ISOC Future of the Internet – My Take
For questions 6-10, please describe the greatest forces of change that you believe will affect the future of the Internet over the coming five to seven years.
6. Social. The five billion poor, empowered by the Internet, and the 99% within the one billion rich, empowered by the Internet, will no longer tolerate what Matt Taibbi calls Griftopia — the merger of financial and political crime.
7. Technological. MaidSafe or something like it will explode overnight and put many legacy information technology businesses out of business, while setting the stage for a World Brain to evolve rapidly, with attention finally being paid to the I in IT. A few corporations may finally realize they must make the leap to fractional pricing at the paragraph or datum level (Oracle and Thompson Reuters come to mind), and this will accelerate the demise of other content providers trying to keep a hold on the 1% (published) of the 1% (written) of the 1% (known).
8. Economic. The Middle East, Europe, and the USA could suffer near total economic collapses in which central banks and traditional banks go belly up within a few years while dictators and two-party tyrannies are literally run out of town. The barter, System D, and cyber economics, as well a community-based safety networks and an end to all absentee landlords, perhaps locally enforced debt jubilees as well, will liberate the 99% toward a renaissance.
9. Environmental. Geoengineering will become well known and vigilante justice including active sabotage and wide-spread violence will be the Third World War. On a positive note, the geoengineeering exposure and the collapse of the medical associations over their continued manfeasance in relation to vaccines, GMO, etcetera, will end government fraud — “question authority” will take on new meaning, and local nullification of predatory federal regulations will end fracking and other abuses.
10. Political/Regulatory. Hybrid evidence-based governance will become possible. Government will be recognized for what it is — the most ignorant and corrupt among the eight tribes of information — and will over time be cut down to 20% of its present size, with an end to all taxes and most military and federal level spending. Regulation will be eliminated — public education, including true cost economics displayed at point of sale on every hand-held device, will put Monsanto, Coca Cola, Nestle, and the Koch Brothers out of business. Self-governance will become real across all domains.
11. Please describe what you believe would be the most ideal scenario for the future of the global Internet. What must happen over the next several years to realize a best-case vision for the Internet in 2021?
The creation of an Open Source (Technologies) Agency would be helpful, especially since the vast majority of the benefits will not come from open software and open hardware but rather from Open Manufacturing and Open Provisioning that eliminates the 50% waste and corruption endemic in all domains. Blockchain, distributed storage, local to global geospatial registries, will all become common. Individuals will have rights of anonymity, privacy, and security as well as authentication and the ability to earn karma and MaidSafe storage and processing credits over time. The United Nations will pay attention the briefing at http://tinyurl.com/EIN-BRICS-OSEE. Open Source Everything Engineering (OSEE) Innovation Centres will emerge at every university, along with nodes of the World Brain Institute. A Global (Serious) Game will exist in cyberspace, a massive sparse matrix grounded in a 1:20,000 geospatial chart that is accurate to within one meter and everyone will have voice and vote on every issue. Applied Collective Intelligence will be the norm.
12. Please describe what you believe would be the most pessimistic scenario for the future of the global Internet. What could happen over the next several years to realize a worst-case vision for the Internet in 2021?
The US-UK will continue to be controlled by Wall Street and the City of London, with politicians continuing to abuse the public interest, actively committing treason every day as is now the case with the two-party tyranny that disenfranchises 60% of the public. Draconian national security laws and a perpetuation of public apathy and ignorance will allow the easy “disappearance” of dissidents, iconoclasts, and hackers.
13. Given your areas of focus, what are the greatest questions you have about how the Internet (and the world that interacts with it) will look in 2021?
Why on earth are Oracle, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon so selfish and ignorant about the possibilities of a truly open global world brain?
TAKE THE ISOC SURVEY (OPEN TO 8 APRIL 2016)
