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FNS Introduction

Today's Internet was never designed to be a critical part of the worldwide economy infrastructure - but it has become exactly that. In fact, it has become a critical infrastructure element for Society in practically all developed and increasingly so in developing countries.

In the light of these developments, there are many questions today on how the current Internet will develop in the future. It is apparent that the Internet must change and that the change is likely to be revolutionary. In particular, it is expected that today's Internet will evolve into the "Future Networked Society". The inherent multi-disciplinary nature of this endeavour strongly demands a dialog among different technology camps, stakeholders across value chains and policy makers in this domain. This TEC will provide a stage for this dialog, bringing together high-level representatives to bring about recommendations and strategies to drive forward solutions and efforts to meet the grand challenge of building the Future Networked Society. Since many activities are underway in academia and industry to drive forward the development of this future Internet, the TEC will seek, through its liaison efforts, direct and efficient collaborations with central research activities in this area, like the EIFFEL (Evolved Internet For Future European Leadership) think tank, the FIRE (Future Internet Research and Experimentation) initiative, the US NSF FIND (Future Internet Design) and GENI (Global Environment for Network Innovation) programs, but also with stakeholder forums like ETNO, ISOC-ECC, and European Technology Platforms.