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Although fieldbus systems are meanwhile an established concept, there is still room for future developments. Furthermore, fieldbusses are more and more to be seen in a wider context of complex systems. In this paper, we briefy review the histoly of fieldbusses to highlight the major infuences on their evolution. Essential driving forces for the future are identifed in the areas of building automation, internetworking, and microelectronics. With the availability of smarter nodes, the complexity of fieldbus installations will inevitably increase, which in turn will raise new problems. The main d $$ culties will be the development of appropriate tools to support the management of networks with several hundred thousand nodes. Security of network interconnections is another upcoming problem, and the growing system complexity also requires new concepts for distributed applications, such as agent-based or holonic systems …