The Internet boom and bust cycle has left many perplexed about the prospects for an enduring communications revolution. Starting with the Web browser much was promised, but as the technology matured, surprisingly little was delivered. It became increasingly clear that the Internet suffers from many deficiencies, some reflecting structural and design decisions made decades ago and yet still fundamental to the operation of the network today. Other problems reflect the relative immaturity of some areas of eCommerce, while still others emerge from profoundly flawed business visions. This talk will try to distinguish between different classes of issues: technical, business and social, with the goal of understanding the real potential for a renewed era of network-driven growth and prosperity. The talk will be aimed at non-specialists who are comfortable with computers and familiar with the Internet as currently used.

Professor Kenneth P. Birman has been a faculty member in the Department of Computer Science at Cornell University since 1982. His research is concerned with highly reliable, secure distributed computing systems, and he developed software that now operates core components of the New York and Swiss Stock Exchanges, the Naval AEGIS warship and the French air traffic control system. Birman has been Editor-in-Chief of the ACM Transactions on Computer Systems and is a Fellow of the ACM. He also founded two companies in the Internet sector; one (Isis Distributed Systems) was ultimately acquired by Stratus Computer, while the other (Reliable Network Solutions) eventually failed.