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]
What future do you want for the
Internet? (one or two words)
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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
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It’s getting complicated!
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http://www.halcyonmaps.com/map-of-the-internet_2_0_2/
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From 1.0
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From 2.0
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From 2.0
Thinking Points
These are all interrelated.
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Digital Convergence/Media Channel
Adoption/Digital Natives
Network Growth/Evolution/Complexity
Device Proliferation
Industry/Stacks
Social Impact
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Adoption
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http://www.slideshare.net/CDNetworks/content-delivery-network-cdn-basics
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Stacks. In 2012 it made less and less sense to talk
about "the Internet," "the PC business,"
"telephones," "Silicon Valley," or "the media," and
much more sense to just study Google, Apple,
Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft. These big five
American vertically organized silos are re-making
the world in their image.
~ Bruce Sterling
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How we use the Internet
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Evolution of Applications: Pre-Web
• Social: Email, Newsgroups, IRC chat, instant
messaging for communication
• Data: FTP for moving data
• Search: Archie, Veronica, WAIS for finding data
(early search)
• Publishing: Gopher for distributing, searching,
and retrieving documents
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Evolution of Applications: Web
• Publishing/Data: World Wide Web for the same sort of
things as Gopher, but with hypertext, and eventually media
• Search: Altavista, then Google, for finding data on the web
(later, more sophisticated search)
• Publishing: Content Management Systems for publishing
• Publishing/Social: Blogs and Wikis for sharing information
• Social: Social Networks for finding others, connecting,
sustaining connection, sharing media and data
• Social/Data: Augmented Reality, location-aware servces:
overlays for navigating, finding specific sorts of things,
showing where you are or have been, etc.
• Semantic Web: Machine-readable metadata for more
intelligent and relevant data sharing, distribution, access.
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; an explosion
among those who have broadband access.
• 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, targeted apps
on mobile devices with broadband access via wifi and cellular. Dick
Tracy’s two-way wrist radio is actually a smartphone.
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What’s been changing
• Digital natives mature and innovate
• Web technology evolves (HTML5 and CSS3,
semantic web)
• Apps vs web (browser)
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Relevant 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.
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Future
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Future Scenarios: Network
• Ideal 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, high-bandwidth premium delivery plus
low-bandwidth, lower-value everything else;
providers and users pay for higher QoS.
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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.”
“Network neutrality (also net
neutrality, Internet neutrality) is
a principle which advocates no
restrictions by Internet service
providers or governments on
consumers' access to networks
that participate in the internet.
Specifically, network neutrality
would prevent restrictions on
content, sites, platforms, the
kinds of equipment that may be
attached, or the modes of
communication.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality
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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]
Forward-looking 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?
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Future (=Now) 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?
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DIY home, media environment, life
Empowered patient
Empowered citizen
Sustainable communities
Networked transportation
Noosphere (global consciousness)
Singularity/Superintelligence
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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
http://consumersunion.org
[email protected]
Jon Lebkowsky | [email protected]