From buttoned-down basics (the details of online commerce) to the fringes of sci-fi (implanting computers in human brains), few stones were left unturned last October at a wide-ranging HBS forum devoted to an examination of the future of commerce. Dozens of top executives and expert panelists from the worlds of technology and e-commerce gathered for the daylong "CEO Millennium Forum," an event jointly sponsored by HBS, Microsoft, Forrester Research, and the Wall Street Journal. The forum was also the subject of an hourlong television program on CNBC, which aired later in the month.

The event opened with welcoming remarks from HBS Dean Kim B. Clark, who spoke of the challenges and benefits of incorporating technology into the HBS curriculum. Forrester Research's George Colony then kicked off the discussion with a presentation that focused on the evolving world of e-commerce, the next generation of Internet-savvy consumers, and how today's CEOs can transform their own focus and that of their organizations from "dot-com" concerns to a more sweeping "dot-corp" vision.

Next up was Microsoft president Steve Ballmer, who predicted that the fundamental technology underlying the Internet will soon move from HTML programming language to XML. Ballmer stated that this shift would alter the current Internet balance of power in which consumers are in a reactive position as they relate to company (or "publisher's") Web sites. XML, Ballmer said, will change business by making the Internet much more connected, pervasive, and easy to use. Greater customization will result, and the consumer will call the shots.

"Companies that return power to the consumer will be the ones that thrive," Ballmer said, mentioning online banking and advertising as examples of areas that will be profoundly affected by XML technology. Ballmer concluded by noting that any business whose product can be delivered electronically (e.g., publishing, music) will do well on the Internet. But all CEOs, he said, should ask themselves, "What is different for my customer about doing business over the Internet, as opposed to in the real world?"

In a panel on "Technology and Commerce," HBS professor David B. Yoffie elaborated on that theme, observing that the big challenge for CEOs today is "not necessarily to start something new, but how to bring technology into the very essence of everything they're doing." Yoffie added that in the near future, "we won't be talking about Internet companies as something distinct because the Net will be so integrated into everything we do." That integration, panelist Walter Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal noted, will be hastened when the "Internet is liberated from PC prison" and becomes easily accessible by less complicated means and is accepted "as just being out there, like the electricity system." As for achieving commercial success through the Internet, writer and computer industry observer Esther Dyson noted that it's one thing to attract viewers to a Web site, but building a persistent brand is a difficult and expensive proposition. "Online customers clamor for attention to be paid to them," she said. "They expect a high degree of customization and politeness."

The next panel moved from e-commerce to global commerce. In a session titled "The New Economy, A Global Perspective," HBS professor Michael E. Porter observed that, contrary to classic theory, "in developing countries, getting capital these days is not the problem; it's organizing society so that competition rules." Esther Dyson asserted that outside the United States, one often finds "a deference to authority." "Failure here is treated as a learning experience whereas in other countries it can bring shame on one's family or loss of one's job," she said. "So people elsewhere tend to trust or fear their government or their company; the individual has no role." In concluding his remarks, Porter noted two potential threats to America in its current role as the standard bearer of global commerce: U.S. capital markets could get too near-term oriented, and basic research might not receive sufficient investment.

In a more philosophical vein, a panel titled "What Endures" considered how new technologies will affect humans' experience of the world and of themselves. Declaring that a common "human nature" exists, biologist and Harvard professor emeritus Edward O. Wilson said, "We have inherited regularities of mental development that are hard-wired in our brains." For example, he explained, humans across cultures share predilections ranging from choices of habitation sites to preferred colors and visual forms. "In twenty or thirty years," Wilson said, "our knowledge of human nature will make today's knowledge look eighteenth century." Despite the possibility of abuses, Wilson believes this heightened understanding of humanness will "ultimately be a positive development," leading to breakthroughs in diplomatic, social, and commercial activity.

Another panelist, MIT professor Sherry Turkle, an expert in the sociology of science, noted that "new technologies are radically challenging our sense of the exoticness and uniqueness of being human." She cited popular children's toys such as the Tamagatchi and Furby ("machines that say 'you have to take care of me'") and children's belief that such machines can represent "a different kind of 'alive.'" Turkle speculated that what sets humans apart from animal or artificial intelligence is the empathy that stems from an awareness of the life cycle and of human mortality.

Panelist Ray Kurzweil of Kurzweil Technologies declared that in the coming decades, "we will recreate brain processes in nonbiological forms, and there will be entities that claim they are human because they will be copies of human thinking." As humans, he said, "we will put devices in our own brains to expand our own thinking so there will be a real merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence."

Harvard's Wilson postulated that the great ethics question to come is: "To what extent will we allow ourselves to become post-human?" Turkle concluded her remarks by posing what she believes should be the ultimate question for any new technology: "Does it enable us to do better as humans or to be more human?"

MIT's Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web, closed out the conference. Acknowledging that "we haven't yet made an information sandbox," he said that the Internet is still at a primitive stage where information does not yet flow freely enough, due in part to software differences. He urged the CEOs in attendance to "think what you want your company to be and tell your Internet people to achieve it - don't just follow the technology and try to adapt your company to it."

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