I first imagined something like the internet back in 1990, when I first got a modem. It was obvious what an extraordinary revolution it would be if every computer could easily access a shared comms system, instead of having to connect to lots of different BBS systems. By 1995, it was clearly happening, and the possibilities boggled my mind. I soon realised that this wasn't just about new games, new apps, and new services. The internet was the wild frontier, a place free from the corrosive influence of corporate ideology, run by open-source nuts and paid for with delivered pizza. The bursting of the dot-com bubble in the early 2000s was good news to me. It looked like the corporations had tried to buy the whole place up but failed. Advertising on the net didn't work. Payment was a hassle. Search engines weren't good enough to drive consumers to retail websites. This was all good news to me. The dot-com frenzy was a stark reminder of the ruin that would result if the real-world corporate megaliths got their hands on the internet's steering wheel. But it was only a temporary retreat. Google fixed search engines and invented a new type of advertising that worked. The word 'monetize' was invented and then became ubiquitous in what seemed like a week. Now it's all fucked. The same open-source nuts are still there, but above them we now have a layer of hardcore profit-mongers, mostly VC types, who have bent our wonderful playground into the shape of the world outside. The dream is ruined. There is a successor to the internet coming. I don't know when it will appear or what form it will take. All I know is that it will be awesome, until the predators find their way in.
Certainly a mesh infrastructure would be less susceptible to overt control/monopolization. But that's only the physical layer. Any medium that allows access to millions or billions of 'consumers' will be unlikely to maintain real independence for long. People will invite the corporations into their lives, as they have since the 1930s when the public relations industry was invented by Edward Bernays. There are significant changes in our culture and politics that must happen before we will see progress. Whether that happens in our lifetimes is a coin toss.
Like this? http://news.discovery.com/tech/gear-and-gadgets/outernet-project-seeks-free-internet-access-for-earth-140225.htm Inter-web social commentary is almost always bullied into cynical viewpoints, for more reasons than I care to mention, so I don't post that link without knowing the uniform opinions of those doubting it, but this truly seems like a humane, and evolutionary step in providing the environment necessary to continue the growth of mankind as an interconnected organism of innovation
That just broke my heart a little bit. Okay a lot. Any emerging technologies you consider possible candidates for this successor?
It is crazy to think the US has been an innovator in so many things and being ruled by capitalism which has also increased innovation and early on, adopted anti-trust and monopoly laws in order to increase competition has fallen in to the same traps that come with capitalism time and time again. It is hard to believe that Google Fiber will take 20+ years to come to many major cities in the US while other countries, further behind then us, already have 100 mbs at a low cost in small cities. It seems that they should think they are shooting themselves in the foot in the big picture. However, that is the thing with bottom lines for shareholder profit margin companies. It is all about the profit now, with no regard for the future, until they are forced to change, or can control the change and slow it from happening.
A good, healthy company focuses on sustainable profit and sizable margin. There's no need to grow 10% or more every year if that's not what the market naturally allows for. It's insane to even think that continuous growth is possible. Literally insane. The market is finite. I mentioned that I've worked for three fortune 100 companies and it's worth mentioning that the one I'm currently employed at is far less guilty of these things than the other two were. Not all of them are purely evil, some are governed by more reasonable minds.that is the thing with bottom lines for shareholder profit margin companies. It is all about the profit now, with no regard for the future
As someone that has worked for several fortune 100 companies and one fortune 50 company, I can confirm this. Huge organizations, like any other organization have goals. These goals come from the top down. The top is almost always concerned with the same thing, "growth," not "profitability alone, but "growth." Not the growth of ideas or the dispersion of quality products, these things are nice to them but only if they foster "growth" and not just any growth but usually double digit growth. Why? Because this is what shareholders have come to expect. Did your company show an 8% increase in revenue last year? -HORRIBLE!! WHY NOT DOUBLE DIGIT! -Heads will roll and they will not roll from the top.
I fear we will have to wait for the people in the younger generation who see the virtue and profit in new technology, such as the Internet, run for government positions and can get the ball rolling faster again. It's a sad affair where people care about small gains today for themselves and not the larger picture for the community as a whole.
I was thinking about this the other day. How is anyone in the "younger generation" of today ever going to be able to run for any kind of government position without being blackmailed into corruption? If you are a young adult today, you've likely been posting everything about your life... tons of personal information all over the internet. Your parents may have even started it before you were born. Now we know all that information has been stored and is ripe for being used against politicians to control them.
I think as the iPhone toting, nude picture taking, over-sharing generation grows up, there will be some issues with nude pictures or scandalous twitter posts but not any more or any less than we see now. Keep in mind the 30 and 40 year old politicians managed to partake in the same exact thing. Cock shots. Affairs. Articles they wrote for their college paper that goes against what they preach now. For the more intelligent, tech savvy kids, there were really only a few years where people were sharing everything without knowing the consequences. Today's high schoolers have grown up hearing about nude pictures being passed around the entire school, ex-boyfriends and revenge sites, parents finding out / cops arresting dumbasses who brag about their location during a crime, etc. They know what to post, when to post it, where to post it: Semi-anonymous things like Snapchat, more anonymous and differentiated usernames online, completely anonymous like Tor. Facebook is hardly being used by today's teenagers and there is a reason Snapchat is so damn popular. I'm 23 and even I knew the dangers of posting things online. We didn't have cell phones with cameras and internet until high school, but we had digital cameras. When I was 14, my mother found out I ditched the Friday night football game to set off fireworks on the beach with some boys because a friend of mine posted photos on MySpace. I didn't even have a MySpace. At 15, two girls in my class were arrested for death threats that they had posted to MySpace. My younger cousin (currently 16) is forced to be friends with his mother on Facebook. But he has his settings all crazy so he can choose to post to all his friends, or all his friends with the exception of his mom, family, and not-so-close acquaintances. His mom sees all the harmless things like surfing and random teenage musings, doesn't get suspicious that he's hiding anything because of the lack of wall posts or whatever, while never seeing the pictures from last weekend's party. I also think we are going to see things that aren't acceptable now become a bit more acceptable. At some point, we can't spend weeks vilifying each individual person with a cock pic out there because every one will have a cock pic out there. My grandmother has a set of topics that she finds completely socially unacceptable to talk about. My generation talks about them all the time and doesn't even think about it, let alone judge each other because of it. I'm not saying that we'll all be posting our nudie-bits on the next Facebook or sharing our darkest secrets with the world, but we won't be spending 3-4 weeks of front page articles coving the latest dirt on a politician. I don't know how prevalent this actually is. I think if one person finds a dark secret you posted online, others can find it too. Blackmail only works if you can get the single video tape back, not if it can be accessed via google or a light doxxing. Front page news stories and broken careers are what happen to politicians when they get caught. I would be very surprised if there was that level of corruption happening due to oversharing, although nothing would surprise me these days. Also, you might like this post: http://hubski.com/pub?id=105950Now we know all that information has been stored and is ripe for being used against politicians to control them.