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Contents About this RFC Errata 2
In this section<br>1. The Internet is for everyone
2. Security Considerations
3. References
4. Author's Addresses
5. Full Copyright Statement
Home<br>Info<br>RFC 3271: The Internet is for Everyone<br>V. Cerf<br>Informational
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Network Working Group V. Cerf<br>Request for Comments: 3271 Internet Society<br>Category: Informational April 2002
The Internet is for Everyone
Status of this Memo
This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does<br>not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this<br>memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2002). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
This document expresses the Internet Society's ideology that the<br>Internet really is for everyone. However, it will only be such if<br>we make it so.
1. The Internet is for everyone
How easy to say - how hard to achieve!
How have we progressed towards this noble goal?
The Internet is in its 14th year of annual doubling since 1988.<br>There are over 150 million hosts on the Internet and an estimated 513<br>million users, world wide.
By 2006, the global Internet is likely to exceed the size of the<br>global telephone network, if it has not already become the telephone<br>network by virtue of IP telephony. Moreover, as many as 1.5 billion<br>Internet-enabled appliances will have joined traditional servers,<br>desk tops and laptops as part of the Internet family. Pagers, cell<br>phones and personal digital assistants may well have merged to become<br>the new telecommunications tools of the next decade. But even at the<br>scale of the telephone system, it is sobering to realize that only<br>half of the Earth's population has ever made a telephone call.
It is estimated that commerce on the network will reach somewhere<br>between $1.8T and $3.2T by 2003. That is only two years from now<br>(but a long career in Internet years).
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RFC 3271 The Internet is for Everyone April 2002
The number of Internet users will likely reach over 1000 million by<br>the end of the year 2005, but that is only about 16% of the world's<br>population. By 2047 the world's population may reach about 11<br>billion. If only 25% of the then world's population is on the<br>Internet, that will be nearly 3 billion users.
As high bandwidth access becomes the norm through digital subscriber<br>loops, cable modems and digital terrestrial and satellite radio<br>links, the convergence of media available on the Internet will become<br>obvious. Television, radio, telephony and the traditional print<br>media will find counterparts on the Internet - and will be changed in<br>profound ways by the presence of software that transforms the one-way<br>media into interactive resources, shareable by many.
The Internet is proving to be one of the most powerful amplifiers of<br>speech ever invented. It offers a global megaphone for voices that<br>might otherwise be heard only feebly, if at all. It invites and<br>facilitates multiple points of view and dialog in ways<br>unimplementable by the traditional, one-way, mass media.
The Internet can facilitate democratic practices in unexpected ways.<br>Did you know that proxy voting for stock shareholders is now commonly<br>supported on the Internet? Perhaps we can find additional ways in<br>which to simplify and expand the voting franchise in other domains,<br>including the political, as access to Internet increases.
The Internet is becoming the repository of all we have accomplished<br>as a society. It has become a kind of disorganized "Boswell" of the<br>human spirit. Be thoughtful in what you commit to email, news<br>groups, and other Internet communication channels - it may well turn<br>up in a web search some day. Thanks to online access to common<br>repositories, shared databases on the Internet are acting to<br>accelerate the pace of research progress.
The Internet is moving off the planet! Already, interplanetary<br>Internet is part of the NASA Mars mission program now underway at the<br>Jet Propulsion Laboratory. By 2008 we should have a well-functioning<br>Earth-Mars network that serves as a nascent backbone of an inter-<br>planetary system of Internets - InterPlaNet is a network of<br>Internets! Ultimately, we will have interplanetary Internet relays<br>in polar solar orbit so that they can see most of the planets and<br>their associated interplanetary gateways for most, if not all of the<br>time.
The Internet Society is launching a new campaign to facilitate access<br>to and use of Internet everywhere. The campaign slogan is "Internet<br>is for everyone," but there is much work needed to accomplish this<br>objective.
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