The Future of the Internet: Where Do We Go From Here?4

By Adam Troudart, Jan 02, 2012 in P.O.V., Pop Culture

It’s almost impossible to believe that when a group of American academics and corporate engineers planted the seeds of the Internet back in the 60s and 70s, they had no particular ambitions in mind – but that’s exactly how the Internet started.

In his book Future of the Internet (and how to stop it), author Jonathan L. Zittrain describes how the ‘network of networks’ was designed with simplicity and openness as its core values. Its original intent was merely to connect existing research and government networks. It was a blank slate, a platform anyone could build upon in years to come. And, naïvely enough, the Internet was designed with trust as a fundamental assumption. Why would any network user want to harm another? Consequently, no major security features were introduced to the early Internet.

As discussed in the news show Online Out of Line, the Internet changes daily, for better or for worse. The Internet, as we know it, is a great departure from its academic humble beginnings, back in the 70s:

• According to royal.pingdom.com, there were 107 trillion emails sent via the Internet in 2010.
• Online piracy is costing the US economy $12.5 billion annually, among other damages (Institute for Policy Innovation)
• 1 in 5 under-25s in the US won’t go to bed before checking his/her Facebook/Twitter account (Retrevo)

Online Out of Line – Stop Sleeping With Your iPhone

In her critically acclaimed book Imagining the Internet: Personalities, Predictions, Perspectives, author Janna Quitney Anderson describes the three stages of development the Internet has gone through – similarly to the stages television, radio and other modern networked communication technologies experienced in their time:

Innovation: Inventors (who tend to be young) come up with great ideas or improve previous inventions. They push for public acceptance – since they need financial backing and support from entrepreneurs/politicians to make their ideas happen. For example, the first web browser, Mosaic, was invented by 21-year-old Marc Andreessen.

Commercialization: Typically, old and well-connected, entrepreneurs and/or political backers join forces with innovators in order to build on their ideas. They aim to gain control or capitalize on the new market before their competitors. As proven back in the 90s, (online) pirates often follow them.

Acceptance of Regulation: Conflicts and concerns over property rights mean entrepreneurs have to accept some degree of regulation. There’s often a war between a few types of competing technologies – like the browser war between Netscape and Internet Explorer in the early 90s.

Considering the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) bill has made it to the U.S. Congress and that Internet regulation has made it onto the G8 agenda, we may well be experiencing the Web’s third stage of development right now.

So, where do we go from here? What is the Internet going to be like, say, 20 years from now?

Growth

The Internet is growing at a staggering rate:

• According to Cisco, there were 500 million Internet-connected devices in 2007. That number ballooned to 35 billion in 2010 and could grow to 1 trillion by 2013.
• A study by TeleGeography’s Global Internet Geography reports that international Web traffic grew 62% in 2010 over 2009 – with Eastern Europe, India/South Asia, and the Middle East seeing the fastest growth.
• The current Internet addressing system – called IPv4 – may reach its 4 billion address limit within a year or so.

The US FCC (Federal Communications Commission) carries out the National Broadband Plan in America to give more US homes broadband access and improve the wireless networks nationwide. As video traffic goes through the roof (YouTube reports that 200 million mobile clips are streamed on their network every day), Internet service providers are looking at filtering some content to reduce the strain on their networks. Some tech leaders are concerned that such actions might compromise the previously discussed Internet openness (or net neutrality).

Social and Mobile

Although the future of the Internet is not entirely clear, one assumption can be safely made: the Internet will continue to get more social and more mobile.

• The number of UK adults aged over 50 that are consuming social media on their mobile devices has risen by 52% year on year (TGI MobiLens, January 2011).
• Facebook has become the third largest country (member-wise) with over 800 million active users (Facebook.) and is responsible for 52.1% of sharing on the Internet (AddThis).
• About 140 million tweets are sent each day (Twitter).
• Tumblr sharing grew by 1299.5% in 2011 (AddThis).

Most of us use one social network or another, and, as Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg puts it, “It’s a shift from the wisdom of crowds to the wisdom of friends. It doesn’t matter if 100,000 people like X. If the three people closest to you like Y, you want to see Y.”

Entrepreneur Mark Suster sees a future where Facebook is not the only kid in town – once people who are fed up with its privacy issues seek alternatives such as Diaspora. Social media will become more pervasive and present throughout our Web experience. As for mobile, according to market researcher IDC, more people will access the Web through mobile devices than PCs by 2015. Combine the power of word-of-mouth with the local, instant nature of mobile devices, and you’re presented with endless opportunities.

Ayelet Noff, founder of social media agency Blond 2.0, envisions a future where physical and digital worlds come together. She believes we’re at the wake of Web 3.0, or Semantic Web, where the right information will find us at the right time. Facebook will become a major shopping avenue for brands and companies, which in turn will strive to engage and interact with their audience and users will get special offers, coupons, and tips on their mobile devices relevant to their interests and geographical location. Juniper Research believes the mobile advertising market will reach $5.7 billion by 2014.

According to Matthew Doyle of Broadcastr, cloud services will become more widespread and enable users to enjoy rich media and have a much better browsing experience on their mobile devices.

Technology

When it comes to the techie side of things, Arley McBlain, founder of Debut Creative, has got some noteworthy insights. As text-to-speech and speech recognition technologies gain foothold and HTML5 technology is fully embraced, audio browsing and searching will soon become the standard. Apple’s personal assistant, Siri, is the most recent step in that direction. With time, says Arley, we will be able to surf the Web on any device. One such example could be a cutting board with a screen embedded into it to display recipes, grocery lists, meal suggestions, and so on.

READ: 8 Futuristic Gadgets We Hope to Own Soon

Remember the scene from the movie Minority Report where Tom Cruise controls a few computer screens with simple hand gestures? This could become reality. As Clayton Miller demonstrated in his 10/GUI video, current mouse navigation technology is very limiting. Future Web interfaces will involve multi touch and simple gestures. So, the next time your browser gives you a headache, don’t despair. Your Internet experience will only get better… maybe even by tomorrow.

Online Out of Line – Facebook Gets Even Creepier

Online Out of Line – Getting Good Vibes

Watch more episodes of technology news series ONLINE OUT OF LINE

Adam Troudart is a blogger who is obsessed with words, people, and helping people succeed by using words.