Future of the Internet
Last month, there was a futuristic piece about the Internet on Red Herring, which had interesting points with regards to the relationships between virtual world/objects and the physicality of those.
the barriers between our bodies and the Internet will blur as will those between the real world and virtual reality.
Automakers, for instance, might conceivably post their parts catalogs in the virtual world of Second Life, a pixilated 3D online blend of MySpace, eBay, and renaissance fair crossed with a Star Trek convention. Second Life participants—who own the rights to whatever intellectual property they create online—will make money both by using the catalog to design their own cars in cyberspace and by selling their online designs back to the manufacturers, says Danish economist and tech entrepreneur Nikolaj Nyholm.
(…)
“Devices will no longer be spokes on the Internet—they will be the nodes themselves,” says Ray Kurzweil.
I am wondering how this would work with networked seams, perplexed users facing the non-interoperability of networks; how would this prediction work: “People will be able to talk to the Internet when searching for information or interacting with various devices—and it will respond”. As a user experience researcher, I am wondering whether everybody has in mind how people are currently using the Internet, how one look for information with search engine. I know this is long-term research but there is a huge gap between this and how people use current networks. Of course today’s kids will be able to handle that but what about the aging population?
The machine-to-machine communication is also expected to increase:
As so-called sensor networks evolve, there will be vastly more machines than people online. As it is, there are almost 10 billion embedded micro-controllers shipped every year. “This is the next networking
frontier—following inexorably down from desktops, laptops, and palmtops, including cell phones,” says Bob Metcalfe, the inventor of Ethernet and founder of 3Com. This is what will make up much of the machine-to-machine
traffic, he says.
The article also addresses other concerns like the telco competition, the internet infrastructure and mostly innovation in emerging technologies.
May 3rd, 2006 at 4:54 pm
First of all, I’d like to say I enjoy reading your blog very much. Thanks for sharing all the news you find as you go along!
It’s interesting to see how this will evolve. I think people nowadays are more connected than ever. Relying on other’s recommendations, links, tags and whatnot.
The way people use the internet is considerably different to what it was like 3 or 4 years ago. Location, presence and context being a much bigger part of information and communication than we could have imagined. Yet we are still mainly connecting and communicating through our pc’s or very closely related devices. It will be interesting to see and predict how new devices will change the way we access and use this information.
This goes well beyond thinking of a new architecure now. Think for example of what a mobile web server (nokia research) can do to peer to peer connectivity, viral marketing, sharing files and controlling them.
As for generation gaps, I think they will smooth out slowly. MySpace is a major frontrunner of giving less tech-savvy people an online presence and though it might not appeal to many, it is accessible to many. I think the aforementioned recommendation and context combined with a MySpace kind of community is a small step forwards.
Translating this to always present portable/mobile/wearables will be a major influence on the way any generation uses it. Until we reach the next stage of devices-ubiquity, I think it’s very difficult to predict what is going to happen ten year from now.
May 4th, 2006 at 12:44 am
Thanks for the nice comments!
I agree with you but I am quite skeptical of the level of ubiquity we might reach with future applications; plus I am always wondering to what extent every individual would have access to them…