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INNOVATION
Growing earth's 'electronic skin'

By Lee Dye, 12/15/99

dvance the calendar 25 years. You're in your easy chair and your granddaughter climbs on your lap to ask a few questions about the old days.

She looks at the telephone on her wrist that can reach her mother anywhere in the world every time she says ''Mom'' and asks with incredulity, ''Couldn't you see the person you were talking to?''

The sound of her voice awakens a visual theater fueled by thousands of cameras and microphones surrounding a concert by the Rolling Stones (yes, they're still around). Instantly, the living room becomes a virtual-reality experience almost as good as the real event. ''What,'' she asks, ''was a television?''

Her father comes in and commands the volume of the Stones concert to drop so he and his colleagues around the world can continue their videoconference.

''You mean you actually went to your office to work, and sometimes you even had to travel to talk with your partners?'' the child says.

In the kitchen, the dishwasher is on the blink. But not to worry - the appliance has already consulted with the manufacturer and is busy making adjustments.

As the girl tugs you out of that chair for a trip to the playground, there are no worries about traffic. The computer in your vehicle will present pictures from cameras suspended over every possible route, instantly showing which would be the fastest.

That's the world of 2025, as seen by researchers at Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs in Murray Hill, N.J.

Avun Netravali, its president, says the world of the future will be embraced by a ''meganetwork that will cover the entire planet like a skin.''

''Just as our skin transmits a constant stream of sensory data to our brains,'' Netravali said, the global skin will use millions of cameras, sensors, microphones, and various measuring devices to collect and transmit data. Gone will be such things as waiting by the phone, surfing the Net, and traveling to business meetings.

Predicting the future is always hazardous, though. Current trends surely set the stage for many developments, but what is unknown remains, well, unknown. Who would have thought just a decade ago that the Internet would become so mainstream?

But when Ma Bell speaks, people listen. These are, after all, some of the same people who brought us the transistor. Here's what they are basing their ''millennium predictions'' on:

Communications. That long wait for information over the Internet will become a thing of the past, due to increased bandwidth. Bell says it's doubling the capacity of optical fibers every nine months, and recently announced that it had transmitted data at 1 trillion bits (a ''terabit'') per second. That's enough to transmit 500,000 movies simultaneously.

Miniaturization. Electronics are getting so small - a camera on a chip, for example - that it will be possible to put them everywhere. That should permit instantaneous monitoring of everything from pollution to rising flood waters. Bell predicts high-resolution monitors the size of an eyeglass lens, and wireless phones the size of a quarter.

Software. Programmers are creating software that can take the drudgery out of research by monitoring your work on a personal level. The personal computer of the future should know you well enough to anticipate your needs, and it will travel with you wherever you go.

All of that could have a downside, of course. Sociologists worry we will retreat into our electronic caves like so many hermits. And how many remote cameras do we really need? Every time you scratch an itch, will a million people see it? What about privacy?

And the toughest question: Once we get all that information, what will we do with it?

Technology alone won't solve all of our problems. But it will certainly change the way we deal with most of them.

Lee Dye can be reached by e-mail at leedyeptialaska.net.

This story ran on page C04 of the Boston Globe on 12/15/99.
© Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company.