{"id":1264,"date":"2017-11-29T15:49:20","date_gmt":"2017-11-29T15:49:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sdi.thoughtstorms.info\/?p=1264"},"modified":"2017-11-29T15:49:20","modified_gmt":"2017-11-29T15:49:20","slug":"could-the-internet-disappear-within-20-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sdi.thoughtstorms.info\/?p=1264","title":{"rendered":"Could the internet disappear within 20 years?"},"content":{"rendered":"

From a Quora answer I just made :<\/em>
\nThe protocol will still exist.
\nBut there is now a real danger that \u201cthe internet\u201d will have been successfully enclosed by private corporations.
\nWhat will that look like?
\n1. the end of net neutrality means that the phone companies \/ network providers can choose to prioritise packets from certain companies \/ services. They start to demand a premium from popular services.
\n2. most people don\u2019t notice or care because they only use a few popular services anyway : Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Pinterest, Netflix etc. These large corporations complain but start to pay the premium to be first class citizens. Packets from other services \/ web-addresses get deprioritized.
\n3. the commercial Content Delivery Networks probably play a role here. Basically anyone who wants to provide content to the public will need to go via a CDN because they\u2019ll be the ones cutting the deals between the phone companies and any company smaller than Facebook and Google. That\u2019s probably how Quora and Pinterest etc. will keep going.
\n4. Meanwhile, governments will continue to try to reassert control over internet content. In the name of clamping down on piracy, pornography, fake news, terrorism, online harassment, illegal crypto-currencies etc. they\u2019ll start putting more pressure on online services to police their content. Facebook and Google will be increasingly required to co-operate. Smaller services will find they need to be vetted to get onto the CDN.
\n5. Also networking \u201chardware\u201d is increasingly moved into software. Routers become generic boxes whose protocols are just software configuration.
\n6. Finally, phone companies, CDNs and router companies figure out some \u201cimproved\u201d protocols which make the shaping and inspection of traffic more efficient. Stripped of the need to route generic packets from anywhere to anywhere, this new infrastructure, brought through a software update, is sold to the consumers as an \u201cupgrade\u201d.
\n7. By now, consumer IP is dead. Email protocols stop working. (Google and other \u201cweb-mail\u201d providers arrange an alternative that looks the same but works over the new protocol. Or perhaps integrates directly with other messaging providers.) Communication is via Facebook and Twitter which work on the new protocol. Other P2P protocols that rely on IP also stop working. No more bittorrent, btsync, syncthing, webrtc etc.
\nIP survives as a \u201clegacy system\u201d for corporate users of course. Too many large companies still depend on it. But it will now be expensive, like most \u201centerprise\u201d kit.
\nWithin 20 years, we\u2019ll find that the remaining \u201cfree\u201d internet, where any ordinary person can hire a web-server and put up their own content independent of any of the major corporations or systematic government oversight is reduced to a tiny minority of hobbyists like amateur radio. Most people never access it or even know of its existence.
\nIf you don\u2019t like this scenario, NOW is the time to do something about it.<\/strong>
\nNot just do what you can to defend net-neutrality, but start to use the free \/ peer-to-peer, open protocols that we still have. Run your own web-site or blog. Use RSS to share content. Use webrtc to do your video conferencing, and bittorrent to share legitimate files. Do what you can to make sure that there is just too much demand and usage of the open protocols and internet that the large corporations can\u2019t afford to try to switch it off because they know they\u2019ll be losing too many customers.
\nOnce most people aren\u2019t using the internet, taking it away becomes easy.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From a Quora answer I just made : The protocol will still exist. But there is now a real danger that \u201cthe internet\u201d will have been successfully enclosed by private corporations. What will that look like? 1. the end of net neutrality means that the phone companies \/ network providers can choose to prioritise packets […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[196,216],"class_list":["post-1264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","tag-hacker-politics","tag-internet-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sdi.thoughtstorms.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sdi.thoughtstorms.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sdi.thoughtstorms.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sdi.thoughtstorms.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sdi.thoughtstorms.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sdi.thoughtstorms.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1264\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sdi.thoughtstorms.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sdi.thoughtstorms.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sdi.thoughtstorms.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}