USI 2009 Session

The digital civilisation is entering a phase of upheaval, with an accelerated evolution of the Internet world which is becoming a genuine "informational ecosystem". 

From Web 1.0 to Web 2.0, we have seen the rise of the "media of the masses", faced with the mass media's traditional pyramid model. User generated content competes with the content of the major traditional media (press, radio, music, television). 

New interface tools, like mobile telephones, open the way to "clickable environments" and to their many applications in e-commerce, leisure, tourism, medicine and security. The merging of classic Internet, mobile Internet and object-based Internet creates "The Cloud", the next world into which computing industries and the users of the Internet ecosystem will expand. This is why we need to protect our data and our privacy against piracy and viruses. 

In the future, new trends will appear: the extension of Peer to Peer (P2P) to banking, insurance and consulting; the arrival of e-books and the e-press in the publishing world; the development and rise of 3D printers for small- and medium-sized companies; and microcredit on the cell phone, are all evolutions which lead to new economic and society models and challenge the structures of our traditional organisations.