I had the pleasure to attend the TSSG hosted Irish Future Internet Forum in the Dublin Digital Exchange (part of the Digital Hub) on the 29th Oct 2008.
I say pleasure as I know behind the scenes there was a real tight deadline to the pull this one together and Kevin D. and his team did an excellent job to do so.
There were presentations giving an overview of EU & Asian activities in the Future Internet, with the Akari Architecture Conceptual Design for New Generation Network [pdf] is a quite interesting take on the societal considerations, future basic technologies, and design principles that should be used when designing a new network architecture. It appears that serious consideration has been given to both the top-down demands of solving societal problems and the bottom-up conditions of future available component technologies in the Japanese Akari, and its a programme I must take more indepth look at.
The EU approach is summed up with the video attached below
With the accompanying EU website on ICT reaserch around the Future Internet worth a visit.