For typical users, the Internet experience will change drastically over the next year or two. The hope is that the developments will reignite the industry. Up to now, the Net has been almost completely about viewing content or buying products over the Web, using a browser on a personal computer. In the next wave, the browser will no longer be a solo act. It will become part of an ensemble of software and hardware that uses the connections of the Internet to do much more than has yet been possible.
People think the Internet and the Web are the same thing.
Web sites will work harder. Travel sites will coordinate the arrangements you make online with the calendar on your handheld computer and automatically trigger the e-mail software on your PC to notify colleagues and family of the upcoming trip. Information on the Web, already increasingly accessible by cellphones and handhelds, will be everywhere. Web sites will turn the tables and find you, calling your home phone or paging you. The Net's connections will go every which way, not just from PCs to servers and back.