YOKOHAMA, JAPAN -- Harvey B. Newman thinks of massively big numbers - petabytes, or ones followed by 16 zeroes, and exabytes, 100 times larger than that - as he contemplates the volumes of data involved in the study of vanishingly small particles of matter.

Wawa A. Ngenge thinks of a much smaller figure - about 10,000 - when he contemplates the number of people connected to the Internet in his home country, Cameroon.

Newman is a professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Ngenge is Cameroon National Coordinator for the United Nations Development Program's Sustainable Development Networking Program.

They were among the thousand men and women from about 100 countries who gathered here last week for the Internet Society's annual meeting. The focus ranged from the Net as it exists today - barely present in some places - to how it will look in the not-distant future for those who can afford it.

All, it seemed, envisioned the Net as part of a solution to some huge problems. But the problems in front of the participants varied as much as the cultures from which they came.

Newman's gaze, like many here, is fixed on the next-generation Internet. He's among a global team of scientists who are struggling to understand the particles and forces at the heart of our existence, and they're putting together a "data grid" that will transcend today's technology collaboration and communications.

Geographical dispersal, among other things, makes it necessary. Some 5,000 physicists at 250 institutes in 60 countries are participating in the projects. The information produced when accelerators smash small particles together is prodigious, and it has to be crunched, then sent to teams and individuals around the world for analysis. The scientists are having to come up with new techniques to do all this, and they're going to be relying on the Internet of the future to move all the data around.

The data grid they're creating was one example of many ideas floating around an exhibit here called iGrid, which stand for the International Grid. Using technology that's already in use in academic and research institutions, iGrid was a demonstration of what's coming, relatively soon, for the rest of us.

It's all about connecting distant but powerful computing resources with extremely high-speed networks, the kinds of speeds that make the typical corporate network of home cable-modem connections seem snail-like by comparison. The point was to show examples of people using these things together to advance science, engineering and art, said Thomas A. DeFanti, director of the Software Technologies Research Center and Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

UI-Chicago was one of four institutions - two each from the United States and Japan - that collaborated to put the iGrid together here. They were part of a global collection of networks that operate parallel to the public Internet, at vastly higher speeds, both to help scientists do their work now and also to help researchers understand what will be needed to make such technology more widely available.

I stepped into a darkened room, donned some special goggles and found myself "inside" an airplane fuselage that had just been struck by lightning. This was a simulation for analyzing the effects of lightning strikes.

From atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii, Ryusuke Ogasawara, an astronomer from the University of Tokyo, explained via the Internet-video link - running on the iGrid network, which operates at high speeds on lines that are deliberately kept separate from the public Internet - how the next-generation Internet will make it possible to deliver the vast data collected by an array of telescopes on the mountain and around the world.

Michel Reilhac, from the Forum des Images in Paris, described a project that will warm the hearts of film buffs and historians alike. He and his colleagues have collected some 5,000 hours of film - commercial releases, documentaries, home movies - about the city of Paris, going back to the dawn of the motion picture, preserving it for posterity and making it available to anyone who wants to see it. Now they're planning to digitize the collection and put it on the Net, creating "a virtual Paris," Reilhac said.

The next generation Net will be with some of us soon enough - people who live in rich countries or who have access to the right institutions. But for the majority of people in the world today, even a simple phone call is out of reach, much less a connection to the Net.

Ngenge, who is trying to bring the Net to Cameroon, where about a tenth of one percent of the population is connected today, said the issues come down to availability, affordability and accessibility. Is there an infrastructure? Is it affordable?

For much of the world, the answer is no.

Even if the technology is present and affordable, it may still be inaccessible in other ways, Ngenge said. The technology standards that apply in today's Internet, "are not culturally neutral," he observed. "We are excluded if we do not speak English. There is very little content in African languages."

Do Americans control too much of the Internet? "Yes," he said, "but only for now."

Bringing the Net and its benefits to the world won't be easy or quick, Ngenge said. But in making it available, affordable and accessible - in giving other cultures the role they deserve - pessimism isn't helpful.

"I see opportunity," Ngenge said smiling. "We have to take up the challenge."