IEEE Future Directions
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6. Communications Paradigms
The Communication Fabric will have some significant differences from the infrastructure we are used today. It will be a set of networks, most at the edges of the main pipes, that will not just be seen as transport facilities. Actually they will have processing power and storage capacity, In a way they will be, at least in an abstract sense, more similar to what we call network when looking at neurones interconnections in the brain. Clearly thesis not going to happen in a few years, and not everywhere but can be seen as a trend.
Looking further down we will see that it will be more and more difficult to separate the communications fabric from its users, be they humans or objects. The very presence of a “user” and his/its use of the fabric will change the fabric itself.
We are shifting towards a self aware fabric, probably by the fourth decade of this century.
In this context communications will be local, in the sense that each communicating entity will be influencing and will be influenced by the communications. Data will be processed locally at the usage point and will be influenced by the receiver creating ripples towards the sender and in both sending and receiving ambient, This clearly does not mean that we won’t have any more private one to one communications but that also these communications will be able to affect the fabric. we have already been talking about rich communication media. This will bring our ideas of that a few steps forward.
In a way it will be like we will have the relevant information (that’s to say relevant to us at that particular time) in our ambient, what I used to call sticking communication paradigm, because Information sticks on the potential user. Since communication will be customised both in space and time to the specific user it will also be richer than the information sent from the sender.
Communications will take place between and among humans, between and among objects and between and among ambient,
