The Future and the Internet

Although the internet started in 1968, it wasn't until the mid 90's
that it came to the attention of the general public in the shape of
the World Wide Web. Since then it has such a great effect on society,
it is hard to remember how we did without it.

There are now suggestions that the internet will cause as great a
change to society as book printing did in its time; there is already
talk of a "second enlightenment". There were several hundred years
between the introduction of printing and the age of enlightenment;
will we be waiting that long or are there indications that it could
come earlier?

This talk will look back and forward, and see if there are any
patterns we can discern to give us a hint about what we could expect.

Steven is a researcher at the Centre for Mathematics and Computer
Science, CWI, in Amsterdam, and works with the World Wide Web
Consortium, W3C, designing future parts of the World Wide Web. He has
been involved with the Web from the beginning, organising workshops at
the first web conference in 1994. He has co-designed HTML, XHTML, CSS,
and a number of other Web technologies.  He was also editor-in-chief
of the magazine Interactions for the best part of a decade.