COMMUNICATION The unpredictable Net: Is it time for a new one?

Internet2, a thousand times faster than the Internet, raises questions about the future of communication.
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
By some counts, the Internet turned 35 years old this fall. But far from entering middle age, it seems to be growing into a rebellious teenager who has no idea what he will be when he grows up.
It could become a safer, more secure medium running 1,000 times as fast as today. Or it could turn into a delinquent's paradise, where spam, scams, viruses and pornography drive legitimate users away. The Internet, some observers say, could collapse in the next few years under the strain.
Even if it survives, the soul of the Internet is up for grabs, other experts say. Growing concerns about security and commerce threaten its traditional openness.
"Some of the fundamental precepts built into the original Internet are no longer true," says Jonathan Zittrain, co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & amp; Society at Harvard Law School.
An open system
Originally set up as a way for scientists and academics to exchange ideas, the Internet developed as an open system that encouraged collaboration and assumed that the people who used the system were who they said they were. Early Internet users were much more concerned about "some pesky, centralized overseer who would rain on their parade rather than some out-of-control malcontent who was technically skilled enough to try to disrupt the network," he says.
Part of the problem is the increasing volume of spam, digitized scams and viruses. Another part stems from the major fight waged by traditional businesses, such as music companies and movie studios, over intellectual rights to digital content.
"One of the ways [the companies] are going to fight is to attempt to close off the openness of the Net," Zittrain says.
Last month, for example, the recording industry filed 761 new lawsuits against individuals for trading copyrighted music files over the Internet.
Add to this the fact that the personal computers connected to the Net were themselves designed in an open way -- for innovation, not security -- and you have something of "a perfect storm" of disruption that is going to require much more than just tinkering around the edges to save the Internet, he says.
Will the system really collapse under the strain? Most Internet experts don't think so. While concerned about the dark side, they're far more optimistic.
The Internet still "has a very long way to grow," says Leonard Kleinrock, one of the people who was around for its birth.
"In some ways, we're still in the Stone Age."
But the Internet of the future will be as full of surprises as it has always been, Kleinrock suggests.
"Nobody predicted the Web," he says. Or the impact of e-mail. Or instant messaging. Or Napster. "Those are the things that are hard to predict, and that's where I think a lot of the growth of the Internet will occur -- with these magnificent new applications that nobody thought about that the young people of this era are going to develop."
Much faster
Internet2, which today operates over the proprietary Abilene Network instead of the open Net, moves 1,000 times as fast as a typical broadband connection. It's being used by everyone from astronomers, who can remotely control telescopes with it, to master teachers who can see and hear distant students in high fidelity.
Douglas Van Houweling, the president and CEO of Internet2, says he once observed San Francisco Symphony conductor Michael Tilson Thomas coaching a young conductor via an Internet2 feed. Mr. Thomas told the student to take his watch off his wrist because it was weighing down his arm movement, a subtle observation.
"Music at the highest level is very nuanced, and you have to have [a] very high quality [connection] to make it work," Van Houweling says. The two-way interface is "very high fidelity. This is not your typical postage-stamp video conference."