Transcript The Future of the Internet

The Future of the Internet
Concept by Mac Funamizu, http://petitinvention.wordpress.com/2008/02/10/futureof-internet-search-mobile-version/
Jon Lebkowsky | [email protected]
The democratization of technological
power has made the shape of the
future hard to know, even for the best
informed.
~ Tim Wu, The Master Switch
Jon Lebkowsky | [email protected]
Image: University of California - San Diego
Maps
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Map: http://www.lumeta.com/
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source: http://www.informationarchitects.jp/slash/iA_WebTrends_2007_2_1600x1024.gif
Jon Lebkowsky | [email protected]
Jon Lebkowsky | [email protected]
Jon Lebkowsky | [email protected]
From Mindwest Strategies
(http://mindwest.net/)
Jon Lebkowsky | [email protected]
History
Jon Lebkowsky | [email protected]
Evolution
• Arpanet (as of 1983)and NSFNet (1985):
TCP/IP networks for research and
development
• NSFNet opened to other networks, esp. mail
(1988)
• World Wide Web via HTML and HTTP (19891991)
Jon Lebkowsky | [email protected]
Evolution of Applications
• Email, Newsgroups, IRC chat, instant messaging for
communication
• FTP for moving data
• Archie, Veronica, WAIS for finding data (early search)
• Gopher for distributing, searching, and retrieving
documents
• World Wide Web for the same sort of things as Gopher, but
with hypertext, and eventuall media
• Altavista, then Google, for finding data on the web (later,
more sophisticated search)
• Content Management Systems for publishing
• Blogs and Wikis for sharing information
• Social Networks for finding others, connecting, sustaining
connection, sharing media and data
Jon Lebkowsky | [email protected]
It’s all
about
data.
Jon Lebkowsky | [email protected]
What’s been changing
• Broadband: more bandwidth, faster connections, enabling
media distribution over the web
• Adoption: more people doing more things online
• Everything is miscellaneous: information explodes, “wants to
be free” and findable quickly without reliance on
taxonomies and categorical structures. We engage more
randomly with the world (association)
• Voice over IP (e.g. Skype): cheap, immediate voice
communication
• Post-Television: Hulu/BitTorrent/Netflix bring on-demand
video delivery via computer
• Politics: Grassroots Adhocracies, Tea Party, Egypt and the
Middle East, questions about participation, democracy
• Mobility: the world in your pocket, augmented reality
Jon Lebkowsky | [email protected]
~ Pew Internet
http://www.pewinternet.org/Presentations/2010/Nov/Opportunity-Online.aspx
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The numbers might be higher, but there’s
little investment in rural broadband.
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AT&T is buying all the houses on the block,
then they’ll put up a hotel…
Jon Lebkowsky | [email protected]
Effects
• Network effect: everybody gets your email; the
Internet becomes exponentially more useful and
productive as adoption increases, at least for
those who adopt.
• Down side: Unmanageable deluge of useful
information.
• Even more unmanageable deluge of useLESS
information - spam and noise (~90% of email is
spam).
• The Internet grows more valuable, and “money
changes everything” – consolidation,
centralization, conglomeration.
Jon Lebkowsky | [email protected]
Future
Jon Lebkowsky | [email protected]
Future Scenarios: Network
• Internet: Free and open network of networks,
end to end principle, “dumb network.”
Facilitated by Freedom Box?
• Cable television: limited selections delivered
with a high quality of service. Relatively high
barrier to entry on the content side.
• Balkanized hybrid: walled gardens and pay
walls plus low-bandwidth, lower-value
everything else; providers and users pay for
higher QoS.
Jon Lebkowsky | [email protected]
Jon Lebkowsky | [email protected]
Network Neutrality
“Network neutrality (also net neutrality,
Internet neutrality) is a buzzword used to
describe a principle proposed for users'
access to networks participating in the
Internet. The principle advocates no
restrictions by Internet service providers
and governments on content, sites,
platforms, the kinds of equipment that
may be attached, and the modes of
communication.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality
Jon Lebkowsky | [email protected]
For less than $1,000, he could get his idea onto the Internet. He
needed no permission from the network provider. He needed no
clearance from Harvard to offer it to Harvard students. Neither with
Yale, or Princeton, or Stanford. Nor with every other community he
invited in. Because the
platform of the Internet is
open and free, or in the language of the day,
because it is a “neutral network,” a billion Mark
Zuckerbergs have the opportunity to invent for the
platform. And though there are crucial partners
who are essential to bring the product to market,
the cost of proving viability on this platform has
dropped dramatically. You don’t even have to possess
Zuckerberg’s technical genius to develop your own idea for the
Internet today. Websites across the developing world deliver high
quality coding to complement the very best ideas from anywhere.
This is a platform that has made democratic innovation possible—
and it was on the Facebook platform resting on that Internet
platform that another Facebook co-founder, Chris Hughes, organized
the most important digital movement for Obama, and that the film’s
petty villain, Sean Parker, organized Causes, one of the most
important tools to support nonprofit social missions.
Jon Lebkowsky | [email protected]
~ Larry Lessig
How should we experience the
Internet? Should our Interface
with the world and its data be
owned and controlled by
corporations? Operated as
public utilities? Or distributed?
What does it mean for a
private, for-profit Facebook,
Google, or Twitter to “own” a
network effect, personal data
for whole populations, core
interface and infrastructure?
Jon Lebkowsky | [email protected]
Freedom Box: a “privacy
appliance” proposed by
attorney and free software
proponent Eben Moglen. A
personal server running a
free software operating
system, with free applications
designed to create and
preserve personal privacy.
Jon Lebkowsky | [email protected]
Questions
• Identity: who has a right to your data? How do
you manage the manifestation and use of your
identity online?
• Power: who has authority for a relationship?
Example: vendor/customer – who has a right to
the data, to manage the relationship?
• Abundance: how do you manage information and
sustain an accurate world perspective with
literally millions of potential information
channels?
• Access/Bandwidth: what is the appropriate
role/business of the broadband service provider?
Jon Lebkowsky | [email protected]
Future Applications
• Many distributed sites, platforms, and
applications, open architectures, data portability
• Mobile and targeted applications
• Curation and filtering: recasting the stockpile of
information in usable form
• Google, Facebook, and Twitter rule: via these
platforms, people filter, find, and present content
(with help from search and other tools).
• Digital media distribution: television and radio
incorporated in the media mix. Bandwidth a
potential issue.
Jon Lebkowsky | [email protected]
Scenarios: Utopian?
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
DIY home, media environment, life
Empowered patient
Empowered citizen
Sustainable communities
Networked transportation
Noosphere (global consciousness)
Singularity/Superintelligence
Jon Lebkowsky | [email protected]
Scenarios: Dystopian?
• Cognitive automation vs jobs for humans
• Outsourcing – moving jobs
• Disruptive effects, rapid changes to dynamically
stable systems
• Winner-take-all business models (network
effect/long tail)
• Efficiency-borne reductions in redundancy and
competition
• Information availability causing loss of individual
freedom
• Network exclusion or “digital divide”
Thanks to David Isenberg, http://isen.com
Jon Lebkowsky | [email protected]
Jon Lebkowsky
http://weblogsky.com
[email protected]
Jon Lebkowsky | [email protected]