The challenge is to offer services commensurate with this requirement so that everyone, thanks to new knowledge support media (virtual libraries, multimedia directories, universal browsers, image, sound and odour banks, etc.) will have an immediate, personalised access to the answers he is looking for: practical aspects of life, culture, leisure, health, e-business. It's simple and revolutionary. Like a generation that would solve the problems of the world…

Is new-generation Internet one that is completely integrated into our everyday life? New dependency or fantastic freedom?

It is certainly difficult to give a definite answer to this sort of question. We are only in the very early days of understanding not only what the Internet might change but also what it will contribute.

The Web is a place where everything is possible, with unlimited access to all cultures, an unparalleled training tool where people can meet and exchange information.

Virtual reality eliminates distance and time by restoring environments and giving our contacts new presence.

Communication is easier, information more accessible and everyone controls his path across the network.

But, above all, the revolution resides in changes of usage, in the sharing of the capabilities of information to the advantage of the internaut, user, consumer and customer.

Over and above infrastructure problems (the world bandwidth needs to be multiplied by 50 in 5 years) and content problems, even if vital, it is this new idea of society, this new vision, that of a customer, which is at the core of new-generation Internet.

 

Thanks to the Internet, we will be provided - and are already being provided - with unprecedented flows of information around which new communities are being formed and transformed: without distance or time constraints, we can speak to and see one another, play games and exchange ideas, etc.