Where will the internet end?

[a_unique_person]

When I first heard of the internet and public email, many moons ago, (before the WWW was even invented), I thought to myself "This can't last". I worked in a mainframe shop as a systems programmer, where security and maintenance and reliability were paramount.

Amazingly enough, the internet worked, and the WWW appeared on it, and I've been using it ever since.

However, the quality of the product seems to be on the inevitable slide to oblivion that I forsaw many years ago. Email now contains more spam than content. The efforts to weed out spam also, inevitably, affect the content.

Viruses run rampant. It's easy to blame Windows, but that's only an issue because Windows is the most popular platform, and hence the target. If anything else was to take Windows place, it would be the target. As it is, the OS is becoming irrelevant anyway, since a lot of fraud operates purely at the browser level.

The internet is open to exploits, attacks, fraud, crime, stupidity, ignorance, vanity, sex, the usual human foibles.

And so it must, eventually, become irrelevant. What comes after, who knows, but the internet must die.

[Furi]

The Last boss was a bitch but I eventually beat it
http://www.internetlastpage.com/

[firestorm]

My guess it the web will subdivide into sectors. Many will choose to stay within their sectors which will be much more strongly regulated. Membership will be a privilege and you'll only recieve email from sector members. The sectors themselves will be further subdivided into neighborhoods which will have elected officials like super moderators. Businesses will have to apply for sector permits which can be revoked if they break the rules.

[Giggywig]

When I first heard of the internet and public email, many moons ago, (before the WWW was even invented), I thought to myself "This can't last". I worked in a mainframe shop as a systems programmer, where security and maintenance and reliability were paramount.

Amazingly enough, the internet worked, and the WWW appeared on it, and I've been using it ever since.

However, the quality of the product seems to be on the inevitable slide to oblivion that I forsaw many years ago. Email now contains more spam than content. The efforts to weed out spam also, inevitably, affect the content.

Viruses run rampant. It's easy to blame Windows, but that's only an issue because Windows is the most popular platform, and hence the target. If anything else was to take Windows place, it would be the target. As it is, the OS is becoming irrelevant anyway, since a lot of fraud operates purely at the browser level.

The internet is open to exploits, attacks, fraud, crime, stupidity, ignorance, vanity, sex, the usual human foibles.

And so it must, eventually, become irrelevant. What comes after, who knows, but the internet must die.

I think your prediction skills remain consistent. I've heard of the internet's inevitable slide into useless ever since 1995 when the AOL kiddies started roaming the halls. I get 0 SPAM on my work email and about 1 a week on my personal email accounts. The server might be bombarded with email with my address on it, but I am not getting it. And let's say that email as a protocol fails because of SPAM; another protocol will come along, and the internet will keep thriving. That is my prediction. Check back in 10 years and see who's right.

[Blackadder]

Same here: Almost no spam on a 7 year old address. I don't even know if it is my provider or my email client or both that does a great job blocking it.

more and more of my life is connected with the internet.

All my banking goes on internet.

Communication with overseas friends and relatives.

more and more entertainment, for example right now as I type I have the Olympic games opening on my second screen.

research

job market

file sharing


I can't imagine it will ever go away. I also don't see any decline in quality, only increase (of course you have to make your personal choices to get in touch with the quality and ignore the masses of stupidity)

[lumos]

I see the internet evolving over time and continuing to live on. It has become a valuable resource to all of society, far more than I'd ever imagined it would turn into.

Now what's wrong with the sex and why would you ever consider that a "foible"? Personally, I think it's great that we can now enjoy free porn in the privacy of our own homes.

[Denver]

I was the opposite: when I starting using gopher and it's kin pre-1994, and then I saw the first web browser, I knew it would change the world.

It will continue to expand more into the real world, until it will be as pervasive as electricity.

[Marquis de Carabas]

The internet is open to exploits, attacks, fraud, crime, stupidity, ignorance, vanity, sex, the usual human foibles.
So it's like religion. Haven't gotten rid of that one yet, either.

[Darth Rotor]

Where will the internet end?
You may as well ask where a circle will end.

It is the closest approximation of a hive mind humans have yet invented. Oh Brave New World of the 22d century, when humans will be four legged, meaty ants, ripe for the picking by intergalactic aardvarks.

(aka the Zerg :D)

A furore hydraliskus, libera nos Tassadar

Save us, Oh Protoss, from the fury of the Zerg

DR

[Blackadder]

(aka the Zerg :D)

A furore hydraliskus, libera nos Tassadar

Save us, Oh Protoss, from the fury of the Zerg



StarCraft 2 where art thou?

[Gord_in_Toronto]

It will end when it is replaced by something "better". I'm not reading enough science fiction these days.so I can't speculate on what that might be. :D

[six7s]

However, the quality of the product seems to be on the inevitable slide to oblivion... Email now contains more spam than content... Viruses run rampantLike a network of roads or rail tracks, the internet and it's protocols don't produce anything - which is why it works without being owned or controlled by any one organistation

The internet is open to exploits, attacks, fraud, crime, stupidity, ignorance, vanity, sex, the usual human foibles.
Yep. So?

Unlike teh intetubes, there are innumerable rules that apply to most roads, which are - nevertheless - open to speedsters, drunk drivers, Harleys and Ladas... if you can't avoid them, take a hike :)

And so it must, eventually, become irrelevant. What comes after, who knows, but the internet must die.Nothing lasts forever, but I have a hunch that whatever comes next, if its going to be successful, will have to be as open and unrestrained as the un-patented, unregulated www

An intersting article from eight years ago:
Robert Fulford's column about Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web (http://www.robertfulford.com/TimBernersLee.html)
(The National Post, August 1, 2000)

Think of mathematics as the Latin of modern times. Across the world, it plays, as several historians have noted, the role that Latin played for Europeans in the Middle Ages. It's the international language of vital work. It unites those whose thoughts produce big changes, and it helps make those changes occur. We who know nothing of mathematics (like Europeans who knew nothing of Latin in, say, 1350) are fated to be, in a crucial sense, more spectators than participants at the central dramas of our lifetime.

Tim Berners-Lee, who devised the World Wide Web, is no spectator. He received mathematics as a birthright... "we discussed imaginary numbers over breakfast."

<snip/>
People just starting to use these systems sometimes confuse the Internet and the Web. In fact, the Internet was there long before Berners-Lee, and so was e-mail. So, for that matter, was the hypertext link, a way of connecting one document to another. But these were specialized tools of academics, governments and some businesses. When you used them to get information, you paid money.

As Berners-Lee puts it, "I happened to come along ... after hypertext and the Internet had come of age. The task left to me was to marry them."
<snip/>

...In the autumn of 1990 he wrote the first Web browser (WorldWideWeb) and created the first Web site (info.cern.ch). In 1991 he made his system public, and soon others were extending it.
<snip/>

It didn't make him rich. In fact, he believes it wouldn't have worked if he had patented it. Other companies would then have developed different systems, designed to keep out the non-paying public. It would have been impossible to link them. The Web as we know it might not have developed for a long time.
<snip/>

He's still at work on his project ... running the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) ... keeps the Web on an even keel by refining the rules in ways that are acceptable to just about everybody. This means, he says, "as close as possible to no rules at all."
<snip/>

Berners-Lee is a Utopian evangelist, like many people connected with the Web. He says things like "the openness of the Web is a powerful attraction. Everyone can not only read what's on the Web but contribute to it, and everybody is in a sense equal." That's nonsense, of course, but it's the sort of thing Web pioneers say.
<snip/>

http://www.robertfulford.com/TimBernersLee.html

[kedo1981]

With all of us getting fired because we showed our "HO-HAs" on myspace

[RazorEddie]

I find the opposite to be true.
As Time passes, ny reliance on the web increases.
E-mail has become my communication of preference. I haven't put a stamp on anything in years.
Banking, bill paying, news, commentary, socialization, entertainment... as time goes by the web becomes more involved in all these areas of my life.

is the web the best it could be? Maybe not.

But I don't see it dying any time soon.

[Jontg]

The Last boss was a bitch but I eventually beat it
http://www.internetlastpage.com/

Oi! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_(group))

[Ohmer]

Email now contains more spam than content. The efforts to weed out spam also, inevitably, affect the content.


Our spam filter now throws away 99.1% of the messages we get. Most of it from Zombies. We have spent 10's of thousands of dollars to buy and maintain this filter. Why? because email is a vital form of communication.

Through the clever use of technology, we can still effectively use a system that is 99% garbage. The internet will survive as clever people continue to figure out how to get the signal out of all of the noise.

[dudalb]

The internet is like any other communication network: It is only as good as the people using it.
The internet is here to stay. It might take different forms...a method superior to the WWW might be developed, but it had become as permenent as the Phone System.
Of course I was never under the illusion that The Net would lead to some golden age.

[dudalb]

StarCraft 2 where art thou?


Out in 2009, I believe.