Position Paper 3: First World Expectations

Even though they say there’s nothing like the present, I’m sure we all want to know what the future has in store for us. The internet has a unique way of attracting and inspiring new victims to learn, create, and experiment. Before, we relied strictly on text or word of mouth to form judgement and to learn history. Everything was regional until it wasn’t. Today, I might find myself saying “Hey Siri! Where did the title of the Pope originate?”, and within a few seconds (after some possible verbal miscommunications and a little frustration) Siri will have the answer without a finger lifted. It is amazing what humans have created and made a normality or even a necessity in some cases. The exciting part is, the internet shows no indefinite limitations! Within nearly 20 years the internet has gained over 4 billion users and occupies around 56% of the world’s population according to internetworldstats.com. If you still consider the internet a new phenomenon to the history of communication, then this rapid increase in popularity is baffling and it will continue to increase as more countries enter the 1st world.

Fifty years ago, the tools we rely upon to communicate today were only science fiction. Today, you can purchase a smartphone and make calls, surf the Web, play games, run applications and accomplish more than most people would have dared to dream back then. So what's next? All the hype in technology these days is around AI/deep learning, self-driving cars, AR/VR and other shiny new things. However, there is one area of technology that has been silently evolving and gaining momentum recently: communications. Its rise over time has been fueled by things like smartphones, social apps, productivity/collaboration apps, gaming and even more millennials. Even the big four tech giants (established by Bloomberg Opinion) – Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon – have caught up to this and are spearheading some keys efforts in the field of communications. According to Jose Garcia Guaita from ferrovial: “We’re not yet fully aware of this, but thousands of children grow up today talking to, ordering and asking questions from an automated domestic assistant installed in their bedrooms. ‘Alexa, play It’s Raining Tacos’ is what Rachel Metz, editor of the MIT Technology Review, hears her 4-year-old niece say. Her family [has] several Amazon Echo Dot devices installed around the house. In her article ‘ Growing up with Alexa’, Rachel Metz reflects on how these digital butlers will affect children’s education and behavior.” What is clear is that the way in which they communicate will be very different from how we do it.

Another big trend that is going on right now is that people are taking control of the internet again. Large corporations and governments may own the internet right now, but the question is this: for how long can that be sustained? Eventually what we’ll also see is the blockchain technology being introduced for more and more information sources. What the blockchain basically does is to re-distribute the power of the network from the power of the few (those in control of the network itself) to the power of many. With the introduction of blockchain technology people will own their own data again and decide with who they want to share that data. Technology will enable normal people to set up their own long-range peer to peer data networks, large centralized internet service providers will be a thing of the past. Blockchain technology combines public transparency with personal privacy protections to create a unique data platform. Of course, if we are to reach our desired destination, the journey will have to start with the following three steps curated by Alibaba Cloud with Medium:

1. Firstly, primary blockchain technology must move a step further in development. Ultimately, the tallest buildings must get built on a solid foundation.
2. Secondly, we must complete the implementation of decentralized transactions.
3. Finally, we must provide users with concrete, practical services by such transactions. At last, technology is merely a tool by which we can change the world, create value, and ultimately provide services that help people.

WorldStream Case Study - YouTube

As we continue to move more and more into using the web more like a diary, the “web” metaphor seems unlikely to make it into the next decade. We aren’t using the Internet in the same way as 10 years ago which is why WIRED contributors David Gelernter and Eric Freeman developed the concept of the “worldstream.” Instead of using links to form a web, the worldstream uses “narrative streams” made up of social media, blogs, etc... to follow the flow of the Internet. The result is info flowing to you from the future and away into the past in an organized cluster. That means there will be the invention of a virtual 3-D display that will allow us to literally surf through the worldstream and extract important info. And, believe it or not, that actually already exists! While not the enveloping online experience that this will come to be, a software prototype that puts an esthetic on Gelerntner and Freeman's vision called lifestreams does show what we can do with our current limited technology. A few more years, and we’ll be surfing the web… literally.