Emerging Technologies News Conference on the Future of the Internet in Prague Conference on the Future of the Internet in Prague
- 11/05/2009
As part of the Czech presidency of the European Union, the Future of the Internet Conference was held in Prague on 11 -13 May 2009. Its objectives were to analyse the strategic guidelines and trends shaping future Internet- and Online Mobility-based social and economic developments and to put forward ideas and projects of interest in this area.
This conference comes at a time when the Internet as we know it has been identified as being at a crossroads. Interactive and collaborative Internet applications are growing like wildfire. Mobility has emerged as a key social requirement. More than ever before, an increasing number of businesses and services are Internet-centred: transport, health, energy and the environment, oil and gas, banks, entertainment. However, people are increasingly realising that the current architectural Internet technologies may not be able to support such wide-ranging growth from an information service to a critical infrastructure on which lives and economies depend.
Responding to increasing demand and being ready for future needs will require more than incremental development of network and service infrastructure. Instead, the need for major transformations bringing a host of technical, economic, social and governance challenges has to be pre-empted.
This conference is part of a larger movement. In actual fact, the Bled Declaration on 31 March 2008 launched a European approach to dealing with the Future of the Internet and set up the Future Internet Assembly. The i2010 Conference – Information Society at the Crossroads also took place under the Slovene Presidency. The French Presidency organised the Internet of Things – Future Internet International Conference in Nice, following on from the "On RFID – The next step to THE INTERNET OF THINGS" Conference and Exhibition organised by the Portuguese Presidency on 15 -16 November 2007 in Lisbon, and the "RFID: Towards the internet of things" Conference organised by the German Presidency on 25 -26 June 2007 in Berlin.
The launch meeting for the FIF – Future Internet Forum was held on 12 May 2009 (see Launch of the Future Internet Forum in Prague), focussing on R&D and innovation policies to enable Member States and Associate Countries to exchange best-practices and experience, to overcome fragmentation of efforts and to seek to forge cross-cutting synergies for programmes and initiatives financed at national and EU level.
For more information, visit the European Future Internet Portal and the EC website on the Future of the Internet.