Chapter 11 – Summary and Outlook

Publisher Summary This book outlines the rapid progress of the Internet over the past 35 years, focusing on the explosion of the World Wide Web (WWW) over the past decade. This chapter describes that evolution by briefly discussing the key technologies introduced in the past years. By extending each technology forward along its logical path, the chapter suggests future directions of the WWW. Constant reduction in costs for the hardware and software needed to produce such content further facilitates this trend. New techniques for organizing, identifying, and locating relevant content will be developed. The network infrastructure will change to support the dramatically large number of content sources. New mechanisms will be introduced that protect the privacy of each individual user.