http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5370688.stm

Quote :

"Internet's future in 2020 debated The internet will be a thriving, low-cost network of billions of devices by 2020, says a major survey of leading technology thinkers. The Pew report on the future internet surveyed 742 experts in the fields of computing, politics and business. More than half of respondents had a positive vision of the net's future but 46% had serious reservations. Almost 60% said that a counter culture of Luddites would emerge, some resorting to violence. The Pew Internet and American Life report canvassed opinions from the experts on seven broad scenarios about the future internet, based on developments in the technology in recent years. Written responses The correspondents were also able to qualify their answers with written responses giving more detail. "Key builders of the next generation of internet often agree on the direction technology will change, but there is much less agreement about the social and political impact those changes will have," said Janna Quitney Anderson, lead author of the report The Future of the Internet II. She added: "One of their big concerns is: Who controls the internet architecture they have created?" Bob Metcalfe, founder of 3Com and the inventor of ethernet, predicted the net would be a global connection of different devices. "The internet will have gone beyond personal communications," by 2020 he wrote. 'Embedded micros' "Many more of today's 10 billion new embedded micros per year will be on the internet." Louis Nauges, president of Microcost, a French information technology firm, saw mobile devices at the forefront of the net. "Mobile internet will be dominant," he explained. "By 2020, most mobile networks will provide one-gigabit-per-second-minimum speed, anywhere, anytime. "Dominant access tools will be mobile, with powerful infrastructure characteristics. All applications will come from the net." But not everyone felt a "networked nirvana" would be possible by 2020. Concerns over interoperability (different formats working together), government regulation and commercial interests were seen as key barriers to a universal internet. Ian Peter, Australian leader of the Internet Mark II Project, wrote: "The problem of the digital divide is too complex and the power of legacy telco regulatory regimes too powerful to achieve this utopian dream globally within 15 years." 'Real interoperability' Author and social commentator Douglas Rushkoff agreed with Mr Peter. He wrote: "Real interoperability will be contingent on replacing our bias for competition with one for collaboration. "Until then, economics do not permit universal networking capability." Many of the surveyed experts predicted isolated and small-scale violent attacks to try and thwart technology's march. "Today's eco-terrorists are the harbingers of this likely trend," wrote Ed Lyell, an expert on the internet and education. "Every age has a small percentage that cling to an overrated past of low technology, low energy, lifestyle." "Of course there will be more Unabombers," wrote Cory Doctorow of blog BoingBoing. Some commentators felt that the violence would either be tied to the effects of technology, rather than the technology itself, or possibly civil action around issues such as privacy. "The interesting question is whether these acts will be considered terrorism or civil disobedience," wrote Marc Rotenberg or the Electronic Privacy Information Center. More than half of respondents disagreed that English would become the lingua franca of the internet by 2020 and that there would be dangers associated with letting machines take over some net tasks such as surveillance and security. Internet Society Board chairman Fred Baker wrote: "We will certainly have some interesting technologies. He added: "Until someone finds a way for a computer to prevent anyone from pulling its power plug, however, it will never be completely out of control." The repondents were split over the whether the impact of people's lives becoming increasingly online, resulting in both less privacy but more transparency, would be a positive outcome. 'Access information' Tiffany Shlain, founder of the Webby awards, said such transparancy would be a benefit to society. "Giving all people access to our information and a context to understand it will lead to an advancement in our civilisation." But NetLab founder Barry Wellman disagreed: "The less one is powerful, the more transparent his or her life. The powerful will remain much less transparent." Mr Doctorow wrote: "Transparency and privacy aren't antithetical. "We're perfectly capable of formulating widely honored social contracts that prohibit pointing telescopes through your neighbours' windows. "We can likewise have social contracts about sniffing your neighbours' network traffic." By 2020 an increasing number of people will be living and working within "virtual worlds" being more productive online than offline, the majority of the respondents said. Ben Detenber, an associate professor at Nanyang Technological University, responded: "Virtual reality (VR) will only increase productivity for some people. For most, it will make no difference in productivity (i.e., how much output); VR will only change what type of work people do and how it is done." Glenn Ricart, a board member at the Internet Society, warned also of potential dangers. He envisaged "an entire generation opting-out of the real world and a paradoxical decrease in productivity as the people who provide the motive economic power no longer are in touch with the realities of the real world"."

What do you think the social and political implications of the expansion of the Internet by 2020 will be? To transparency? To privacy?

Most importantly, do you consider your vision a good thing or a bad thing?

9/25/2006 11:29:26 AM

fatter pipe, maybe IPv6, maybe broadband wireless, but i doubt it.



if you mean what new applications make use of the internet in 2020, it will be hopefully IPtv on demand type stuff. Anything that you can do today that just needs more bandwidth. I dont think its going to be that much different.

As the barrier to entry gets even less, more and more stupid will fill the pipe. Hpefully we can continue to contain this with Web 2.0

[Edited on September 25, 2006 at 11:57 AM. Reason : my vision is the best vision.]

9/25/2006 11:56:52 AM

I'm referring to the internet's ability to completely decentralize information, and what the implications of that will be to our social and political futures. Your technical analysis was pretty informative, though. I really had no idea what any of that meant before now.

[Edited on September 25, 2006 at 12:00 PM. Reason : thxu Wiki]

9/25/2006 11:59:24 AM

Old school communistic governments like North Korea are going to have a hard time keeping their propaganda up. Then again the people will probably still be too poor to get access to the information.

One concern that I've always had is children (like under 10 years old) being young and naive posting things that will get identities stolen and whatnot.

9/25/2006 12:03:46 PM

my prediction

in 2020 you'll be able to get porn over the internet 100x faster

that's about it

9/25/2006 12:10:26 PM

Your finacial information is already decentralized. And that probably contains all the information anyone really needs on you.

Medical records are something that could and probably should be available to you whenever and whereever. But that isn't a limitation of todays internet. People just get so paranoid about patient data. And believe me, I know. The company I work with does nurse triage for healthcare providers and insurance companies and we do tons of stuff to keep patient data locked down. But theres no standard for patient data storage. Perhapse some form of DRM might help there.


About the only thing that I could see really coming around that could make major changes would be a nationwide or global directory for user authentication. Both in the internets and in the real world. Kind of like a universal ID card. It would hold whatever data you need based on where you live. It would have biometric data for identification along with added data depending on application.

For example it would grant access to patient data, serve as your drivers liscence for wherever you currently reside (or multiple locations), it would be your passport, and it could contain bank information if you wanted.


The technology to do this exists today. The hard part is getting people to decide they want to make a standard access method for this data. Making the standard would be easy.

9/25/2006 12:15:22 PM

Right. I'm just wondering if the current paradigm of centralizing information in power centers of government and commerce will be able to sustain itself. We're seeing signs like the recent enhancements to FOIA that information openness appears to be the direction we're headed, but I'm wondering what changes we'll see as a result of that.

Because while the decentralization is occurring by leaps and bounds, it's rather obvious when you ask people that few of them are aware of the basic facts about even the financial information you're talking about. While the financial information is out there, I doubt it's being dissseminated as widely or thoroughly as it will be in 2020.

We've already learned enough about how skeptical to be of the financial information you've cited. Enron, MCI WorldCom, Martha Stewart, Arthur Anderson, and every political party have taught us that lesson. I wonder how the state of information handling will progress between now and 2020.

Seems to be that we're headed towards a clash between those who favor information from corporate sources and those who prefer information from government sources. Both are worthy of unmitigated skepticism in my opinion, and the Internet has done little to contain skepticism. I doubt it will in the future, either.

9/25/2006 12:43:32 PM

I want a implant, that's for sure. An wireless access everywhere. I want to be on the net 24/7.

And I want to frag n00bs with my brain.

[Edited on September 25, 2006 at 1:21 PM. Reason : frag]

9/25/2006 1:21:23 PM

lol

9/25/2006 1:58:12 PM

I want my eyeballs taken out and my eye sockets implanted with HDMI plugs. Everything in the "real world" will be HDCP enabled, so you'll have to pay to look at anythhing.

9/25/2006 2:15:03 PM

I vaguely recall having some kind of conversation about this w/ someone a couple months ago... was it you Gamecat... ?

9/25/2006 2:16:21 PM

Might've been. I've been wondering about this for a good while now.

9/25/2006 2:17:54 PM

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/internet/09/26/china.blog.reut/index.html

Quote :

"China bloggers surpass 30 million BEIJING, China (Reuters) -- The number of blog sites in China reached 34 million in August, a 30-fold increase from four years ago, state media said on Tuesday, despite a series of curbs on media and dissent. China has more than 17 million people writing blogs (short for Web logs) and more than 75 million people reading them, Xinhua news agency said. Authors of personal blogs choose their own subject and can instantly forward their writings to friends anywhere in China or the world. "The rapid growth of blog sites in China also brought potential business opportunities to the advertising industry," Xinhua said. "Some blogs written by famous people attract millions of daily readers." The report said that out of the 34 million blog sites, 70 percent were "dormant," having remained unchanged for more than a month. The Chinese government, obsessed with maintaining Communist Party rule, routinely monitors online chat forums and bulletin boards for controversial political comment, censoring words such as "freedom" and "democracy". In the past couple of years, several Internet sites that were forums for candid opinion have been closed. Copyright 2006 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed."

How long do you guys think China can keep the blogs open without the party losing its grip on their political future?

9/26/2006 2:58:56 PM

Quote :

"China bloggers surpass 30 million"

i read this and then pretty much skipped the article and was going to write something like "if they got all those bloggers, wouldnt that be a threat to their government...well if its a threat to their government, wouldnt china shut it down" or something to that effect

then i read what you posted and i was like oh ok

9/26/2006 3:55:10 PM