projections: future of the internet

[strongbad]

something that i really enjoy speculating about. the internet has changed drastically just in the 7 or so years that i've used it.
i feel like "internet culture" is going to eventually disappear and most things about the internet will be "mainstream"

i also feel like piracy is going to be a hell of a lot harder. the technology that is the internet has progressed faster than the regulations that we can put on it. it's actually pretty mind-blowing that i can download thousands of dollars of media overnight without thinking twice about it. restrictions on things like p2p and file hosting are going eventually be incredibly intrusive and invasive, but there is so much money being lost in media piracy that i feel like it is inevitable.

i know the arguments about how piracy doesn't result in lost sales and one download does not equal one lost sale, and people still buy media so pirates can pirate, but i think that those are really pointless. I rarely (if ever) buy media, and when i do, i buy it for the novelty (like records). i would have easily paid 1000s of dollars since i started pirating on media that i otherwise would have bought.

i think that we currently live in the golden age of the internet. the internet without regulations, or central control (i guess both of those points could be argued, but for the most part we are pretty free on here). enjoy it while it lasts

[ME##]

The future of the internet is 50 MB monthly data caps for $300 with every extra megabyte costing $100.  Oh, and every site is behind a paywall.

[PLEASEHELP1991]

The future of the internet is 50 MB monthly data caps for $300 with every extra megabyte costing $100.  Oh, and every site is behind a paywall.

don't you mean the past

[The Hand That Fisted Everyone]

we're going to destroy the world outside and make everything ugly, giving us no reason to venture outside of the internet the internet will be our real lives (this has already happened)

[strongbad]

we're going to destroy the world outside and make everything ugly, giving us no reason to venture outside of the internet the internet will be our real lives (this has already happened)

i agree
and it will suck with regulations

[bluaki]

I imagine cultural assimilation of the Internet is essentially complete; various fads will continue to rise and fall and businesses (especially marketing) will continue to obsess on a small subset of those. The Internet is already used for a majority of our communication, media consumption, and probably commerce.

i feel like "internet culture" is going to eventually disappear and most things about the internet will be "mainstream"

Depends on what you consider "internet culture" and "mainstream" to be. As things already are, something like Facebook is as mainstream as you can get and things like reddit and tumblr might seem to be both an "internet culture" as well as mainstream.

There will always be parts of the internet which are distinct from "mainstream culture"

i also feel like piracy is going to be a hell of a lot harder. the technology that is the internet has progressed faster than the regulations that we can put on it. it's actually pretty mind-blowing that i can download thousands of dollars of media overnight without thinking twice about it. restrictions on things like p2p and file hosting are going eventually be incredibly intrusive and invasive, but there is so much money being lost in media piracy that i feel like it is inevitable.

Successful anti-piracy essentially requires end-user systems being closed in absolutely every way. While there is a gradual move toward closed systems, with everything from iOS to proprietary file formats, Silverlight, and even HDCP, there will always be workstations that require some degree of openness for features like interoperability between programs and media distributors (especially high-end games) would hesitate to drop support for them, especially considering the enormous investment in the current PC platform.

Of the main media formats, I'd imagine music and video to be the hardest to control because of how much interoperability consumers expect across devices. Software are more controllable, especially web services, which are gaining prominence; users who pay a subscription for an account to access software running on servers cannot simply download and share that software. At least OnLive failed.

[snoorkel]

what's most interesting to me is how internet has augmented the way we interact with the world. we can locate and parse information 100x faster than a generation ago, be connected to a multimedia communications network in real time across geographic borders ,etc etc

i like to think of the internet as an evolution of the synergistic social organism's need for a more advanced method of self-assessment, where the internet is an externalized 'mirror image' of society's subconsciousness. whether this began evolving only within the past few centuries or could be seen as a major "point" of the entire recent phase of human evolution in past millennia is interesting because it puts us in a unique place in terms of the technological development we can expect even within our lifetimes, and the incredible advancement we could and should be trying to make happen within the next 250 years

and you know if you really want to know some far out shit i see the future of Internet as the transition from traditional concepts of access (physical permission, etc) to total integration with our environments, so that ideas like "logging in" and "searching" or even opening a door, the symbolic "entry" into "another place," will become obsolete... all things will become network devices, even grass and our brain cells. our methods of coordinating actions to achieve physical goals will morph as All of Experience becomes available via the internet and we literally construct the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, first 'inside' like implanting a radio in tooth but more like google in your ego then outside as we realize the two are synchronous, so "living reality" becomes more of a process of exercise in mind than in physical action, and physical action itself degrades in favor of hyperreal meta-interaction in a collectively-held dreamscape-as-reality. the living network basis of the internet (where organizational components automatically propagate duplicates of themselves to all distant parts of the network, ensuring global redundancy and stability) is a precursor to / catalyst of our civilization's move off the planet to intergalactic (and possibly inter-dimensional) residence, where the earth and sun are "nodes" in a hyperdimensional network storing and propagating megaflows of information that are necessary for the process of artificial reality construction.

[spoiler]im jk[/spoiler]

i also feel like piracy is going to be a hell of a lot harder. the technology that is the internet has progressed faster than the regulations that we can put on it. it's actually pretty mind-blowing that i can download thousands of dollars of media overnight without thinking twice about it. restrictions on things like p2p and file hosting are going eventually be incredibly intrusive and invasive, but there is so much money being lost in media piracy that i feel like it is inevitable.

i kind of feel the opposite about this, mainly because of the role that small and independent organizations play in the structure of the Internet. most of them have no business incentives whatsoever except to grow their networks, and make them faster. it's very much a "wild west" market right now, with basically no regulation and very few authorities, but I feel that the government and major corporate interests will fail to regulate or "settle things down" because a) the people who care the most are going to die before we're 40 and b) private interests with inside knowledge are innovating far too quickly for outside speculators and legislators to possibly keep up. it's probably going to get a little worse before it gets better, and sure, the government can force ISPs like comcast to filter or report traffic (like the way virgin media blocks access to TPB in the UK), but it's impossible to "centrally control" the Internet because there are no central nodes. highly secure means of acquiring media will always be available, at least to those who know how to use it.

i know the arguments about how piracy doesn't result in lost sales and one download does not equal one lost sale, and people still buy media so pirates can pirate, but i think that those are really pointless. I rarely (if ever) buy media, and when i do, i buy it for the novelty (like records). i would have easily paid 1000s of dollars since i started pirating on media that i otherwise would have bought.

it's still not your fault, it's the fault of the media publishers for failing to advertise a more appealing product the solution to their "problem" is either going to be doing that, or realizing that digital content is more lucrative anyway, and working it into their content delivery methods. as an example where consumers were not blamed for declining profits, the print media market has somewhat successfully innovated itself (or at least prolonged its lifespan) by moving to touch and online subscription-based service models. the advent of netflix and itunes is the beginning of the same change for other media formats, though I think "hollywood" movies and "popular" music will be holdouts, as the old business model of forcefully juicing money out of people starts to cope with a new world where people interact at will, like they do online, instead of by force as in l'idée fausse de capitalisme.

i think that we currently live in the golden age of the internet. the internet without regulations, or central control (i guess both of those points could be argued, but for the most part we are pretty free on here). enjoy it while it lasts

i'd say we're transitioning out of the wild west of the internet, but a long and prosperous golden age is still far ahead. this thing has only been happening on a worldwide scale for 15 years.

[The Hand That Fisted Everyone]

saw a thing where this guy made small talk with strangers as an art piece small talk is art now thanks internet

[silvertone]

the future of the intenret- 3 d printers so u can download+ print lots of frisbees causing a crash in the frisbee markets but no one cares because theyh ave "fri" frisbees

[PLEASEHELP1991]

the future of the intenret- 3 d printers so u can download+ print lots of frisbees causing a crash in the frisbee markets but no one cares because theyh ave "fri" frisbees

also tires and cars

[don't let's]

People installing pirate servers into unsuspecting people's beside