David Hunter Tow – Director of the Future Planet Research Centre, forecasts that within the next decade the Internet and Web may be at risk of splitting into a number of separate entities- fragmenting under technological, national, business and social pressures.
In its place may emerge a network of networks – continuously morphing- linking and fragmenting, with no central dominant domain backbone; instead a disconnected, random structure of networks with information channeled through uncoordinated switching stations and content hubs, controlled by a range of geopolitical, social and enterprise interests.
For authoritarian states such as China, North Korea, Iran and Syria as well as criminal cartels, this will facilitate the expansion of their operations, allowing them to circumvent exposure of illegal activities in much the same way as the current Darknet network.
Darknet- the alternate network of virtual channels that currently operates beneath the backbone of the Internet has long been a place for clandestine operations, by both criminal and state networks. It is also used as a tool by cyber authorities to provide evidence of DDoS, port scanning, worms and other malware; also allowing dissidents from repressive regimes to remain in touch with the outside world, providing protection to whistle blowers and hosting pirated movie and music sites- out of reach of traditional search engines.
Autocratic governments are also maintaining increasingly tight censorship over politically sensitive sites via controlled points of entry to their cyber fiefdoms, even to the extent of distorting current and historical events. Both China and Iran now have plans to establish their own Internet infrastructure to further strengthen the control and censorship of their populations and no doubt other authoritarian states will follow. But this power won’t be limited to dictator-run states. The increasing threat of Internet censorship via the proposed SOPA- Stop Online piracy Action legislation in the US, confirms the threat facing online freedom even within democratic nations and has already motivated opposition by major Web companies concerned about the arbitrary blocking of any site considered deemed to be infringing copyright laws.
At the same time white hat hacker groups plan to launch their own communication satellites linked to a grid of tracking stations in order to avoid such Government surveillance and interference, as discussed at the recent Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin
But Apple, Facebook, Google, Amazon as well as Cable and Internet TV companies have already begun to fragment the web to support their own Walled Garden strategies of quarantining and manipulating membership data, applications, entertainment, search results and identities. Facebook membership data cannot be transferred to other social sites. Adobe’s Flash software as well as a number of developer applications were banned by Apple, which means the iPhone browser cannot display a large portion of the Internet. Likewise Amazon’s Kindle will only display books on sale or for rent by the company. Google Plus fails to adequately attribute search results to original sources and multiple Ids are banned.
Such social sites have become closed silos, similar in many respects to those of authoritarian sites such as China.
The more this type of restricted, proprietary architecture gains traction on the Web the more it will become fragmented and the easier it will be for criminal groups to exploit, placing the open and egalitarian charter of the future Internet at risk.
But there are compelling reasons why such closed silo strategies, introduced by Governments or Web companies are likely to eventually collapse.
As outlined in previous blogs, physics ordains that information flows cannot be constrained and will eventually spread by pathways of least resistance, driven by consumer demand, competitive pressure and technological advances. In addition, biological ecosystems with limited genetic variation are the most vulnerable to extinction. Companies within the cyber ecosphere are equally vulnerable- more susceptible to competition and rapid changes in their technological and social environments if open access to innovative ideas and information flows is restricted.
The emergence of the Semantic Web is also a catalyst for greater openness, facilitating the interpretation, linking and application of knowledge stored in millions of discrete databases across the Web. This is a vital advance in fostering greater transparency, flexibility and autonomy within the Cybersphere.
But the battle for web control and Internet supremacy is only just beginning, not only between the US and China but also involving all other nations in the newly emerging multi-polar world. The US still maintains the controlling votes in ICAAN - the Domain management company, despite many attempts to democratise its management.
But now the US will be forced to flex up and stop playing the role of alpha male in an increasingly equal and diverse information world.
By its obsession with maintaining technology dominance of critical assets such as the Web, particularly in a time of global warming, with an urgent need to effectively manage global resources for all populations, the US is ironically accelerating the rise of alternate Internets and Webs.
China is charging ahead with alternate communication networks, as in most areas of new technology. After all its search engine - Baidu, already has 500 million users - almost as many as Google worldwide. Baidu works hand in glove with the Central Communist Party and is the ultimate arbiter of reality for its users, committed to working within the Government's paranoid censorship parameters constrained by a massive firewall of 50,000 Internet police. But with 200 million bloggers producing trillions of words a day as well as subscribers to RenRen and Seina Weibo- the equivalent of Facebook and Twitter, it’s becoming an increasingly tough call- even for a totalitarian government.
So now the momentum is building for a multi-Internet infrastructure as governments of all colours attempt to impose their will and dominate the evolution of the pre-eminent artefact of our civilisation, which may hold the key to the planet’s survival.
In the short term China cannot replicate the mega optic fibre cable, satellite and server networks of the present Internet, but it can deploy a mesh of alternate channels linking its own network assets to other friendly systems, for example in Africa, South America, Iran and Russia; at the same time constructing a topology complete with their own domain servers. In addition, it will develop its own knowledge hubs while leveraging the existing core public assets such as the priceless science, engineering, social and economic databases of the current Web.
The new US Net Neutrality rules recently introduced to prevent balkanisation are already under heavy fire, with broadband providers prevented from engaging in anti-competitive behaviour by blocking content or slowing access to sites and applications, as Comcast attempted to do in 2007 with the BitTorrent "peer-to-peer" protocol.
But as the pressure to bypass the new rules to allow a multi-speed Internet has increased, so too have the tensions been building between the major Social Web, Broadband and Cloud providers- Google, Apple, Facebook, Cisco, Verizon, Amazon, VMware etc. Cloud vendors have been erecting a new set of proprietary firewalls, with VMware the exception, adopting an open architecture to encourage developers to leverage and extend its technology.
The more such closed architecture with differing operational and security standards gain traction however, the higher the risk that the CloudSphere will eventually become fragmented, less productive and more vulnerable to hacking.
Meanwhile, despite its financial problems, the EU plans to spend billions on boosting broadband speeds to increase productivity and competitiveness. The European Commission will spend 9 billion euros to rollout super-fast broadband infrastructure and services across the European Union to help create a single market for digital public services by 2020 for half its population including- e-health, intelligent energy and cyber security applications, assisting utility companies, construction cooperatives, public authorities and rural users.
New Internet Architecture options are also on the horizon, with a number of innovations in train, forecast to improve the Web’s flexibility while avoiding fragmentation. But these could be put in jeopardy by the US’s intransigence over ceding control.
For example the National Science Foundation has established the Future Internet Architecture program- Nebula, to better secure Internet- Id verification, data safety, mobile access and cloud computing. Google is also setting up a new Web architecture to improve search effectiveness.
At a recent Internet Conference run by the European Paradiso Group, a number of advanced options were discussed including- Internet routing algorithms with quantum options to provide more efficient and secure routing paths; flexible spectrum allocation; a smart Internet environment enabled by networked sensors; a content and context aware Web combined with self-organising and self-adaptive capabilities to provide more autonomy and optimisation.
In addition, the proposed Named Data Networking (NDN) architecture shifts the communication emphasis from today's focus on resource addresses, servers, and hosts, to one oriented to content and context. By identifying data objects instead of just locations, NDN transforms data into the primary Internet focus. While the current Internet secures the channel or path between two communication points, adding data encryption as an extra, NDN will implicitly secure content security and trust.
These and other advances will result in the emergence of Internet Mark 3.0, following its early incarnation as a simple packet data transfer system and then transforming into a pervasive information search powerhouse over the last decade
But Internet 3.0 will only emerge if fragmentation of its infrastructure and the ensuing chaos is avoided
Internet Mark 3.0 will offer- complex multidimensional and ultra-efficient processing and the dissemination of realtime, multi-services and decision-making based on content and context– not just physical objects.
Such capability will drive societal transformation at hyper speed catalysing - urbanisation, mobility, vastly improved health and education services and all forms of virtual reality, as well as the beginning of a truly symbiotic web-human partnership in complex decision-making.
The Future of the Web has been discussed in a number of previous blogs by the author.
In summary-
By 2015 Web 2.0- The Social Web- will have developed into a complex multimedia interweaving of ideas, knowledge and social commentary, connecting over three billion people on the planet.
By 2025, Web 3.0- The Semantic Web- will have made many important contributions to new knowledge through network science, logical inference artificial intelligence. It will be powered by a seamless, computational mesh, enveloping and connecting human and artificial life and will encompass all facets of our social and business lives- always on and available to manage every need.
By 2035, Web 4.0- the Intelligent Web- will be ubiquitous- able to interact with the repository of all available knowledge of human civilisation- past and present, digitally coded and archived for automatic retrieval and analysis. Human intelligence will have co-joined with advanced forms of artificial intelligence, creating a higher or meta-level of knowledge processing. This will be essential for supporting the complex decision-making and problem solving capacity required for civilisation's future survival and progress.
Also by 2035 the last of the enterprise walled gardens will break down and leak like stone walls surrounding an ancient town. Techniques and technologies across the spectrum of knowledge will continue to spread, expand and link in new ways as they always have, bypassing temporary impediments, because that is the physical reality of information and knowledge.
The future Internet will inevitably follow these laws- becoming more open and flexible, using common protocols as enterprises and consumers demand greater flexibility. As an increasing number of data providers begin to implement Tim Bernier Lee’s Linked Data principles, it will transform into the creation of an open global Infosphere containing billions of links and coordinated by the World Wide Web Consortium.
This will offer a blueprint for connecting information from different sources into a single global data repository, with the Global Commons and Public Domain models playing an increasingly important democratic role.
Most importantly the Web will be equally available to and controlled by all nations, under the auspices of a specially constituted UN body, devolving forever away from US control.
But this can only happen if the underlying structural integrity of the Internet and Web is preserved. If managed as a global cooperative project it will result in enormous benefits for the whole of humanity. But if the Future Internet splits and fragments along geopolitical and competitive lines, as its current evolution suggests, then much of its potential benefit for our civilisation and planet will dissipate.
The future of this pre-eminent human-engineered living organism of the 21st century is now in the balance..
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