My two connections with Ditchley Park amount to having had to liaise with the estate in a former life about whether the Christ Church Beagles could roam over their land and "starring" as an extra in the Peter Cook version of Black Beauty, some of whose outdoor scenes were filmed in front of the house itself. And yes, the great man did cadge a cigarette off me - but I don't think I actually made it into any scenes!

But I have never been invited along, as Jonathan Fryer has, for a high powered Ditchley Foundation event such as on The Long-term Impact of the Internet. Jonathan doesn't tell us very much about the sort of ideas that came out of the event. I'm always slightly skeptical about these things because looking at the list of the rich, powerful and influential that are members of the Foundation, I can hardly envisage anything coming out that is not already the view of the "establishment" but maybe with such a speculative predictive event as this they would be more adventurous than I give them credit for.

But it's a subject that has long captivated my imagination, so I'll give some of my predictions here. I know of one author, a former international banker, who believes that the internet is a development with the potential for epochal change. The sort of thing that happens only once every few hundred years and when it does, those who look back cannot imagine how the world managed to function without it. His other examples are the printing press and the steam engine.

So do I. But because of the speed of development and more importantly the speed with which information flows as a result, this time the changes will be fast and almost unimaginably far reaching.

Never before have we been able to reach individually into others' homes on the other side of the planet in quite the same way as with the internet. We can now form communities of common interest involving people in diverse cultures and communities the world over. Many of the structures and systems humans have devised are to enable us to relate at a distance with people we don't know. Money is a mechanism for storing trust - you don't know the person you're trading with so you accept a form of exchange you mutually trust. Diplomacy is a mechanism for negotiating deals between whole peoples. Whole nations who have as diverse individual opinions within as any of us. Governments represent our "national interests" to other governments with their "national interests".

The internet, on the other hand, enables one to form networks of trust that don't necessarily depend on currency, to get to know and understand the individual interests of people in other countries, not rely on a "block vote" put forward by a government or a diplomat. And it can give us "presence" almost anywhere on the planet we want ("presence" is a technical term for what happens when you phone your bank in Stevenage and the call is answered by someone in Bangalore).

And then there's the ubiquity and velocity of knowledge. Previously we might have relied on people sending packet mail around the world to know what was going on in other countries. Even only thirty years ago journalists filed long reports after a few weeks' investigation into an issue and sent it all back at once - and that was news. Now we don't even need the journalist, even with his instant electronic news gathering equipment. Now we can learn from each other what's going on. And in the research and knowledge creation arena we have so much more at our fingertips - we can discover what others are doing, focus our energies and cooperate on development more easily.

So what does this actually mean for the way we operate...?

National currencies will be on the wane - many of us will be able to trade directly one with the other with no intermediaries, and trust our trading partners to reciprocate in ways other than perhaps through money transactions. On top of that other currencies will develop, such as the Linden Dollar used in Second Life that will become the currencies of choice for particular communities. This is just logical - I can trade with people close to me with Sterling - I go into the local shop and they accept that. If I want to buy from abroad I have to convert - which is a block and a tariff. But what if my virtual community is amongst people from many different countries? We can make our own currency and trade in that - or just barter trade credits within our new circles of trust.

Why do we need governments striding the globe as at G8 this week when I can discover what my friend in Ghana needs and send them it or find ways they can get hold of it? If the Taleban and the Southern Baptists got together in an internet chat I'll bet they'd soon realise they have far more in common than their respective governments make out! It seems at times that the very function of governments is to set nation against nation. When the peoples of those nations are in direct contact with each other how can that be sustained?

The way we work will change markedly. With "presence" we never need to be in a single place, an office, for hours at a time. Stripped of the need to commute or stamp our time cards our cities can become based more on mutual social and leisure needs than on employment and commuting needs. Instant knowledge of what others are doing elsewhere and focussing our efforts more cooperatively will lead to a step change in the rate of scientific discovery and dissemination of ideas.

This presents huge opportunities for the spread of liberal ideas and freedom for people the world over. There are of course some caveats. If influence of government wanes in our lives, the influence of global telecommunications interests and service providers, transport and distribution organizations, will increase - a big motivation behind my attempt to set up a "Wireless Oxford" initiative - to "socialise" local connectivity at least. We need to protect peoples' rights of access to these services and we need to create access where there is none so that as much of the world's population as possible can join in.

The dark side - or what might stop us...

There are some dark potentials as well. If governments do not recognize these new non-geographic communities as on a par with themselves they could become more, not less intrusive and coercive. If we are able to trade and create wealth in virtual worlds and offshore, they will be unable to calculate and collect income taxes - we will need to shift our tax base to something more tangible - like land, say (did you put money on whether I could bring LVT into an article about the internet?) If planners do not take into account these new ways of living and working we could end up with empty cities or slum cities as the digitally mobile decide to go elsewhere.

And how long is "long term"? Already there are many more people connected to the internet than are represented by the governments of the G8 for example. By the end of next year there will be about a tenth of the world's population armed with WiFi enabled devices capable of connecting them wherever they are. The tipping point is soon, certainly I'd say inside a decade, if governments see the opportunity and enable this by backing off a bit. But if they try and stifle it or control (which they will, with their vested interests in perpetuating concentrations of power, in my opinion) then it could lead to revolutions and war.

If Martin Luther was the author of the "priesthood of all bellievers" and the great upheavals the reformation wrought in the world, it is feasible to me that Tim Berners-Lee is the author of its civic equivalent, the "government of all citizens". And it is, to me at least, and exciting and beautiful prospect. But we must also boldly go into this new future and not have it hijacked from beneath or above.