Opportunities and Challenges in the Digital Economy: an Agenda for the Next-generation Internet

我们提出了一个研究集群，以探索数字经济的机遇和挑战。互联网正在推动媒体、设备和基础设施供应方面的许多强大融合。这些融合带来的前景是，下一代互联网将成为一个非常强大和通用的平台，在这里可以进行大量的经济和社会活动。鉴于互联网的普遍性，这个平台将打破商业和公众之间的传统区别，任何行业的任何人都可以成为这些服务的提供者或使用者。如果正确认识到这些发展，这些发展可能会带来可观的好处。然而，它们不会自动发生，在完全实现它们之前，有许多问题需要解决。鉴于互联网的性质，这些问题既是技术问题，也是经济、社会、法律和监管问题。最重要的是，我们共同解决了这些问题，提供了一个全面和完整的解决方案。我们组建了一个多学科联盟，成员包括解决这些问题所需的所有领域的有才华和经验的研究人员，并与下一代互联网的主要利益相关者建立了关系。该集群由帝国理工学院、牛津大学和南安普顿大学领导。研究专题组将进行公开调查，以确定需要处理的主题，并制定解决这些问题的路线图或研究和发展议程。该专题组建议在一年研究的开始和结束时举办两次公开讲习班，以使社区尽可能多地参与进来，并设立专家工作组来处理关键问题。所有这些讨论都将以公开的方式进行，使用Web 2.0社区网络技术。这些讨论的结果将是一系列相关行动计划，以推动数字经济的发展。这些将包括多学科研究计划、商业开发、社会或法律行动或监管建议。研究集群还将被用来确定最适合推进这些建议的联盟，同样是研究和商业联盟。

We propose a Research Cluster to explore the opportunities and challenges of the Digital Economy. The Internet is driving many powerful convergences in media, devices and infrastructure provision. These convergences hold the promise that the next-generation Internet could be a very powerful and universal platform where a great deal of economic and social activity could take place. Given the universal nature of the Internet this platform would break down the traditional distinctions between, say business and the general public, and anyone from any sector could be a provider or a user of these services.If properly realised the benefits from these developments could be considerable. However, they will not happen automatically, there are many issues that need to be tackled before they can be fully achieved. Given the nature of the Internet these issues are as much economic, social, legal and regulatory as they are technical and, critically, these issues have been tackled together to provide an holistic and complete solution.We have assembled a multi-disciplinary consortium that includes talented and experienced research workers in all the fields necessary to address these issues and have established relationships with major stakeholders in the next-generation Internet. The Cluster is led by Imperial College, the University of Oxford and the University of Southampton. The Research Cluster would conduct an open investigation to identify the topics that need to be addressed and produce a roadmap or research and development agenda to tackle them. The Cluster proposes to hold two open workshops at the beginning and end of the one year study to involve the community as much as possible and to create expert Working Groups to address the critical issues. All these deliberations will be conducted in an open manner using Web 2.0 community networking techniques.The outputs of these deliberations will a programme of linked actions to drive forward the development of the Digital Economy. These will comprise multi-disciplinary research programmes, commercial exploitations, social or legal actions or regulatory recommendations. The Reserch Cluster will also be used to identify the coalitions, again both research and commercial, best suited to take forward these proposals.