The Internet: more than we can imagine.

• Author: Partick, John
• Position: Business use of Internet - Cover Story

"I can do what?" Take it from the guru of Internet technology at IBM: We won't recognize ourselves in a few years.

Okay, what's really going on with the Internet? At the highest level, it's fairly simple: We've just begun. Sure, when you're exchanging web site addresses at the watercooler, it seems everybody is connected to the Internet, but in reality, the number of people hooked up right now, as a percentage of the world's population, rounds off to zero. Yes, zero. In effect, nobody is connected.

So how do you take advantage of that fact? How do you thrive in this exciting world we're moving in to? First and foremost, start simple. The Internet isn't something to study; it's something to do. There's nothing wrong with having a grand plan, but implementing it may be impossible, because while you're wrapped up in the implementation, your competition is moving very rapidly ahead of you.

It's much better to work from the outside in. Remember, that's where all the people are, and they're the ones with the power. Get connected with those people. Then work your way back in through bridges, connectors and gateways to existing applications. You can re-engineer the applications when you get a chance, but don't insist you do that first.

Build on a framework. Web sites today are mainstream, and the design of these sites is just as critical as the most important, most sophisticated systems in existence. They need to be [inches]7 x 24[inches] (supported seven days a week, 24 hours a day), reliable, available, secure and manageable, because things do go wrong. And companies need to be able to manage through the problems. In large companies today, if an application hiccups, somebody's pager goes off. That same discipline and architectural approach must be applied to the web. The days of surfing around for enjoyment are gone. This is serious stuff.

Here are the hot buttons.

* Instant messaging

Instant messaging is the concept of having a "buddy" list of people, whether they're part of your company, part of your family or part of an outside organization, whose names are on your screen. If a name is highlighted, that means that person is connected to the Internet right now, somewhere. You may not know where they are, but they're connected. So if you click on the name and type a message, that person gets the message immediately. It's not e-mail, and it doesn't replace e-mail. It's a supplement to e-mail, a new way of leveraging communications and a very quick, efficient way to ask a question and get an answer.

Today, tens of millions of people - most of them 15 or 16 years old use instant messaging. But this concept is moving inside all kinds of organizations, and it's having a profound impact on how people work together.

* Habla Espanol?

Another innovation that's potentially profound for business is language-translation technology, especially when you need to reach across cultural boundaries. For instance, there are prototypes of technology that allow me to type a question in English to a colleague in Spain and my message automatically will translate to Spanish; when the reply, in Spanish, comes back to me, it will appear in English. What's more, if you use text-to-speech technology, the messages will be translated and played back in the appropriate language.

Think about the potential of this technology in a customer-service environment. You'll be able to ask a question in your language and have the person most knowledgeable about that question hear it and answer it in his language. It offers a tremendous opportunity to break down cultural and language barriers in the commercial or educational world.

* Kids

Children are playing an interesting part in the technology phenomenon, too. Look at Lego, a company that's been around for many years creating little pieces of plastic that snap together to make different objects. Now, inside one of those little pieces of plastic is a computer that can store five programs. Each program has multi-processing capabilities. It can sense light, sense motion and be programmed to react in certain ways. Kids of all ages are experimenting with this new technology.

Think of the implications of children growing up interacting with technology of this type. Their expectations are expanding rapidly. They know what's possible. They've mastered the video games. They take for granted this world of interaction.

So what kind of e-business applications will today's children expect? Can you imagine teenagers five years from now going to the branch office of any kind of company, sitting down and filling out a three-part form to enroll in something? It won't happen.

* Reading, writing ...

In the educational arena, profound changes also are...