Jon Lebkowsky

Jon Lebkowsky | [email protected]

The Future of the Internet

Concept by Mac Funamizu, http://petitinvention.wordpress.com/2008/02/10/future-of-internet-search-mobile-version/


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


MapsImage: University of California - San Diego


Map: http://www.lumeta.com/


source: http://www.informationarchitects.jp/slash/iA_WebTrends_2007_2_1600x1024.gif



Jon Lebkowsky | [email protected] Mindwest Strategies (http://mindwest.net/)


History


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 (1989-1991)


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


It’s all about data.


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


~ Pew Internethttp://www.pewinternet.org/Presentations/2010/Nov/Opportunity-Online.aspx


The numbers might be higher, but there’s little investment in rural broadband.


AT&T is buying all the houses on the block, then they’ll put up a hotel…


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.


Future


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.



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


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.

~ 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?


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.


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?


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.


Scenarios: Utopian?

• DIY home, media environment, life• Empowered patient• Empowered citizen• Sustainable communities• Networked transportation• Noosphere (global consciousness)• Singularity/Superintelligence


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 Lebkowskyhttp://weblogsky.com

[email protected]

Jon Lebkowsky | [email protected] The Future of the Internet Concept by Mac Funamizu, of-internet-search-mobile-version

Documents

neutrality slide

data slide

future slide

history slide

network internet

internet neutrality

mobileversion slide