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The utopian period of the web is ending. The future web will be much more balkanized and militarized. In the race between the web's competing revolutions of dem

by guelo 9y ago

The utopian period of the web is ending. The future web will be much more balkanized and militarized. In the race between the web's competing revolutions of democratization of information vs mass surveillance and control, surveillance and control will win out as linear scaling, distributed, crowdsourced, democratic power won't be able to keep up with exponential scaling, centrally controlled, capital intensive, machine learning enhanced, mass control.

FilterSweep 9y ago
You could argue it already ended with the corporatists' "Web 2.0". And PRISM. The only real difference now is that its entering the public's consciousness, and the ground is rife for authoritarians to present non-ideal solutions.
- cJ0th 9y ago
  > You could argue it already ended with the corporatists' "Web 2.0". And PRISM. What's more, FB and Co are to blame for these shutdowns of communication channels. Had we kept our communication decentralized governments would have a much harder time identifying communication services.
kogepathic 9y ago
> The utopian period of the web is ending. The future web will be much more balkanized and militarized. You could say that. I'd flip it around and say "It's amazing the world wide web has survived intact as long as it did, given the vastly different political ideologies in the world." Quite frankly, I consider it a small miracle we're all still using the same internet that's been around over 20 years. I absolutely think the future of the internet is regional/national versions of the internet, with limited/censored connectivity to other regions/nations. If not for political reasons, then because it's becoming too easy for nations to conduct devastating attacks on critical infrastructure without ever setting foot in the target country. [0] [1] If you're the target of a coordinated cyber attack against your infrastructure, and the remediation choices are either a complete overhaul of your infrastructure (on a software and physical level) or disconnection from the internet, I predict many nations will choose to voluntarily disconnect themselves from the internet. [0] https://www.wired.com/2016/03/inside-cunning-unprecedented-hack-ukraines-power-grid/ https://www.wired.com/2016/03/inside-cunning-unprecedented-h... [1] https://www.wired.com/2014/11/countdown-to-zero-day-stuxnet/ https://www.wired.com/2014/11/countdown-to-zero-day-stuxnet/
- badlocal 9y ago
  Maybe we need several internets, at least if people and organisations insist on putting their critical infrastructure on there. A critical one, with infrastructure and balkanisation and an off-switch for each region, a commercial one for people to do their online shopping and banking and whatever and an utopian one where information is free and the past still alive. Maybe the third one should be more hidden. (Just one proposed division.) Of course there are several problem here, like how to deal with government censorship. I just think we should be open and proactive about changing the basic infastructure so we can keep the cool and still be safe even with all the cyber going on. add: Sorry for throwaway, using a public airport computer in the middle east, don't need it connected to my account.
  - awakeasleep 9y ago
    Interesting idea: Can there be multiple "Internets"? Wouldn't they just be networks, then? There can only be one Internet, because of the definition of Internet! "The global computer network providing a variety of information and communication facilities, consisting of interconnected networks using standardized communication protocols"
eb3c90 9y ago
I have hope that general AI will be a democratizing force again. Having something that can be taught by a human and trained with messy real world data, rather than vast data sets and specialized computer scientists, will make a huge difference. I'd like it to general intelligence augmentation[1] so we aren't creating more agents with their own goals. I'm not sure what the future looks like then. With my futurist monocle on you could imagine most SaaS being disrupted. You still want to send messages, but those can be encrypted and the IA manages the encryption for you, so you don't have to. Searching still seems pretty likely to be centralised although different communities might run their own if IA makes that sort of thing easy. [1]: https://improvingautonomy.wordpress.com/2017/08/22/a-possible-path-to-intelligence-augmentation https://improvingautonomy.wordpress.com/2017/08/22/a-possibl... and obviously https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html
taf2 9y ago
don't give up just yet... if we can get those low earth orbit satellites into place - broadcasting lte or 5g globally for anyone... it'll be pretty hard to block?
danjoc 9y ago
For decades, any time internet censorship came up, there was always someone who quoted John Gilmore's "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." What happened? Did you all give up? Is the utopia really over? You're just gonna let it fall into disrepair and die? Back in the day, when utopia was being built, they designed things to be decentralized and self hosted. Like smtp, nntp, ldap. Think about that when you complain about Facebook (glorified, centralized ldap) being blocked.

by guelo 9y ago

FilterSweep 9y ago

You could argue it already ended with the corporatists' "Web 2.0". And PRISM. The only real difference now is that its entering the public's consciousness, and the ground is rife for authoritarians to present non-ideal solutions.

cJ0th 9y ago
> You could argue it already ended with the corporatists' "Web 2.0". And PRISM. What's more, FB and Co are to blame for these shutdowns of communication channels. Had we kept our communication decentralized governments would have a much harder time identifying communication services.

kogepathic 9y ago

> The utopian period of the web is ending. The future web will be much more balkanized and militarized. You could say that. I'd flip it around and say "It's amazing the world wide web has survived intact as long as it did, given the vastly different political ideologies in the world." Quite frankly, I consider it a small miracle we're all still using the same internet that's been around over 20 years. I absolutely think the future of the internet is regional/national versions of the internet, with limited/censored connectivity to other regions/nations. If not for political reasons, then because it's becoming too easy for nations to conduct devastating attacks on critical infrastructure without ever setting foot in the target country. [0] [1] If you're the target of a coordinated cyber attack against your infrastructure, and the remediation choices are either a complete overhaul of your infrastructure (on a software and physical level) or disconnection from the internet, I predict many nations will choose to voluntarily disconnect themselves from the internet. [0] https://www.wired.com/2016/03/inside-cunning-unprecedented-hack-ukraines-power-grid/ https://www.wired.com/2016/03/inside-cunning-unprecedented-h... [1] https://www.wired.com/2014/11/countdown-to-zero-day-stuxnet/ https://www.wired.com/2014/11/countdown-to-zero-day-stuxnet/

badlocal 9y ago
Maybe we need several internets, at least if people and organisations insist on putting their critical infrastructure on there. A critical one, with infrastructure and balkanisation and an off-switch for each region, a commercial one for people to do their online shopping and banking and whatever and an utopian one where information is free and the past still alive. Maybe the third one should be more hidden. (Just one proposed division.) Of course there are several problem here, like how to deal with government censorship. I just think we should be open and proactive about changing the basic infastructure so we can keep the cool and still be safe even with all the cyber going on. add: Sorry for throwaway, using a public airport computer in the middle east, don't need it connected to my account.
- awakeasleep 9y ago
  Interesting idea: Can there be multiple "Internets"? Wouldn't they just be networks, then? There can only be one Internet, because of the definition of Internet! "The global computer network providing a variety of information and communication facilities, consisting of interconnected networks using standardized communication protocols"

eb3c90 9y ago

I have hope that general AI will be a democratizing force again. Having something that can be taught by a human and trained with messy real world data, rather than vast data sets and specialized computer scientists, will make a huge difference. I'd like it to general intelligence augmentation[1] so we aren't creating more agents with their own goals. I'm not sure what the future looks like then. With my futurist monocle on you could imagine most SaaS being disrupted. You still want to send messages, but those can be encrypted and the IA manages the encryption for you, so you don't have to. Searching still seems pretty likely to be centralised although different communities might run their own if IA makes that sort of thing easy. [1]: https://improvingautonomy.wordpress.com/2017/08/22/a-possible-path-to-intelligence-augmentation https://improvingautonomy.wordpress.com/2017/08/22/a-possibl... and obviously https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html

taf2 9y ago

don't give up just yet... if we can get those low earth orbit satellites into place - broadcasting lte or 5g globally for anyone... it'll be pretty hard to block?

danjoc 9y ago

For decades, any time internet censorship came up, there was always someone who quoted John Gilmore's "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." What happened? Did you all give up? Is the utopia really over? You're just gonna let it fall into disrepair and die? Back in the day, when utopia was being built, they designed things to be decentralized and self hosted. Like smtp, nntp, ldap. Think about that when you complain about Facebook (glorified, centralized ldap) being blocked.