The prediction, in brief:

The Open Data Network envisaged by the committee will surely grow to … be capable of interconnecting every school, library, business, and individual in the United States, extending beyond that to international scale. The ability to communicate among such a huge set requires the ability to name the desired communicant.

Predictor: National Research Council

Prediction, in context:

In 1994, the NRENaissance Committee, appointed by the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the National Research Council, produced a special report titled “Realizing the Information Future: The Internet and Beyond.” Among the committee members were Internet pioneers Leonard Kleinrock, David Clark, David Farber, Lawrence Landweber and Robert Kahn. The committee’s goal was to “study issues raised by the shift to a larger, more truly national networking capability.” Among its statements about the blossoming of the National Information Infrastructure (NII), it says:”The Open Data Network envisaged by the committee will surely grow to … be capable of interconnecting every school, library, business, and individual in the United States, extending beyond that to international scale. The ability to communicate among such a huge set requires the ability to name the desired communicant. The Internet currently provides a 32-bit address space, within which it is theoretically possible to address approximately 4 billion hosts. However, as a result of the structured way in which this address space has been allocated, the number of addresses may be restricted to far fewer than 4 billion, a limitation that the Internet standards community is working to rectify for both the short and a longer term.”

Date of prediction: January 1, 1994

Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure

Subtopic: Protocols

Name of publication: Realizing the Information Future: The Internet and Beyond

Title, headline, chapter name: Issues of Scale in the National Information Infrastructure

Quote Type: Direct quote

Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://stills.nap.edu/html/rtif/

This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney