LIKE everyone, the scientists and techies at Bell Laboratories have secret fantasies, particularly when it comes to speculating on how technology would transform our lives. Unlike most of us, however, the people at Lucent Technologies' cutting-edge research arm are working hard to make these fantasies come true. And, as Bell Labs' track record shows, don't be surprised if they end up discovering the science behind the most science fiction scenario.

"The great thing about Bell Labs is that you find people working on the craziest ideas, and what's even greater is that through the years Bell Labs people have actually made crazy ideas come true," said Joann Ordille, technical staff member of Bell Labs' Systems and Software Research Center.

She is also actively involved in the Internet Engineering Task Force, ATM Forum and Computing Research Association.

According to Ordille, sometimes we need to stop thinking of the Internet only in terms of current kinds of applications, as though a person or company is only moving to a new medium while retaining old methods and processes of doing things.

"One of the things I fantasize about is micropayments. For little pieces of information, maybe you would even be talking about microfractions of a cent as payment," she said.

While the technology for these kinds of microtransactions are already being proposed, Ordille said that this sci-fi scenario could conceivably change the way people view authorship and make it profitable for virtual communities to exchange even tiny bits of information. She said that the debit card model could be used, with even microfractions of a cent being debited from your account every time you buy a tiny bit of information.

"This might make it profitable for people to write small pieces on the Internet, like very short stories, essays and even short tips. Since the Internet brings millions of people together, it might be possible to generate profit," she said.

To bring even more people together, however, the challenge is for technology enablers to deliver higher bandwidth at more affordable access rates. Ordille emphasized that the new applications that we will see and the IPv6 (Internet protocol version 6) would have features that would further tax the routers that are already being burdened by ever-increasing Internet traffic.

"The need for higher bandwidth access is being addressed by technologies like DSL (digital subscriber line) and cable, for customers to get faster service," she said.

She also noted that telephone companies would have an incentive to deploy a high-bandwidth infrastructure to protect themselves and compete with cable companies. In particular, this would mean the adoption of an IP-based network for data, voice and video.

While we might think that the cool thing about the Internet now is that we can go virtually to a lot of places and do a lot of things, in the near future the network will be the one to go to you.

"The dream world would be one where the network always knows where you are and what you want. You'd have a network that brings services wherever you are when you need them. In fact, you'd be part of the network," said Rolando Espindola, technical staff member of Bell Labs' Optical Fiber Research Department.

Describing this dream world as "The Matrix, but you're not stuck to your chair," Espindola pointed out that the world where a ubiquitous network interconnects systems on a chip is already being born. These chips would be embedded on consumer devices_maybe even woven into our clothes or implanted on our bodies.

"Our microelectronics arm is already developing these systems on a chip, so even as we speak we are increasing the ability of networks to move closer to this dream world," he said.

In part, this dream world would be built on the optical networking technologies that Espindola is helping develop. One of the latest advances is the use of light in free space to deliver a high quality of service applications at high speed.

"Light will travel through the air, maybe traveling for a kilometer or so, and for that distance you could have broadband applications. The future network will definitely have to be portable, so that wherever you move, the network would be there," he said.

This optical network technology for free space environments would be used for different wireless applications, including satellite.