KEY POINTS:
First, some ancient history from a bygone era when cellphones were only for businessmen and email was still a novelty.
It was 1995, the year a renowned technology luminary called Bob Metcalfe wrote that the internet would "go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse". He promised to
eat his words if it didn't.
The calendar ticked over, the internet stayed intact and Metcalfe - true to his words - took to the stage at a web conference with a blender.
He liquefied a copy of the magazine article in which he had made the unfortunate prediction and gulped it down with a spoon.
Those were crazy times.
Companies like Cisco Systems must be pretty pleased Metcalfe was wrong about the internet imploding. Cisco's global networking technology business generated US$34.9 billion in revenue last year and the company continues to grow as the internet's pervasive sprawl shows no sign of abating.
Cisco's annual Australasian customer gig, Networkers, attracted a record number to Brisbane last week, where one of the company's senior vice-presidents, Howard Charney, was a keynote speaker.
Eons ago (in 1979), Charney and paper-eating Metcalfe co-founded another significant tech company, 3Com. But despite that connection, Charney didn't bring a blender on to the stage at Brisbane. Instead he brought a famous YouTube clip featuring the Numa Numa Guy.
If you haven't experienced the Numa Numa Guy before, type "numa numa" into Google and hit the "I'm feeling lucky" button. What you'll see is a strangely compelling video of American teenager Gary Brolsma boogying in front of his webcam to a catchy Romanian pop song he found on a Japanese animation website.
When Brolsma posted his self-made video to the web in late 1994, he became an overnight net celebrity. Millions downloaded the clip, a fan website was set up and the overwhelming glare of international media attention forced Brolsma to go into hiding at his family's home.
Here endeth another salutary lesson for anyone considering posting anything online.
"Now this is a cautionary tale for sure but you know it's also a great example of how connected we all are," Charney told his Australian audience last week.
"A Romanian band, Japanese animation, a kid in a suburb of New York City, global media coverage, fans all over the world. It is weird, yes, but it's also powerful. It is a sea change in the way information gets passed back and forward."
Charney says the ever-improving quality of that information flow is one of the key trends in technology. Eventually we will receive communications not through a flat screen but in the form of holograms.
For now, however, Cisco's top-of-the-line internet-powered corporate communications product is a system called TelePresence.
This is a videoconferencing device which puts users in front of life-sized high-resolution images of the person to whom they are talking.
"It [TelePresence] is such a richer experience in terms of the context that it adds to the conversation," says Cisco's New Zealand manager, Geoff Lawrie.
TelePresence is so realistic, Lawrie says, he expects the amount of time he spends travelling to meetings to drop 20 to 25 per cent when the company installs its first New Zealand unit in its Auckland office in the next few months.
Lawrie says increasing interest in trimming corporate carbon footprints by reducing travel is one factor fuelling enthusiasm for the new generation of teleconferencing tools.
Several New Zealand companies are interested in TelePresence, he says, but the sales process will become easier once the Auckland unit is available so Cisco can demonstrate it locally.
But what about that next leap to hologram-based communications?
Charney, who is obviously not keen to follow Metcalfe's pulped paper diet as a result of unwise prophesying, has a slightly vague answer to what Cisco is doing in this area.
"You can't find this on our website because what I'm sharing with you is sort of a personal extension of what I see is the natural evolution of where we currently are," he says.
"There is no corporate structure which indicates we are going to develop that but I'd be really surprised if that doesn't happen and I believe that's the direction we are going in."
When we do eventually get there, hologram conferencing will no doubt be a powerful business tool.
But is the world ready to see the Numa Numa Guy perform in all his 3D glory?
