Trendy tech guru and Wired Magazine columnist and co-founder Nicholas Negroponte is forecasting a commercial explosion on the Internet over the next few years.

Content service subscriptions, advertising, and retail purchases, in that order, are making money on the Internet right now. But in two to three years, the rankings will be reversed, and subscription revenue might even become totally negligible, said Negroponte.

Negroponte is a professor and author of the best-selling book, "Being Digital," an Utopian look at the upcoming technological revolution. At a day-long seminar in Hong Kong on Monday, Negroponte doled out these bits of wisdom and other predictions for the Internet and related technologies in a somewhat wandering fashion.

Business on the Internet has already challenged the traditional models for advertisement and sources of revenue, says Negroponte. By bringing their business to the Web, companies can sometimes offer more services for less money. For example, Federal Express's Web site allows customers to check exactly where their letter or package is. This has let Fed Ex cut costs by employing fewer phone operators.

True to his main occupation as a professor and director of the MIT Media Lab, Negroponte was at ease in front his "students." As in his books, Negroponte avoided technical terms and instead used everyday anecdotes to explain the technology and illustrate his points.

Negroponte predicted that "intelligent" agents and filters will simplify our lives tremendously. "This type of computerized intelligence will come in the form of digital secretaries who will answer your phone and screen your calls," he said.

On the Internet, you will have agents who will be so adept at collecting information you need right then and now that ultimately, an ad would become news -- it would be information you needed at that moment.

But one crucial feature, global connectivity, Negroponte noted, was still hampered by limited bandwidth. "Infrastructure for the future has to come from fiber, not from wireless connections," he said, adding that wireless had much less bandwidth than fibre, which seems counterintuitive.

Turning to the Internet, Negroponte says the public has been too concerned about content -- how to create more, or how to censor the "bad" stuff. "They are not looking at money," he said. "Digital cash is going to be BIG!"

As for the perceived insecurity of electronic commerce, Negroponte says the digital world is intrinsically safer than the "atoms world" of paper money and coins. Money is trustworthy when it is in form of digital data; only when it comes into contact with humans does it become unsafe.

But before achieving the all-digital world, Negroponte said there were many obstacles. Most of all, computers are still too expensive.

Also, for non-Americans, the Internet is too foreign because the content is mainly in English. Negroponte calls English an "air-traffic control language." Internet content in different languages will grow, fueled in 5-8 years by "instantaneous translation" programs.