The rapid growth of the Internet resources, Internet use, and commerce on the Internet is impressive. Simple trends show exponential growth and, since this
growth is still in its initial phase, it is hard to estimate where an inflection point is that would lead to an asymptotic continuation. Still the number of users in the
U.S. is now so large that exponential growth of participants is bound to slow down, so that future growth will depend on increased use of services. Today
many of these services and their infrastructures are changing rapidly. The acceptance of novel services will determine future growth paths. It is here where
we expect that major qualitative changes will occur.

We extrapolate the quality aspects of current trends as providing services that add substantial value. Adding value implies having expertise in a domain and
serving a customers in specific areas. Having expertise in turn implies specialization, and hence a fragmentation of services. The complexity of the interactions
will rival the complexity of the traditional commercial enterprise, where each supplier of consumer goods or services relies on a wide variety of ancillary
services and technology providers. We indicate in this presentation some areas where new technology is needed, and where research and development is
likely to occur. We do believe that the inertia of Internet growth is such that the required Information Technology will develop in some way. By providing an
early indication of needs we hope that the development can occur in a principled manner.

Specifically we focus on intermediary, value-added information services, that can provide the infrastructure for future systems. Services that are domain
specialized can often share underlying technologies. Sharing of technologies will be simplified by having common interface standards, although semantic
interoperation will remain a challenge for many years to come. 

The analysis leading to this work was performed under sponsorship of the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO), San Francisco CA, an agency of
the Ministry of International Trade and Industry. The complete report, covering several other topics, as technology transfer, will be publicly available soon.
We have performed proof-of-concept research on prediction software interfaces for information system. Such software can aid in the projection of effects
of Command and Control (C2) decisions and allows alternate Courses-of-Action (CoAs) to be evaluated. Our objective is to significantly augment
Command and Control decision services by making predictive results of simulations and similar software as accessible as databases and other information
components. The motivating concept is that an interface language allows separation of customers and providers, and that the autonomy created allows
progress to be made independently.