCS has served as the home for the World Wide Web 
consortium
and has spawned many innovative tech companies, such as Lotus Development 
Corp.
and Akamai Technologies Inc. Dertouzos recently shared some of his deep
technical and historical knowledge with BusinessWeek's Spencer Ante. Here are
edited excerpts of their converstaion:

Q: Is the Internet worn out?
A: This is precisely the reason I wrote the book The Unfinished Revolution. I
consider our present state on the Internet as being 5% along the way toward 
the
ultimate destination of the Information Revolution.

Q: What's wrong with the Web?
A: The Information Revolution is not yet serving human beings. We are serving
technology. The Web is a collection of exhibitionists and voyeurs, and I'm not
just talking about porn. Consider that 5% of people are connected, and that 1%
of the economy is online. We need to be able to do a lot more, and the Web 
can't
quite do that for us.

Q: How will the Web evolve?
A: The Web will evolve over 5 to 10 years. I see at least three major changes
happening. The first is in the area of natural interaction, as in speech. 
There
are over 300 startups in this area. A lot of this stuff is also going on in
computer science labs across the country. And it's very good stuff. One good
thing is that these applications open up computing to the Chinese and to the
illiterate population.

The next area is in automation. I foresee a 300% improvement in productivity
over the next 100 years. And another area is in collaboration across space and
time.

Q: What would you say to the people who say the Internet is dead?
A: Simmer down. They're the same people that were overenthusiastic on the way
up, and now they are overreacting on the way down.


MIT Professor Michael L. Dertouzos dies at 64;
IT pioneer who made technology accessible
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/nr/2001/dertouzos.html

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