As we stand at the beginning of the 21st century, there are four main trends that are shaping the world of telecommunications, media and entertainment.
Those trends are digitalisation, convergence, fragmenting audiences and the growth of the Internet.
Everything is becoming digital - and therefore homogeneous. We live in a multimedia world where voice, music, pictures, moving images and data interactive media are all becoming part of the mix.
Convergence is happening in technologies too - between computers and TV, handheld devices and mobiles.
Mobile phones, for instance, have organiser, calendar and contact functions - just like handheld organisers. Electronic organisers (PDAs) can be made to function as telephones. Where does one end and the other begin? What types of network connection are best for them?
Content and communications streams are converging. Businesses that provide applications and channels are increasingly merging with content providers to make total services available for users.
This means that the same product or piece of data is likely to be found on different channels in slightly different forms. At its most basic, this already happens with films shown on television in a TV format, but the idea is even older than that. In fact it goes back to the Electrophone during the early 20th century, which broadcast live events over the telephone. Today it's happening with music that's increasingly available via the Internet as well as on disc or over the radio.
The next challenge is to make it all interactive and intelligent - so that the network increasingly understands what kind of content you want and offers it to you without waiting for you to ask.
Under the influence of competing media and channels, the size of each market sector is shrinking. The television audience provides the clearest example of this.
In the old days, everybody in Britain used to watch one of two channels - BBC or ITV. Each channel had audiences numbered in many millions. Now the TV audience at any one time could be anywhere - on one of the five analogue, terrestrial channels, on one of the scores of digital satellite or cable channels, or watching video or DVD.
The days of the Internet as a 'free' resource may be numbered. The sums that have been invested in new technologies and the multimedia content that goes with them will have to be recouped somehow. So will the huge sums paid out by mobile operators who aim to deliver Internet-based content right into people's hands.
There are other questions, too - such as how to ease congestion affecting the Net, how to manage the threat from computer viruses, how to resolve the dilemma between personal privacy and global security, how to reshape the Internet to accommodate the expected growth in network connections.
