Introduction

The previous chapters concluded that the information and knowledge sharing capacity of the BC industry lags behind (see section 2.4), and that the current ICT support is insufficient to improve this capacity (see section 3.5). The next generation instruments should promote improved information linking, generic Ontology support in data formats, generic accessibility of information and improved market acceptance.

In recent years, the Internet has enabled an almost unprecedented increase in available information, also it has seen great market acceptance. Following the success of the human-readable world wide web, data sharing and knowledge structuring standards have sprung up around the Internet, prompting the use of the term `NG Internet'. This NG Internet seems an attractive research target to analyse on its applicability for BC.

A large part of this chapter is structured around the notion that communication requires a communication medium, a grammar and a vocabulary. All three, looking at the (next generation) Internet and BC, are analysed in turn; with an analysis of eConstruct, which used many of the technologies, as a benchmark.

With actual market acceptance being important, an analysis is made of the development style favoured on the Internet and the open source licensing that has gained much prominence.

The first section starts with the Internet's basic technologies.