M. Jan PRINS, Président, Internet Society, Pays-Bas
Intervention : 'Internet, a blessing in different disguises'

From small entrepreneurs to large multinationals, the Internet seems a wonderful business opportunity. Many young people are starry eyed in their single-minded pursuit of the next big dot.com. Never mind that the floor has dropped out of the NASDAQ today the Internet still reads as dot.com mania. From Red Hat to Atomic Tangerine the net is about making lots of money fast. When Time wrote the first cover story on the Internet in 1994, the big question was if the Internet, "a collaborative open network" will survive its commercialisation with its value intact. It has not. The Net seems ta have lost its soul. What used to be an environment where "everybody adds something for the benefit of all" has become a commercial environment where "everybody adds something for the benefit of their pockets". Ten years after opening the Internet to commercial use there is little left of the original values that crafted this infrastructure. Commercialising the Internet has brought tremendous technological advances. From a few thousand people to a superpower 250 million strong. From e-mail and FTP to the World Wide Web, Java, streaming video, auctions, secure transactions, mobile applications and intelligent networks. Today's focus on the business aspects of Internet almost makes us forget that the Internet really is about life-long learning, about education permanent. The gladiators of the network are not the dotcom enthusiasts but the people that master exactly this : the ability to adapt themselves to a life full of learning.