- Most routine business transactions (purchases, travel, reservations) will take place between a human and virtual personality: `Virtual Personality' means an animated visual presence that looks like a human face but which really isn't.

And - by the year 2009, (the book assures us - and this may give some of you young fellows a kick) people will have sexual experiences with other persons at a distance (I'd wager a large sum to find out how this can be done!). And phone-sex will be a lot more popular since phones will routinely include real time-moving images of the person on the other end.

Incidentally, if you ask me why I use the / S/word my answer is I am only throwing it back at you. In what you call a `Backgrounder' which was sent on to me last evening while describing our Draft Convergence Bill you have quoted a Nobel Laureate who said that ``bandwidth is like money and sex - only too much seems to be enough: and its hard to say how much is too much!''The book goes on to predict that by the year 2019, (when, thank God, I will certainly be dead) computers will be largely invisible and embedded everywhere - in walls, tables, chairs, desks, clothing jewellery and bodies. Paper, books and documents will be rarely used and most learning will be conducted through intelligence stimulated by software-based `teachers.' People will begin to have relationships with automated personalities and use them as companions, caretakers and lovers.

By 2029, human learning will be primarily accomplished by widely available neural implants. Information will be fed mechanically into the brain through computers which will read all available human and machine-generated literature.

And by the middle of the century defining what constitutes a human being will emerge as the most significant legal and political issue - with the rapidly growing capability of all-knowing machines.

By the end of this millennium - ie, by 2099 - there will be a strong trend towards the merger of human thinking with the world of machine intelligence which the human species itself initially created. There will no longer be any clear distinction between human beings and computers. The reverse engineering of the human brain will have become complete.

How awful. I confess I did not enjoy reading this book.

But one thing I am happy about is that I did not read in this frightening work that in attempts to reverse-engineer the human brain, there will also be attempts to re-engineer the heart - ie, the heart as an instrument of compassion. I sincerely hope that those who try manipulating hearts with computers will be confounded, and will fail.

The book is altogether too clever - and I hate anything too clever.

Did you hear the story about the exceedingly clever Mr Bill Gates and the Dalai Lama? Since His Holiness lives here and has a keen sense of humour and since Mr Gates was a short while ago ``massaging'' our I-T egos, I can as well indulge in some good-natured slander.

...``One night, a Delta twin-engine plane was flying somewhere above New Jersey. There were four people on board: the pilot, Bill Gates, the Dalai Lama and a hippie who had boarded with a backpack. Suddenly an oxygen generator exploded loudly in the luggage compartment, and the passenger cabin began to fill with smoke. The cockpit door opened, and the pilt burst into the compartment.

``Gentlemen,'' he began, ``I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that we are about to crash in New Jersey. The good news is that there are three parachutes, and I have one of them!'' With that, the pilot threw open the door and jumped from the plane.

Mr Gates rose and said, ``Gentlemen, I am the world's smartest man. The world needs smart men. I think the world's smartest man should have a parachute, too.'' He grabbed one and out he jumped.

The Dalai Lama and the Hippie looked at each other. Finally, the Dalai Lama spoke: ``My son,'' he said, ``I have lived a satisfying life and have known the bliss of True Enlightenment. You have your life ahead of you; you take the parachute, and I will go down with the plane.''

The hippie smiled slowly and said, ``Hey, don't worry, pop. The world's smartest man just jumped out wearing my backpack.''

As I look through the keyhole at the new millennium, I have mixed feelings about this new century that started just nine months ago.

I see the line between machines and human beings (as we know them) becoming somewhat blurred.

The great question is whether in this fast-changing technology, human beings themselves will undergo a profound change, and how then would we deal with this: for one thing, they will probably become lonelier tapping away at the `mouse' for the computer to click.

The Internet, as we know it now, is an international network of inter-connected computers. It is unique - a wholly new medium of worldwide human communication.

At any one time, tens of thousands or perhaps hundreds of thousands of users are engaging in conversations on a huge range of subjects on the Internet. And as an American Judge put it - it is no exaggeration to conclude that the content on the Internet is as diverse as human thought.

It was only 10 years ago that a British scientist Tim Bernes Lee wrote the electronic code that taught computers to talk to each other: he is now acknowledged as the midwife who helped give birth to the phenomenon called Internet. From a single site, the web has grown to more than 8,000 million - all in just 10 years.

The blistering speed of change is truly phenomenal. Television took 38 years to reach 50 billion people, while Internet has taken only five years to reach the same number.

The Internet changes many things. It has had a dramatic impact on the world of business. Firms can now link their systems to those of their suppliers and partners, they can do business online around the clock, and can learn more than ever about their customers. Economics may be more productive as a result of personal communication.

But with the invention of Internet and with the new technology, we have created new problems again.

We entered the cable network phase in the 1990s and enacted just five years ago the Cable Networks Regulatory Act, 1995. Almost no sooner we enacted it (and had not yet fully implemented it) than we are now proposing in our new Bill to repeal and replace it.

We simply cannot catch up with modern technological invention - it simply knows no bounds.

And I will give you just one instance. There is a new invention marketed only about a year ago and publicised in the media in India early this week: it is known as blue tooth wireless technology which can be used for a variety of purposes and which will replace multiple cable connections via a single radio link. It will eliminate the need for cabling to connect individual devices. A blue tooth application is a cordless handset to your mobile phone. It can regulate whilst in your office by operating a switch on your mobile phone what goes on in your home. The name ``blue tooth'' is significant. It is taken from a 10th century Scandinavian king whose name was Blatand, which when translated into English means ``Blue Tooth.'' The new technology unites several different applications involving short range radio links and the name blue tooth was adopted because the Swedish king by that name also managed to unite under one political unit several different and divergent kingdoms.

With the development of such new forms of convergence, there are now apprehensions that technological development will increasingly make regulation difficult - at times even impossible - and this is why we have drawn attention in our report to the somewhat pessimistic prediction that the impact of convergence upon regulation will probably be far greater than the impact of regulation upon convergence. The great question for the future will be not how convergence can or should be regulated, but how regulation must change in the light of convergence. We have, therefore, preferred to adopt the advice of permitting amplification of the law by rules and regulations to meet the demands of new technological changes.

While drafting our report and drafting the Communications Bill 2000, we have come to realise how much and how fast information technology has outstripped the law. And it will keep outstripping it. This is one area where there is not even a desire among the knowledgeable that the law should catch up.

On the 10th anniversary of the creation of the Internet, its inventor Tim Berner Lee was asked about what he thought about on-line censorship and his response was, ``For me, the idea is horrific. You must be able to repeat anything on the Web.''

But then how do you control pornography? The answer appears to be (for the at present at least) that you don't! But we, in the sub-group, have left it to the great think-tank - Communications Commission - and deliberately introduced a provision in the section under Duties and Functions of the Commission - empowering it ``to take steps to regulate or curtail harmful and illegal content on the Internet and other communications services.'' You will say we are simply passing the buck. Yes, we are because regulating the content on the Internet by law seems to us to be a pretty hopeless task. Probably new forms of self-regulatory mechanisms will have to be devised by the commission and the broadcasting industry will have to be persuaded to adopt self-regulatory standards.

Use of national law to resolve national problems has become outdated with the development of new forms of activity - like the Internet in which national boundaries have become irrelevant. Law has become unsuited to regulation of Internet and information technology:

In fact, there is now a growing scepticism about the regulatory capacities of law itself - The utopian vision of law as an effective regulator of social behaviour has proved somewhat ineffective. Attempts to regulate social systems through law often seems to work effectively for a short time and produce consequences unanticipated by legislators and would-be reformers.

The answer is to develop new forms of reflexive law - command and control regulation is less effective than mechanisms for self-regulation - or co-regulation, by which the state requires an industry to set up its own standards if it is to avoid harsher and less appropriate standards set by the state itself. We have attempted to provide for this in the new Bill.

But there, I anticipate that the greatest demands that will be made will be on the members of the commission - if the Communications Commission is the lynch - pin of Bill, the members of the commission are the main protagonists of the new law. If they are not infused with the spirit of the law - new forms of reflexive law - ready to innovate persuade and take country forward - then this new law of communications will fail.