The Future

Twenty years is a long time in Internet terms, 20 years ago there was no eBay, Amazon, Facebook or Google. My first prediction is ubiquity internet access will be almost everywhere and not only via conventional devices like computers, Phones or Tablets, the latter two are of course quite recent. But to almost every thing how about a car reporting its health and performance or getting travel reports on real time (yes I know already available on broadcast radio). My second prediction is speed ten years ago Gigabit speed was restricted to the inside of data centres between fasts servers and on limited fibre long distance links. Now 1Gb Fibre To The Home is if not commonplace not remarked upon, even to remote areas. Google are rolling out FTTH to Kansas City, they are of course behind a rural north Lancashire UK area, See the references. Of course WiFi has greatly advanced in speed over the years too. Routers continue to become more and more capable, this of course is a consequence of Moore's Law as routers are just special purpose computers. The reference also looks at a future for Moore's Law based not on CMOS improvements but exotic computing such as quantum computing. Third prediction which is partly a consequence of the second the major link technologies will be Fibre and Wi-Fi. Fibre to the home will become almost universal and Wi-Fi within the home also almost universal, this is no great prediction that is already my set up in rural Thailand, which is how I will submit this and also receive 22 channels of foreign, mostly UK TV. Fourth prediction additional transmission technologies and protocols, for this I went looking for VintCerf's thoughts, he has pretty much been right in the past and is paid by Google to do this thinking. In the references he mentions Interplanetary Internet to facilitate space exploration, so for instance for Mars exploration use a satellite in Martian orbit as a packet store and forward facility a RFC as been written for a new protocol, DTN Delay and disruption Tolerant Network. DTN. It has also been suggested that DTN might have terrestrial applications for remote area, disaster situation sensor networks and the like. Quantum networking, which basically works by Quantum entanglement of two elementary particles might be viable it also has the advantages of being instantaneous. Experiments have been performed more are planned and it might prove viable. See the reference. Fifth prediction is that institutional inertia and resistance will restrict the full exploitation of the uses to which the Internet can be put. One is the outcomes might be the distopian option I mention below. I'd like to give an example from my own experience. I'm a British national but live in Thailand, my bank accounts are with first direct (sic) in the UK and Bangkok Bank in Thailand. Both offer online banking, first direct being one of the first to offer it (they have no Branches), Bangkok Bank (which has lots of branches) made it available in 2005. As an example of an online transaction I might wish to transfer money to a recipient I had never sent money to before. With first direct I set up the recipient details (this can be individuals, banks or other companies) and make the transfer, it takes less than five minutes and costs nothing only restriction is a limit of 49,999 costs nothing. With Bangkok Bank to set up a new recipient I have to fill in a form, go to my branch, no other, and wait several days for them to set it up so of course I do it the old way of using an ATM to a Bangkok Bank Recipient or go to the recipients bank filling in a form and paying a fee, there The Future Page 1 of 2

are small banking costs, larger ones for the car trip and lost time. One dystopian option that might happen, it already has in Iran and North Korea, is a Balkanisation of the Internet. Where certain countries decide that what their citizens see is not to be trusted to the citizens but only to the authorities. Also the system of administration may be weakened as some may think the USA has too much power in Internet administration. A recent article in the the UK Guardian newspaper sums up some of the issues, see the reference. All in all though I think the Internet will continue to deliver more good things and am confident of the future. Word count 752

The Future

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