Monday, December 27, 2010

You Won't Recognize the Internet in 2020

Based on a response attached to Slashdot: You Won't Recognize the Internet in 2020
 
Being 40+ years old now and watching technology my whole life starting computers at 7 it's something I am very in tune with.
If you want to see how it's going to change in the future you can just extrapolate from the past.
First let's point out that the internet is a common method for moving datagrams (IP packets, block of data up to 1500 bytes at a time), much like the postal service ships individual letter. On top of this stream connections using (TCP) are created and most of what we see is built on this.

The point is, there are no limitations over what can be sent, or the format.

So telepresence, virtual reality, haptics, Remote control of UAV's, skys the limit on what can be sent over this network.

I remember the Internet clearly as it was 30 years ago. As a hacker breaking in to it was the most LEET thing you could do back in 1980.

I wasn't till 1987 before I finally got my first legitimate access to the Internet.

Let me put a little time line down to put things in to perspective.

1969 CompuServe started.
1972 C Programming Language invented.
1980 -- there was no TCP/IP even is was NCP, no unix servers and it was the DARPANET. It was all 300 Baud Modems! UUCP and Email was there.
1983 BSD 4.2 Unix came out with first tcp/ip stack in . C++ first developed.
    Modems and BBS's ruled at this time (sort of like when dinosaurs roamed the earth)
1984 Apple Macintosh first released.
1985 "thin" Ethernet first comes out (uses BNC Coax)
1987 Perl released.
1988 Linksys founded. First Internet Worm get's loose, create massive panic! (Robert Tappan Morris)
1990 -- there was no www, html, , it was telnet, ftp, gopher, Archie First Internet search engine starts.
          10Base-T first comes out.
1992 Wais search engine starts.
1992 Tim Berards Lee came out with www and html.
1993 Mosaic the first "graphical" web browser. Before this it was all console text based !!!!!
                  WiFi was invented. Linux and FreeBSD first Released. Lycos search engine starts.
1994 14.4K modems first started to appear. WebCrawler search engine starts. VRML web based virtual reality.
1995 Yahoo and Altavista search engines start. Vocaltec first VOIP comes out. JAVA released.
1995/6 is when the internet boom started. 28.8K modems appear.
1997 Google & E-Bay started. 36.6K and 56Kmodems appear. PHP first comes out. Netflix starts. 100Base-T first comes out.
1998 Voip is 1% of all phone traffic.
1999 Napster first comes out. DSL & Cable Modems first become available. Metricom Ricochet service comes out. Blogger.com goes online.
            Gigabit Ethernet first comes out.
2000 Dot com Crash.
2001 Metricom dies.
2002 Bit Torrent takes off. Wifi Starts to take off for consumers.
2003 Skype first comes out.
2004 Facebook goes online.
2005 Youtube goes online.
2006 Twitter founded.
2007 Hulu Starts
2008 Netflix start streaming video.
2009 HD videos are being streamed from Youtube.
2010 Apple TV and Google TV.

Next 3D Video Steaming., Free Video Point Video, telepresents, and augmented reality

Well as you can see things in the past 10 haven't changed all that much.
I expect the next 10 will not bring any radical surprises unless your living under a rock (Which most people are).



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by MrNatas
You forgot two things. First, technology tends to grow exponentially. It reaches a limit at one moment, but overall, the faster it goes, the faster it gets. Second, the impact of the social media is extremely huge, I live in Asia, and in my city nearly everybody who can access a computer owns a facebook account, that's a LOT of people. Online presence will not be more different for the generations born in the last 10 than phone calls are for us, that's a major change.
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Actually if you look at the grown curve for any technology it's not exponential but sigmoidal. Which can very much look like an exponential when it's curve first starts to rocket upwards.

If you want to see the trend for the Internet look at the phone.

First was just connecting over a single pair of wires, then plug panels, and then automated electron mechanical switching. A monopoly was given by the government to the third largest company! Still Bell Labs drove so much technology R&D. The transistor, the Laser, Fiber Optics.

Development and growth was very rapid for it's time, but it then slowed down and leveled off.

Still developments occurred. touch tones, Muzac, Teletype, PBX's, modems, fax, answering machines, and voicemail, IVRU's, 1-800, 911, Video Conferencing, Caller ID, ISDN, DSL.

Around 1980 though Ma Bell became an obstacle to progress and did all they could to limit modems and computer communication without paying exorbitant rates.  Progress was only made after the government broker the phone company up and opened up a whole new explosion of competition and progress.

I am sure the same will be for the Internet. At some point it will level off, and development will slow. Limited by the pace of other technologies and powerful Monopolies that are already beginning to take a stronghold on the Internet. 

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