John Lamb's Year: 2001 - surfing in space

Those who have read Clarke's book will recall that aliens land on earth, alter the development of homo sapiens and then leave behind a megalith on the moon that is eventually uncovered. Open to the skies, the megalith sends a signal into the ether that is followed to its source by a space ship.

Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have yet to find a megalith, but they are planning to send the first internet server into space - to be precise, to Mars next year. The effort, brainchild of internet pioneer Vint Cerf, will be the first step in creating an Interplanetary Internet to relay signals around the cosmos.

Over time, space probes, astronauts and other devices will be able to communicate with each other and with earth via the network. Surfing in space poses considerable problems of time delay, interference and extremely narrow bandwidths and will call for a very different protocol to the one that Cerf originally envisaged for the Internet.

The Internet Society is hoping to put on a talk by Cerf on the Interplanetery Internet in London in June to coincide with the date that HAL, the talking computer in 2001, went berserk on board the spaceship. And cognoscenti will know that the letters HAL are each one letter before the almost as well known acronym IBM. Make of that what you will.

Microsoft will not exactly be going berserk, that would be out of character for that highly controlled corporation. But 2001 promises to be a busy year for the company. Not only will Bill Gates be hoping for closure in the long running anti-trust case against Microsoft, but he also plans to roll out a follow on to Windows 2000 called Whistler.

After Windows 2000 and Windows Millennium Edition who needs another operating system from Microsoft? You may well ask, especially when Windows 2000 is still finding its feet.

Whistler is Microsoft's effort to keep pace with Intel's development of microprocessors that use a 64-bit word length. The 64-bit operating system is intended to work with Intel's 64-bit Itanium chip. Whistler will also provide a single operating system for both business and home users with plenty of whizzy MP3 and wireless gizmos attached.

Beta versions of Whistler, in a 32-bit format, are already in the hands of reviewers and big customers. Both products are expected to be available in the second half of next year, but don't hold your breath.

Crystal ball gazing is a frustrating exercise, since the most exciting things that happen are always unexpected. Predictions that next year will be the year of ASP, or that the year of broadband in the home is upon us, are the IT equivalent of forecasting that you will meet a tall dark stranger. They may be true, but they are not a surprise.

As the real millennium approaches, this column, with its eye always set on the future, warns you to expect the unexpected. Yes, high-tech stocks will recover, the flood of spurious ecommerce surveys will dry up and there will be fliers on more wireless conferences to wade through than there were marketing brochures on e-procurement this year.