At the recent CTI™ EXPO Fall '98 in San Jose, California, I was fortunate enough to share a speaking opportunity with John Alfieri of Dialogic, Bob Schechter of Natural MicroSystems, and John Dvorak of PC Magazine. Dvorak is even more of a cynic in person than in print. His views of our technological future were certainly refreshing, and peppered with more than a few jabs at Microsoft as is common in his written columns.

Both Dvorak and Schechter made predictions about intelligent devices that will be IP (Internet Protocol)-enabled. These devices range from handheld wireless units to appliances in your home.

Looking For A Networking Standard
Novell has tried unsuccessfully to make NetWare the de facto networking standard in the home by aligning themselves with several large global telecommunications service providers. While the company got off to a very strong start, they have since quietly abandoned their strategy.

Although Novell failed, a global networking standard among all devices in your home and office makes good sense. IP is the likely standard given the absence of anything even remotely as ubiquitous.

Going With Internet Protocol
Perhaps the greatest benefit of IP-enabled devices is the ability for these devices to automatically download upgrades for themselves. This is not a new concept -- Selsius systems has been doing this with their voice/data switch for over a year. The ability to automatically download upgrades was a major reason corporate America was supposed to switch to the network computer. But with PC prices dropping rapidly, the network computer is all but dead.

The world of technology often parallels nature. Survival of the fittest means animals best adapted to their environment live to reproduce and flourish. As the environment changes animals poorly suited to the new climate die out while species better adapted come into being and survive -- likewise, the network computer "species" has been replaced by network devices which are better adapted to today's computing environment. I am not even sure what to call these devices. Is a cellular telephone that communicates over an IP network, has Web access, and manages your messaging and calendar called an IP phone, a network communications device, a wireless voice/data access unit, or some term we can't yet fathom? Perhaps we will just call it a cell phone.

A wireless IP phone is just the beginning -- what do we call an IP-enabled toaster, thermostat, coffee maker, or TV? How will these products work together, and will they communicate over our electrical wires, phone wires, or be wireless? Two predictions I can make confidently are that these devices will be centrally configurable through a browser interface, but will have an option to be managed locally, too.

Science Fiction, Or Nearly Reality?
We are not very far off from these new networked devices; within the next two to five years we should see a rapid proliferation of them in our homes and offices. With speech recognition getting better and better we will be able to interface with our entire house through spoken commands.

Visions of Star Trek that may have seemed so far off are a lot closer than we think. Technology exists today that will allow us to turn off the iron from our easy chair or the car. Three major issues preventing Star Trek-like technology from widespread adoption are:

• the high costs of this technology,
• the lack of media standards that will allow these devices to communicate over the existing wiring in our homes,
• and software standards allowing us to take control of various device independent parameters of each device.

Just as the Internet has spurred our economy by generating new business models such as those so successfully exploited by Amazon.com, expect the new wave of networked appliances to rekindle our society's fascination with technology and keep our economy growing strong for the foreseeable future.

I have a favor to ask of the designers of these new IP-enabled devices  -- build me a cell phone with a video camera and a signature verification mechanism that will forever keep me from standing in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles. The DMV is one place that I no longer want to boldly go.

Rich Tehrani welcomes comments at rtehrani@tmcnet.com.