No.30   August 1, 2001   Ubiquitous Networks:The New IT Paradigm   Teruyasu MURAKAMI       The healthy balance among information technology (IT), the stock market and the macro-economy, which had resulted from a virtuous circle of various innovations stemming from the combination of the Internet and business boosting the stock market, and which in turn brought intensive investment in IT and resultant improvements in productivity leading to a buoyant macro-economy, came to an abrupt end in 2000, as share prices of dot-com businesses crashed on the Nasdaq market in the United States. Under such circumstances, the emergence of a new IT paradigm is hoped for.    The utilization of information technology by businesses had shifted from the era of mainframes to one of client-server systems in the second half of the 1980s. Then, from the mid-1990s onward, the Web computing paradigm has been taking root against the backdrop of the rapid spread of the Internet. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that the IT paradigm, which had evolved through these stages, would leap in one step to the world of exotic networks, which rely on the full utilization of wearable computers or paper computers. There is bound to be an interim IT paradigm before we reach exotic networks. Ubiquitous networks might be just such an interim paradigm.    Ubiquitous networks are an IT paradigm comprising (1) network infrastructures featuring broadband, mobile and constant Internet access, (2) diverse information equipment that provides access to Internet Protocol Version 6 (Ipv6), and (3) seamlessly linked interactive contents.    Japan is about to embark on the implementation of an ambitious e-Japan strategy, which aims to make it possible for 10 million Japanese households to use broadband networks of 30-100Mbps by 2005. This is thought to be an attempt to create a new IT paradigm, and ubiquitous networks can become a strong candidate for this new IT paradigm. Contents I The Stalled New Economy Paradigm II The Evolution of the Information Technology Paradigm and Ubiquitous Networks 1 The Evolution of Information Technology Paradigms 2 Ubiquitous Networks: The New IT Paradigm III Ubiquitous Networks in Japan 1 Multi-Modal Broadband Networks 2 Information Devices with Borderless Connectivity 3 Seamless Portable Content IV The New Direction of the New Economy GO to PDF