A7- Internet and Its Future

            I think that everyone is aware of what the internet actually is. This article is interesting though, because it takes you on a timeline of the internet from 1969 to today. The department of defense essentially invented the internet over 40 years ago, and since then it has developed into a global phenomenon that I’m pretty sure no one under the age of 50 could live without. The growth of the internet certainly followed a parabolic curve, where it hadn’t grown much the first 20 years and then suddenly took off over the past 25 years to where it is today. Part of this definitely had to do with the availability of computers and the level of technology available to the developers. I think part of this also has to do with the internet craze that stemmed from companies like AOL in the early 90’s.

            The data involved in the internet is incredible. Just sending an email involves an array of networks passing data around until the correct line of communication is reached. It’s hard to fathom how this was actually designed. The next topic in the article addresses internet speeds. I can’t help remembering the horrors of the dial-up internet connection. Not just the painfully slow speed, but the shrill noises coming out of the computer as the connection was made. Thank God for newer technology. Cable and DSL have similar speeds in my experience, contrary to the commercials downplaying the other’s speeds.

            Domain Name Systems, or DNS, are basically web addresses, i.e. Drexel.edu. The article then defines email addresses. The ICANN is the organization in charge of making sure no one web or email address is copied or stolen. Email attachments are defined, as well as forums, chats, internet phone calls, and intranets and telnet.

            The World Wide Web is basically how the internet links addresses and documents to others globally. This is only done because all data is set up so that it can be transferred through any server globally. This global data protocol system is our “http”. We use a web browser to search and locate these documents. This section was particularly interesting to me because I didn’t realize “http” was actually an important prefix to any web address because it helps exchange data.

            The article finishes with a small passage on commerce via the internet, and how businesses can be created on the internet or be introduced to the internet to help do business.

            Since this article is essentially common knowledge to most of society, I decided to read an article on “The future of the Internet” http://www.economist.com/node/16941635 , to see where this phenomenon is going. This article starts by reflecting the “anarchy” of the internet as it started. It was a beautiful place where anyone could post or create or share anything with anyone, worldwide. It then discusses how this freedom has been somewhat taken from us through privacy laws, antitrust acts, etc. It says that the government, IT companies, and network owners are toying with the internet to fit their specific wants and needs, which is effecting our use in a sometimes negative way. It says that the internet may become segregated by government entities across the world, where different countries will experience different “internets”. Nevertheless, the article then documents the great success of the internet. It mentions how people can communicate worldwide with similar minds to create fantastic things where they ever could have had to ability before. It references Amazon, Facebook, and Google as some of these successful internet-based inventions.

            Next, the article approaches the uneasy future the internet is headed in. It discusses bans by national governments like China on searches for specific content, where it acts like a company’s firewall which restricts employees’ online content available to them. This would be a real step in the wrong direction from the original concept of a freedom concept via the world wide web. The article also mentions trends that are potentially turning the internet into a competition once again between big companies to control the market. Again, this is taking the ideas behind the internet in the wrong direction. Lastly, the article talks about how companies controlling online data flow are charging private companies to allow their websites to be traveled to via the “fast-lane” data lines, and therefore the smaller companies are being slotted to the “slow-lane”. This is also taking the hopes of the internet’s freedom to the direction of “internets.”

            This article is very interesting because even though it is a year and a half old, it is still very accurate in terms of where the internet seems to be going. I just hope that we can figure out a way to stop it before the internet becomes the “Apple-Amazon-Facebook-Google”, where the government controls what websites you can view.