Future of Internet

It is a truth that the introduction of the Internet (currently maybe around 30-35 years
old) has actually increased the dependencies of the world's different societies,
business and even economies of nations. The Internet is rapidly becoming a key
ingredient in our economic infrastructure –akin to electricity and roads– as well as our
social structures.

Taking the cue from various inputs available in the internet, this is an attempt from
my side to read the future of the internet - do understand how tough and difficult it
might be ... But let me test out my "crystal ball" reading skills - hope you will enjoy
the same too.

Internet is there to stay - it has survived and actually grown in strength in last 30
years ... It will still grow stronger in terms of usage, business revenues and
technologies associated in the future.

Business Impacts
• Currently internet users are more "passive" - it will change and the users will
be "active" with creation of new contents which will lead to new innovation
and more flexible and innovative business models
• Internet will no longer be viewed as "Information Technology" - rather
corporations now realise the potential beyond normal information - it will play
the role of maybe a new coinage of "BIT - Business (on) Information
Technology"
• Intellectual property rights and implementation of processes to protect the
same will remain a challenge and hence a big opportunity for newer
businesses
• The predominance of a "common" language - mainly English - will not be the
focus if the need comes to increase business through internet. Hence, to do
business "locally", you need to have "local" languages into the net - so, maybe
Unicode and similar challenges ahead ?
• Business travel costs will decrease drastically as the purpose of the same will
be met through use of video conferences through the net, etc. Office costs will
also decrease as the homes of the individuals will be their own "offices" as
they work online from their home aided by audio / video conferences

Social Impacts
• The Internet will be considered as a "critical infrastructure" in itself and also
as a key enabler of other forms of critical infrastructure and will play
an increasingly important role in support of critical infrastructure such as
transportation, telecommunications, broadcasting, banking, finance, and
provision of government services.
• Due to the potential economics of scale, newer technologies will change social
entertainment. Concepts of "Video on Demand", "Internet TV", etc will grow in
strenght and will be the backbone of the future society
• Issues of "restrictions", "censorship", "privacy" will be a focus in the future
 • Social life in general will change with lesser inter-personal relationships and
interactions "face to face". These will be replaced either by social networking
sites like Facebook, Orkut, etc OR by using internet technolgies -similar to
VoIP, web camera's, etc
• With more people now being hooked onto internet, it will no longer be for the
newer generation - it will be "Internet for All". The associated challenges in
bandwidths, internet speeds will be there and hence investments in these
areas will continue to rise
• Education will change with very few (almost negligible) classroom sessions -
all will be through the internet - starting from teaching "A B C D" to a child to
an online examination.
• If relegious fanaticism's exist in the future that can potentially breed
terrorism, technologies will also aid them unfortunately. Concepts like that of
Google Earth will continue to help them make their bloody acts of human
destruction
• Gaming and entertainment will change - movie theatres will run out of
business and you will have the modern home theatres in place

Technology Impacts
• "IT departments" within corporations will be looked up beyond the "business
support" functions - but will be looked as a window for "business process
modelling". This will be possible because of new "open structure" technologies
• Network traffic will increase so much that there might be need of soft "traffic
control systems" to regulate and control the same - otherwise we might result
in "traffic jams" in the internet
• Security issues within internet - especially doing business transactions - will
continue to rise. Technologies around this challenge need to strengthen and
be continously innovative. The issues will be tried to be "contained" by rules
and regulations in various nations - but still needs to be implemented through
technologies
• Networks to be designed and maintained as "neutral" with regards to
applications hooked into it - this will mean more stress on Service Oriented
Architecture (SOA)
• Wireless technolgies with usage of concepts of RFID, etc will continue to
flourish. The entire world will be a "Wi-Fi" enabled area - where you need no
wires at all !
• Hardware prices will "fall" as competition will increase to meet the increasing
demands of hardware to meet the huge demands of human usages
• Loads on search engines will increase tenfold - technology have to address
the same
• As the diversity and complexity of Internet governance arrangements is likely
to increase in the future, it would be useful to have a mechanism that could,
as appropriate, foster inclusive dialogue, collective learning, capacity building,
holistic trend monitoring and analysis, and best practices across them.

And the list goes on and on