Where's the Internet Going?

Where's the Internet Going?

As we reach the end of the class, it's time to look to the future of the Internet. We've covered a lot of ground in the previous lessons. It's good to remember that most of the applications and nearly all of the resources in the lessons did not exist only a few years ago! What will the next ten years bring? I'm no Internet prophet and I don't possess a digital "all-seeing eye" of any sort. What I would like to do is to look at some current trends in the Internet and suggest some possible developments.

The Net: Under New Management

This development illustrates the ever-changing nature of the Net quite well. Beginning in part in the late 90s, the National Science Foundation stopped supporting Internet traffic through their Internet backbone (NSFNET). Instead, private Internet providers maintain regional traffic switching points in around the U.S. Some of the providers are familiar: Sprint, Verizon, AT&T, and others (and/or their successors via corporate buyouts). While private service providers have been involved in the Net for some time, this is the first time that these central duties have passed from the hands of the government. What outcomes will this bring?

Well, first off, these companies have put a lot of money into this endeavor, and, as such, have a huge incentive to make the Net profitable. This is generally a benefit to the average Net user, since profit presumes a live and thriving Net. The potential downside of this effort is the question of increased or first-time costs for service and metering/blocking of usage. The debate around this issue is typically labeled the issue of "Net Neutrality." It's not completely understood yet on how this will effect individual providers or institutions. For the present, the Net is still without one unified governing body, therefore no one's in charge.

Doing Business on the Net: Banner Graphics, Junk Email and Spam

Businesses have been on the Net for some time, setting up sites and using Net resources for a variety of purposes. We have seen explosive growth in commercial advertising, in certain search engines, and banner graphics on Web pages. This use of the Net will probably continue. The Net community vehemently dislikes advertising and junk email (a.k.a. spam), and the advertising community held back for a while to avoid a negative reaction to their products, but now it seems no holds are barred! Ads have become part of our communication on the Net. Perhaps, as some have suggested, commercial activity will be more targeted toward consenting individuals via various "push" technologies (RSS and XML channels are examples of this as are smartphones' location-specific services).

A Growing Web of Intrigue

The Web is the hottest area on the Net and it doesn't show signs of slowing. Web sites are growing faster than any other type of site and they're being accessed with tremendous frequency (although a recent report suggests as much as 30% of the traffic on the web at any one time is Netflix streaming content, although that's accessed via a web browser, too). The magic combination of hypertext, images, sound, and video is a huge draw for Net users, even though many can't enjoy all the sights and sounds. It doesn't take a genius to see that this application is going to fuel new enthusiasm for the Net. Web browsers have become the standard way for folks to check out the Net now and in the foreseeable future. This will be due primarily to the ability of this software to provide a relatively seamless interface between users and any type of Net application. We probably won't see the death of other sites, but we'll look at them in a whole new way. The big question is, what comes next? What is the next must-have application? Only time will tell.

Everybody in the Pool!: The Growth of Users

More and more folks will be joining us on the Internet. I say this because, first of all, they keep coming at ever increasing rates and, second, because there are lots of new initiatives to get people connected. For example, many years ago following their competitors Delphi and America Online, CompuServe and Prodigy allowed subscribers to access Internet resources in early 1995. Other commercial providers followed suit, causing a flood of users and making Net folks antsy during the settling-in period (when nearly one million America Online subscribers entered the Net in 1995, the effects were felt (and hotly debated) for months. I wish I had a nickel for every time I saw a message with the subject "AOLers Suck" posted to newsgroups during the mid-90s. This antagonism was the result of the tremendous proliferation of naive AOL subscribers on the net in such a short time--crowding-out old-timers. This type of growth (and growing pains) continues unabated through today.

All told, it's good in the long run to get more folks on the Net. More people motivated to use the Net means more of a voice in keeping it going. As well, there's probably a lot of untapped creativity out there that can fuel the Net's expansion. In any case, the Net will be getting more and more crowded.

Not Just For Rich North Americans Any More

Many people are concerned about the "digital divide." This is the perceived gulf between the digital haves and have-nots. This divide occurs both within this country and between this country and the "Third World." It has been suggested that one of the reasons for this gulf is the wasteful way we in the richer nations engage in computing. Just as we have big gas-guzzling cars to go from one place to the other, we have big, flashy, energy and resource guzzling computers to surf the WWW. Some newer approaches to computing have attempted to cut down on the waste and at the same time make "bit mining" more accessible to those with fewer resources.

One example was the Simputer, for SIMple ComPUTER, a device that enabled India's illiterate population to surf the Web. The price? How about $200 USD! It was launched in 2004.

The Simputer is built around Linux, an open source UNIX operating system. It has 32 MB of flash memory, a monochrome liquid crystal display (LCD) with a touch panel overlay for pen-based computing, and a local-language interface. The appliance has infrared and Universal Serial Bus interfaces, and features Internet access and email software.

The designers developed the Simputer to be used not only as a personal Internet access device, but also by communities of users at kiosks. A smart-card interface to the device allows the use of the device for applications such as micro-banking. The designers have been able to achieve the $200 price point since the electronic components used in the device are all off-the-shelf volume components, and the software is primarily open source software such as Linux. Supposedly a $35 computer is next (also in India).

Another similarly aimed project, Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop per Child Project, also called the $100 Laptop Project (http://one.laptop.org/), is making powerful digital devices available at much lower price points than previously imagined (of course, in the 1950s, computer experts estimated that the entire worldwide market for general-purpose computers would be four!).

Can't We All Just Get Along?: Concerns Over Offensive Material and Discussions

There is a growing concern among the uninitiated public that the Net is a haven for pornography, racists, and child molesters. This is due to the numerous "bad news" stories that the media have reported. Clearly, something has to be done about this perception and reality to keep the Net a good place to live and work. So far, maintaining the relatively offensive stuff in separate locations has worked pretty well, but there are all sorts of dangers present (e.g., accessibility of said areas to minors, flame wars and racist diatribes that spill out into unrelated newsgroups, etc.). My Net "neighborhoods" have avoided all but the most brazen of this stuff, but everyone's at risk. The arrival of a Net "Big Brother" to enforce the law remains a real possibility, although the Communications Decency Act of 1996 has been overturned, since this was deemed to be contrary to the First Amendment, etc. I hope to see some generally agreed upon rules of netiquette take hold, perhaps assisted by technical means of keeping the nasty stuff at bay. It all goes to show, though, that if you're going to invite everyone to the conversation, somebody's going to say something you don't like.

Some Philosophical Muddling

Now that we've looked at the factual evidence, I'd like to relate to you my philosophical take on the Net. This won't be full of the miniature psychological analyses I often see on some of the lists I read; the ones that speak of the Net as a "self-actualizing force that spreads group harmony." You need training to be a psychologist, but anyone with a stiff drink in hand can pretend to be a philosopher (not that I was drinking while I had my epiphany). My epiphany looks at why we have the Net, and it goes like this:

Experiencing the Net is often spoken of in terms of exploration or discovery, and I think that this is an accurate description. When I was a kid, the science fiction I watched showed societies finished with terrestrial exploration and moving out into space as the next frontier (like StarTrek). Another strain of this fiction suggested that civilization's next frontier would be the conquest of the oceans. While I believe these dreams still exist, I think that human society does not have the technological ability or economic capability at present to realize them. We can't afford to break the barrier between ourselves and the next horizon of discovery, as did the Portuguese when they put their carravels to sea.

What do we do instead? We turn inward. We network the world and we communicate back and forth on a myriad of subjects, some serious and some purely recreational. Are we fooling ourselves as we do this, pretending to be discovering a brave new world? Is the Net a meaningless substitute, an easy, relatively affordable way to vicariously participate in discovery? I say that we are not fools and our discovery is not vicarious. It may seem that we're merely retracing our steps ("Ooh, look! A web site in China!" or "Hey! I got an email from Germany!), but we're really getting to know people and places out there on a level we could not imagine before. We're decreasing the importance of race, gender, and national origin that may have kept us from communicating previously. While there are still problems out there, as mentioned above, it is now possible to make professional and personal contact with people around the globe and build a knowledge base that increases our potential as a people. We have turned inward physically, but our reach extends farther than ever before.

This is what draws people to the Net: the possibility of discovering unknown places out there. Yes, not everyone has access to the Net, and, no, I don't believe in some rose-colored vision of the world that the Net can produce. I do believe that we're on to something here and that the possibilities are endless.

Conclusion

I appear to have made my last lesson a catch-all for theorizing and plotting about the Net. Even so, I know that some of my ideas got away and perhaps that's for the best. I'm interested in your ideas about the Net and I hope that this will spur some discussion. The important thing to remember here is that you're already on the Net and becoming an active member. Be sure to spread your knowledge and ability on to others, either in or out of your classroom, so that "those is the know" is an ever-increasing group.

Happy Netting!

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