RE: what will all you who work for private isp's be doing in a few years?

I, personally, was told, during a job interview in the San Jose area, for a position as a Forth programmer, that the desired outcome of the project was for the cable company to derive access information and purchasing information from the streams of electrons coursing through their cable medium.

Maybe I have been mislead,

Yep, you were mislead or more likely, just misunderstood what they wanted to accomplish. sam