The end of the beginning

It's hard not to be dazzled by the growth of the Internet. A novelty only a few years ago, it now has become pervasive and, some would argue, pivotal to our professional and personal lives. Just about everyone seems to surf the Web and send e-mail. An astounding amount of information already is available on-line. Still, Internet sites and services prodigiously proliferate, along with corporate internal networks (intranets). When will we reach saturation?

Certainly not for quite a while. Without a doubt, current on-line resources, as well as the capabilities and uses of the Internet, will appear rudimentary and unsophisticated not too many years from now.

Right now, for instance, chemical engineers rely on the Internet mainly to receive information and for e-mail, according to our recent survey (see p. 93), with e-mail considered the most-important use today. That is bound to change dramatically. Indeed, our respondents foresee the most-valuable long-term role of the Internet being that of enabling people to easily and effectively collaborate, regardless of where, when, and for whom they work.

Few of us probably would be flabbergasted in a few years to find that design projects involve extensive on-line collaboration among equipment vendors, engineering and construction firms, and operating companies. Likewise, it probably would be a safe bet to expect that plant operations will entail close on-line cooperation among plant owners, raw material and hardware suppliers, and customers. After all, such moves already are starting, and they promise dramatic economic benefits.

Similarly, we can reasonably anticipate that the ability to collaborate effectively on-line will translate into broad flexibility in the way that many chemical engineers do their jobs - but, also, that this will pose new burdens and will require more discipline to keep work from overwhelming personal life.

Yet, we shouldn't rule out some significant surprises.

After all, one of the wonders of the Internet is how rapidly it is evolving, not just in what it delivers, but how. We surely can expect much faster connections as well as powerful wireless devices. But, we probably can't foresee or even imagine some of the other developments that will occur in the technology underpinning the Internet. And, that new technology, in turn, undoubtedly will open up undreamt of opportunities for chemical engineers and chemical engineering.

Truly, we're now only witnessing the end of the beginning of our use of the Internet.

[Author Affiliation]

Mark Rosenzweig

Editor-in-Chief

markr@aiche.org