That will happen and probably sooner than we think

True broadband internet will let us reliably make telephone calls (VoIP) and watch TV (TVoIP) on the net. It's all digital, which means it's all about bandwidth. Forget ADSL - even the much-vaunted ADSL2 is not truly high-speed broadband in comparison. Broadband is best achieved with a fibre optic network, which will reach most Australian homes by 15. Within homes, a combination of structured multipurpose cabling and wireless will keep us connected - everywhere, all the time. A lot has happened in years. But the information millennium has barely begun. The technological changes we are witnessing are just the beginning - anybody under 30 today will see changes on this planet our grandparents could not even dream of. Over the next generation we will see the interconnection of all devices at bandwidths incomprehensible today. We will see the marriage of carbon and silicon, the merging of computers and organic life. Fancy a terabyte of data at the base of your brain? How humankind adapts to these changes will determine the fate of our species. The past years are not even a dress rehearsal. A good rule of thumb is - if you can imagine it, it will happen. The only question is: when? Five essentials Tim Berners-Lee, the man credited with inventing the web, says he's looking forward to the day when his daughter finds a rolled-up pixel by pixel colour screen in her cereal packet Rosetta Stone , with a magnetic back so it sticks to the fridge. That will happen and probably sooner than we think. Today we rely on technology to stay in touch and to do everyday things in an entirely different way from how we did them just a decade ago. Consider the following technologies and how they have affected your life. Mobile phones. Truly the communications phenomenon of the decade. There are now nearly as many mobile phones as people in Australia. How did we ever stay in touch before? Text messaging is even changing the grammatical structure of the language. Digital cameras. Film is all but dead. Our photo albums are in our computers - or our mobile phones. But will we be able to show our grandkids? Electronic images are more fleeting than those on paper. Email. If you don't have an email address in the information millennium, you are a non-person. Email and instant messaging is how the world stays in touch. It's also the preferred vehicle for viruses, spam and flaming (organised electronic abuse). Pay TV. OK, not a necessity, but it didn't exist in Australia years ago, and it's where the world is headed. But pay TV as we know it today is a transitionary technology - years from now, it will be delivered via the internet. Online banking and shopping. The banks aren't closing branches just to save money. The whole nature of banking has changed, thanks to the internet. The net is a giant shopping mall, where you can buy and sell anything. Amazon and eBay have truly changed the world of commerce.