Preparing For Future Shock

Predicting the outcome of the Internet is a difficult thing to do as there are so many individual users that could alter the 'ecology' of the Internet but also big businesses that have their own ideas about the path it should take. Thinking about a bottom line, I wonder what are the strongest motivations for users.

There is the monetary minded, the social and political aspects and also of course, the communicative and information spheres. Will any one of these become overly more dominant than the other in time? As an advanced user, I am now obligated to keep my finger on the Internet pulse and keep up with all of the newer trends that arise.

I considered the term 'shock' and came to think that it is a slight exaggeration. I don't think that the future of the Internet will 'shock' anyone. Whichever way is goes, there will be many for and against but ultimately we will all conform. Those of us with advanced skills will be able to use our knowledge for bettering the situation where we think it is necessary and of course take advantage of those areas that are more exposed.

The following areas for discussion found on the Module 5 curriculum page were:

• Further penetration of broadboand
• Increasing delivery of multimedia – video, voice etc;
• Increasing security & authentification – smartcards, digital signatures etc
• Wifi / portable computing / communication devices
• Intelligent agents
• Semantic web

All of which most of us have now heard of and even discussed on the discussion board. Some of these things are upon us already, and others are on our doorstep waiting to be let in. All have positives and negatives and like anything we will learn to take the good with the bad.

I just loved the "bit of fun" link Imagining the Internet the predictions are from the sublime to the ridiculous and I enjoyed a few of these which I will quote below, for more just click the link but be warned, you cannot stop at reading just one...

"The internet will extrapolate … dimensions…??We will be able to get in touch with our relatives, our friends and other people who had passed away." - Marco Veado

"Human consciousness will be encoded. Space travel is as simple as beaming out copies of your consciousness. Cloning won't be a problem; copying your brain will." - Stuart

"The internet will transport us to any location we'd like, regardless of our geographical location." - Deb

"Quantum computing will allow a limited form of time travel that allows information to move through time. In other words, we will be able to develop a form of computer memory that retains data before it has been written. I could e-mail a librarian 300 years away and get a response instantly." Steve Swiller (armchair philosopher and a dreamer)

I am going to have serious egg on my face if any of this comes into fruition. Thankfully most of the predictions are going to take place in a hundred years or so, so I won't be here to see it anyway...unless someone predicts that eternal life will be possible on the internet in well, a hundred or so years...

This site doesn't just highlight the way out there stuff, some of the predictions have been really close and the edgier ones are a good read. I have to admit though that I spent the majority of my time looking for the most far out one.

On a more serious note, the UCLA Internet report on Surveying the Digital Future by J.I. Cole PhD is an interesting read. I took particular interest in the section titled "View About Online Contacts and Friendships", I found some of the results there surprising. You can find them on page 38 of the linked document if you are interested in it.

Well, I am off to read up on David Talbot's "The Internet is Broken".

References:

Allen M (n.d) Net 11 Curricullum Module 5. Retrieved August 10th 2008.

http://webct.curtin.edu.au/SCRIPT/305033_b/scripts/serve_home

Cole J. I., Surveying the Digital Future. Retrieved August 10th 2008

http://www.digitalcenter.org/pdf/InternetReportYearOne.pdf