Historically, listening to people’s predictions about technology can be a downer.

We never got the robots that would clean our rooms. The flying car thing hasn’t really come through, either. And anyone who ever invested in the first moon colony can find a nice bridge in New York that’s for sale.

But after Northwestern upgraded dorm computer networks this summer, the future of the Internet seemingly took a big step toward reality.

According to Mort Rahimi, vice president for information technology at NU, the upgrade of the ethernet high-speed network has paved the way for students to watch high-quality video in dorm rooms.

Within several years, NU students could interact via video with universities around the world, Rahimi said, and within a month a massive archive of C-SPAN video may be online to serve as a powerful research tool.

The work done over the summer converted dorm networks from “shared” to “switched,” effectively giving each student access to an Internet connection they would have shared with about 100 students in previous years, Rahimi said.

One major program available now is the Video Encyclopedia of the 20th Century (www.nmc.northwestern.edu/videoencyclopedia), a collection of 5,500 historical and cultural clips. Once available only in NU computer labs, the network upgrades allow students to search the encyclopedia and watch video from their dorms.

(Watching the video clips requires the IBM Videocharger player, which can be downloaded from the encyclopedia’s Web site.)

Although students may notice only their e-mail sending or Web surfing going a little faster, Rahimi said major and very noticeable differences will be seen in the near future.

Digital video that NU plans to make available to students will be of television quality and the sound will be close to that of compact discs.

Planning ahead, NU’s information technology staff has massive computers ready to hold this digitized video. “What you don’t see is what we’ve been doing in the back rooms with upgrading,” Rahimi said.

The strengthening of NU computer systems is similar to ongoing work at many other universities and organizations around the world and especially in the United States.

After uniting four years ago to form an initiative called Internet2, universities, private companies and government groups have developed methods of transmitting greater amounts of information at faster speeds.

At NU, the International Center for Advanced Internet Research (iCAIR) was founded in April 1999 to create innovative uses for the new technology.

According to the Internet2 Web site, more than 60 companies are participating in the efforts and have pledged to invest more than $30 million during Internet2’s lifespan. Along with IBM, communications companies Cisco Systems and Ameritech are major partners with NU in iCAIR.

Because of online video research done by iCAIR, Rahimi said, the university will “be in a position to take advantage of it as society as a whole adopts it.

“The goal in the university in doing all of these things is to start putting in place powerful tools for all faculty and students to use as part of their teaching and learning experience at Northwestern.”

For the past several years, political science Prof. Kenneth Janda said he has used segments from the video encyclopedia, which was partly developed by NU, for his American Government and Politics class. By combining video clips with additional background text, he has been able to create a “multimedia approach” to topics such as Watergate and Vietnam.

Among several NU faculty members looking to add online video to their courses, Psychology Prof. David Uttal wants the new technology to give his students an extra resource.

“In my lectures, I use video segments, parts of VHS tapes. Nowadays students can view anything I use in class easily except for these videos,” Uttal said. “For the average student, that’s a pain.”

Visually impaired students, who might have trouble seeing a video in a typical classroom setting, would receive even greater benefits from being able to view videos on their own computers.

Uttal said copyright issues are holding up his plans, but if they are resolved before Winter Quarter, the videos will be “easily reviewable and in great quality” for students in his classes.

Several students said they would take advantage of online video to help in their courses.

Speech freshman Amanda Miller said she would use the video in her dorm room but only “if it was easy to use and get to” on the Web.

“It’s always a good thing to learn about new technology,” she added.

While he thought watching videos in class with a professor was better for learning, Medill sophomore Tim Barrett said reviewing clips would help him even more in his classes. “It could really drive home points the professor thinks are important,” Barrett said.

Planning to work in broadcast journalism after graduating college, he said being able to edit video online would be a good experience.

Although the ability to edit video hasn’t been produced yet, Rahimi listed that capability as one of many goals that could be attained soon, along with the ability of computers to intelligently analyze videos for spoken words and scene changes.

Visiting iCAIR’s private testing Web site Tuesday showed a glimpse into this future with several demonstrations of the group’s recent research.

iCAIR offered a preview of its video searching capabilities by using a video for setting up an espresso machine. To play the part of the video that mentions “beans,” for example, all the user has to do is enter “beans” in the search engine.

Although this demonstration and others on the site were developed by technology still unavailable to most people on the Internet, Marcel Kinard, iCAIR software engineer on assignment from IBM, said the general public may see the results of his group’s work in the next few years.

While these ideas may sound far-fetched to the many Internet users who log on only to check e-mail and chat with friends, the plans Rahimi discussed Tuesday appear to be no flying car or moon colony.

“All of this could be common technology three to four years down the road,” Rahimi said.