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Connect to a smarter world, courtesy Sun

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CIOL Bureau
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Looks like for the first time someone has come up with a logical way of

explaining the various phases the Internet has gone through and also dare to

predict the future of this pervasive network.

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Presenting Sun's technology direction, its chief technology officer, Greg

Papadopoulos not only gave a glimpse of what Sun thinks of the Internet but also

attempted to logically sew together the various innovations the Internet has

seen.

According to Sun, the real Network of Networks will be the Internet of

"things". Now to understand this, imagine your shoe polish which has

IP communication-capable granules in it integrated seamlessly in the glistening

cream. The shoe polish knows how much to shine and how much to stick to the

shoes, an intelligence it will pick up from the leather the moment it comes into

contact with it. So goodbye shoe-shiners!

This may appear to be a figment of the wildest imagination, but Sun is

serious about it.

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However, Papadopoulos says there's still time before such polish and leather

hit the stores. He says that before we get on to things that automatically

connect to one another, we have to build devices that connect to each other with

the help of embedded computers. In Papadopoulos' world, the Internet will pass

through three fundamental waves. We are witnessing the Internet of computers and

are about to witness the Internet of things that embed computers. Then follows

the mind-boggling world of the Internet of things (read micro-electronic

machines or MEMs). Papadopoulos doesn't stop at this. In the next column, he has

put a question mark. Give him a year and he may fill it up.

The Internet of things emerges out of Sun's very definition of Network

Computing which states: It is the decomposition and distribution of computing.

Now Papadopoulos encourages us to think as to what extent and how we can detach

and distribute computing control. If you let your imagination run wild, then the

entire globe will appear to be a network of billions of MEMs. And that's what

Sun and Papadopoulos want.

To prove it is not joking, Sun gave sneak preview of two of its futuristic

technologies, Internet Radio and Brazil. Internet Radio is Sun's solution to the

automotive industry to integrate Web services in cars while Brazil is an

experiment Sun is carrying out, which connects stand-alone devices from

refrigerators to coffee makers to the Web.

Who said Sun was all Java and Solaris? Take a look at the real Sun.

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