The Internet [Technology 1998 analysis and forecast]

The paper discusses the growth of the Internet and the World Wide Web, particularly throughout 1997. This commercial popularity has created a schism between the consumer community and those who use the Net for mission-critical operations, especially in engineering. The gulf is so wide that the move toward alternative Internets: in-house intranets, extranets tying in customers and suppliers, and even overnets, had pride of place on the networking agendas of many academic and industry organizations. The paper discusses issues such as design team collaboration, Java, groupware, multimedia, digital libraries and virtual reality applications