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I manage this Web site and the following Web sites: Leslie (Blakeley) Adkins - my oldest daughter

Lori Ann Blakeley (June 20, 1985 - May 4, 2005) - my middle daughter

Evan Blakeley- my youngest child

NEW YORK -- The questions never seem to change, but sometimes the answers do.

Next week many of the men and women who brought us the Internet will gather in New York City for WWW2004, the 13th World Wide Web Conference (http://www.www2004.org/). They will debate the questions they've been discussing for over a decade: What's next for the Web? And how do we get there from here?

Dr. Stuart Feldman, IBM's resident visionary and leader of Big Blue's Internet Technology division, will co-chair WWW2004. He believes that the Internet has just staggered past its toddler phase, and is now entering young adulthood. Feldman also thinks that within the next 10 years the Web will be a platform for virtually unlimited computing and communications capacity, transforming everything from health care to entertainment, once again.

Feldman was a member of the original development team that built the Unix operating system at AT&T's Bell Labs http://www.larryblakeley.com/Computer_History/bell_labs.htm. In addition to his current position at IBM, he is a consulting professor of information technology at Carnegie Mellon University. Feldman also leads IBM's WebAhead project, a team of young technologists charged with predicting how the Internet will transform our lives 10 and 20 years into the future. He managed to take a few moments out of his busy schedule to speak with Wired News about the Internet's past, present and future.

Wired News: Do you still remember the very first time you logged onto what is now the Internet?

Stuart Feldman: I was one of the lucky few people who were on the Internet before the Internet actually existed. Well, maybe not so lucky -- I had access to Arpanet, which in comparison to what we have today was incredibly clunky and painful. Basically, if you managed to type in the magical lucky incantation, you might -- just might -- be able to transfer a file to your colleague down the hall. I'd much rather click on a link than type.

WN: So when you first saw a graphical Web browser, you were thrilled?

Feldman: Actually, my initial reaction to Mosaic was "Well, that's nothing special."

But within a few weeks I was addicted to using it. Absolutely addicted. Convenience is good. And when we get to the point that we don't have to think about the technology we're using, we've won.

WN: That's true -- and we haven't won yet.

Feldman: We haven't, but we're getting there. And we may be doing better than you think -- technically oriented people do tend to think about technology more than other people do....

Nontechnical people don't think about this stuff, they just use it. And it really is getting more usable every day.

WN: Where are we now in the growth of the Web?

Feldman: We're at the end of chapter one. It's been a long chapter. It's time to take a break and think about what happened. It's real, it's good and it matters. But it's not time for the confetti and streamers to drop out of the ceiling yet.

WN: Are you pleased with how the Web is maturing? Is it a well-behaved child or a juvenile delinquent?

Feldman: Well, considering the Web grew up unsupervised....

WN: Essentially raised by wolves....

Feldman: We can't really expect it to be civilized. I'd say the Web is still in many ways a bratty adolescent. Some people appreciate that; it's fun. Others prefer things to be more strait-laced. I'm one of the latter, though I do appreciate the bratty fun side of the Web so long as I can do what I need to do.

WN: Do you think the two sides will both continue to grow and prosper?

Feldman: I hope so. It is amazing to me how bohemian neighborhoods continue to coexist so nicely with the rapid gentrification of the Web. But as society increases its dependence on the Web, it will have to get more serious, more civilized. I don't want my life to get hacked. We have to find a way to get serious and keep the fun. So far, so good.

WN: So what will the Web be in 10 years? Will there be a huge, dramatic change, or will it be more of the same?

Feldman: It will be a huge change, but we'll also be coming back full circle

Arpanet was designed so people could share applications, not information. The idea was that I could sit in my office in UCLA and log on to use some program running on some big supercomputer across the country that was less powerful than your wristwatch probably is. But e-mail turned out to be the killer app, not application sharing.

Now we're moving back -- and forward -- toward sharing applications. The big change will be services, being able to do most of what you need and want to do in your life on the Web. We've already seen that happen with travel and banking. We're starting to see it with health care. Government Web services is about five years out. But eventually we'll be able to conduct much of the business of our lives online.

WN: Once our lives are online, will privacy become more of an issue, or will people just surrender the information because it makes their lives easier?

Feldman: People will definitely give up some control in exchange for convenience. But that will be an individual decision. It always amazes me how much information people are willing to give up just to get a discount or news of a sale. We give out so much information without really thinking about it, and for the most part it doesn't seem to matter much to that many people. But those who are particularly paranoid will be able to protect their privacy.

Privacy is something that each person needs to protect for themselves. It's a common-sense thing. You should know when to "pull down the blinds" when you aren't comfortable with certain information or activities being public. Security is something that probably has to be handled by experts, though. When regular people try to secure their network or computer they usually mess it up. So we'll see more security services as connectivity becomes ubiquitous and we move more and more critical information online. The underlying net will be much more secure, or at least portions of it will be.

WN: Just portions?

Feldman: Security in the future will probably involve ways of determining who or what your computer is connecting to. There will be "safe neighborhoods" online and not-so-safe ones. You'll be free to go where you want, but at least you'll always know where you are. Now it's sometimes hard to tell if you're in a good or bad neighborhood.

But it won't be all serious, I promise. There is meta fun coming too. The thing we don't know yet is what will happen when all these new features begin to interact. There are so many possibilities.

The 13th World Wide Web Conference will be held in New York City, May 17 to 22, 2004.