By Johna Till Johnson, Network World, 07/18/05

Twenty-five years is a long time. In 1980, TCP/IP had just been invented. Ma Bell still ruled the telecom universe. Cisco didn't exist, and a tiny company called Microsoft had just bought Disk Operating System (DOS) software from Seattle Computer. In the world at large, there was the Berlin Wall and Pink Floyd's "The Wall," Ronald Reagan was elected our 40th President, the Cold War and the Blues Brothers' mission from God.

So if ex-WorldCom CEO Bernie Ebbers serves the full 25-year prison term to which New York Judge Barbara Jones sentenced him last week, he will on Oct. 12, 2030, walk out into a world vastly different from today's.