We often think of the Internet as a platform for unfettered global communication, where information flows freely, innovators can launch new applications at will, and everyone can have a voice. But it’s unlikely that our children’s Internet will look anything like what we have now.
How might the Internet as we know it die? Here are 10 possibilities.
- Someone subverts the Domain Name Service. The Internet relies on DNS. But if someone broke — or worse, subverted — the fundamental way in which we find web sites, we wouldn’t trust URLs any more. Phishing would be easy. Own the DNS and you own the Internet.
- Zombie networks attack! Untold numbers of enslaved PCs are waiting to do the bidding of shadowy hackers. Matt Sergeant of MessageLabs puts the size of the Storm botnet at between five and 10 million machines (though others peg the size of the network at much less.) Today, bots fill our inboxes with spam. But in the past, they’ve been used to take out companies and countries and to blackmail sites. In the end, it’s an arms race in which only one side has to play by the rules.
- Massive physical infrastructure failure. If an accident involving a couple of cables in the Mediterranean can make the Internet unusable for hundreds of millions, imagine what an intentional attack could do.
- Death by a thousand fragments: Ever since Usenet, people have been grouping together with those who think like them. In his book “The Big Switch,” Nicholas Carr cites one study that claimed more than 90 percent of the links originating within either the conservative or liberal community stay within that community. Some link referral tools can even be configured to keep visitors on sites with the same world view. The end result? Islands of like-minded people, increasingly sure there is only one right answer and that they’re in sole possession of it. And an end to the dreams of a global community envisioned by the Internet’s creators.
- A really good virus breaks the routers. The Internet’s self-healing mechanisms rely on the Border Gateway Protocol, or BGP. But what if someone gets inside the routers? In a 2006 NANOG presentation, Cisco looked at claims of vulnerability and concluded that “the most damaging attacks are caused by the deliberate misconfiguration of a trusted router.” Corrupt BGP, and you not only stop the Internet from forwarding traffic, you interfere with our ability to get to the routers and fix them.
- Updates break how updates work. Most software these days is designed to patch itself and remain current. But sometimes the process of automated upgrades triggers its own problems. On Aug. 16, 2007, Skype went down in what the company claimed was a side effect of a massive automatic update to Windows. It’s only a matter of time before an update makes a fundamental piece of software, like a networking stack, unable to update itself, cutting off millions and requiring manual intervention.
- The Net stops being neutral. If the carriers start to charge us for access to sites the way cable companies charge for premium television, pretty soon you’ll have a “Google fee” on your monthly bill. This already happens with many mobile phones that feature the services of Facebook and YouTube. It’s perhaps the most insidious death, because it would signal the end of innovation — no one would be able to launch the next Skype, Twitter or YouTube without the tacit approval of carriers.
- The lawyers get involved. The Internet has been an experiment in free speech. That may be coming to an end. Unable to go after the sites themselves, lawyers go after the hosters and registrars. That’s how Swiss banking group Julius Baer took whistleblower Wikileaks off the air. And once there’s precedent, others are sure to follow. The recording industry is already wondering if it can go after carriers for enabling copyright infringement. This is the irony of Net Neutrality: When telcos start treating different bytes differently, they aren’t “common carriers” and may be liable for what they transmit, including illegal content. So they’ll comply.
- Walled gardens: Many countries already restrict how the Internet is used. China’s firewall — which includes 30,000 people tasked with finding improper users — is a good example. But the Internet is a tool for social change and revolution that could threaten any government. Imagine, for example, a U.S. Congress that outlaws online pornography and blocks known adult sites (which accounted for 18.8 percent of all web visits in 2004, according to Hitwise, although the U.S. government says that figure is actually a mere 1 percent.) Instead of a global Internet, we’d have a return to localized standards of decency imposed by legislators. It’d be like “Dirty Dancing” all over again.
- Humans take themselves out: As Discover Magazine pointed out years ago, we’ve got plenty of ways to do ourselves in, from nukes to plagues to sucking ourselves into a black hole of our own making. And what’s an Internet without users?
The Internet has already morphed from its initial aspirations of open academia to a commercial platform controlled by corporations and carriers. In many ways, the time between the start of ARPAnet in 1969 and the end of Netscape this past February is just a brief period in history that the Facebook generation won’t miss.
64 trackbacks so far
2:28 AM PT
[...] went down forever. Hard to imagine? Read about ten ways the Internet as we know it might die in this GigaOM post by Alistair [...]
3:44 AM PT
[...] artículo de Alistair Croll en GigaOm, “10 Ways the Internet (As We Know It) Will Die“, con sus buenos y preocupantes visos de realidad: la entrada enumera diez problemas o [...]
11:45 AM PT
[...] 10 razones por las que internet puede morir [ENG]gigaom.com/2008/04/06/10-ways-the-internet-will-die/ por carlinos hace pocos segundos [...]
1:58 PM PT
[...] voice. But it ’s unlikely that our children’s Internet will look anything like what we have now.read more | digg story addthis_url = [...]
2:27 PM PT
[...] | incoming hURRLs | getting started | FAQ | blog Voila, the hURRL you reqested …1 hURRLs - (link) (first hURRLed by mmathias @ 11 minutes ago /// permalink) mmathias says:”This might happen, [...]
2:38 PM PT
[...] 6, 2008 Gigaom put out an interesting article about the 10 Ways the Internet Will Die. It seems pretty doomsday-ish, but it is interesting nonetheless. How do you guys think it might [...]
2:41 PM PT
[...] voice. But it ’s unlikely that our children’s Internet will look anything like what we have now.read more | digg story [...]
2:56 PM PT
[...] voice. But it ’s unlikely that our children’s Internet will look anything like what we have now.read more | digg story Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can [...]
3:30 PM PT
[...] This is an interesting article on ways that the internet as we know it could die. It is interesting reading, but one thing sticks in the craw. [...]
4:21 PM PT
[...] We often think of the Internet as a platform for unfettered global communication, where information flows freely, innovators can launch new applications at will, and everyone can have a voice. But it’s unlikely that our children’s Internet will look anything like what we have now.http://gigaom.com/2008/04/06/10-ways-the-internet-will-die/” rel=”dc:source” prope… [...]
4:39 PM PT
[...] Aqui podemos leer un interesante articulo en ingles sobre como la red podria quedar destruida bajo 10 diferentes circunstancias. [...]
4:59 PM PT
[...] 10 Ways the Internet (As We Know It) Will Die We often think of the Internet as a platform for unfettered global communication, where information flows freely, [...] [...]
6:50 PM PT
[...] implications. Others have explored the site’s greater meaning for Web 2.0, for the life (or death) of the Internet, and, of course, for law and [...]
6:55 PM PT
[...] Read the full article here. [...]
9:14 PM PT
[...] Ten Ways the Internet (as we know it) Will Die [...]
10:30 PM PT
[...] The above is a great post from fellow blogger Alistair Croll. [...]
1:49 AM PT
[...] Source [Gigaom] [...]
2:13 AM PT
[...] read more | digg story [...]
2:14 AM PT
[...] read more | digg story [...]
8:01 AM PT
[...] un interessante articolo (”10 Ways the Internet, As We Know It, Will Die“) presente su GigaOM viene stilato un elenco dei motivi che potrebbero portare alla scomparsa [...]
8:14 AM PT
[...] 7, 2008 · No Comments Did you read this article about 10 Ways the Internet could die? I thought it was really interesting. In the 10 to 15 years that I’ve been using the [...]
8:26 AM PT
[...] riporta un articolo di GigaOm che elenca dieci modi possibili in cui internet - come lo conosciamo oggi - [...]
8:27 AM PT
[...] Gigaom has recently published a list of scenarios of how Internet could crack down, have a look here. [...]
8:33 AM PT
[...] to kill the internet in 10 (not so) easy [...]
8:39 AM PT
[...] er der der vel også en del der tager det daglige Internet for givet. Alistair Croll behandler i 10 Ways the Internet (As We Know It) Will Die emnet. Citat: “The Internet has already morphed from its initial aspirations of open academia [...]
9:50 AM PT
[...] 10 Ways the Internet (As We Know It) Will Die - GigaOM (tags: Blog computers future technology death) [...]
10:20 AM PT
[...] source from: (link) [...]
11:35 AM PT
[...] 10 Ways the Internet (As We Know It) Will Die - GigaOM (tags: Blog computers future technology death) [...]
1:18 PM PT
[...] come morirà internet? così, così, così, così, così (…) e pure [...]
5:35 PM PT
[...] read more | digg story [...]
6:43 PM PT
[...] 10 Ways the Internet (As We Know It) Will Die - GigaOM [...]
3:41 AM PT
[...] article here’s mostly er, dodgy but there’s one interesting item on the 10-point list about the demise of [...]
4:37 AM PT
[...] 10 Ways the Internet (As We Know It) Will Die - GigaOM We’re all doomed… (tags: internet comment) [...]
6:52 AM PT
[...] Sekrit’s origins are even muckier than the current incarnation bearing that name, and it’s the residual hang-ups from this period that still permeate how it operates and which really bring home the message at the heart of the part of the article I linked to initially (Death by a thousand fractures). [...]
2:04 PM PT
[...] 10 maneras en que el internet tal y como lo conocemos podría morir, desde virus en los routers, PCs zombies, hasta el final del la red neutral y los abogados. ← Anterior | Inicio Comparte esta anotación Imprimir [...]
9:33 PM PT
[...] 10 Ways the Internet (As We Know It) Will Die [...]
5:38 AM PT
[...] 10 Ways the Internet (As We Know It) Will Die - GigaOM [...]
10:29 AM PT
[...] que estas no os convencieron: gigaom.com/2008/04/06/10-ways-the-internet-will-die/, así que voy a por otras que encontré sin comentarios en: tecnología, internet karma: 14 [...]
12:38 PM PT
[...] 9, 2008 in Caricaturas Presenta: Interesantísimo el post de Alistair Croll en Gigaom: 10 Ways the Internet (as We Know It) Will Die, en el que plantea la posibilidad de que virus que destruyen routers, fallos físicos y redes [...]
1:01 PM PT
[...] formas (y pico) en las que la Internet podría morir JJ se toma a chufla las 10 Ways the Internet (As We Know It) Will Die de Om Malik y propone las suyas, muchísimo más [...]
1:06 PM PT
[...] se toma a chufla las 10 Ways the Internet (As We Know It) Will Die de Om Malik y propone las suyas, muchísimo más [...]
11:07 PM PT
[...] 10 Ways the Internet (As We Know It) Will Die - GigaOM [...]
11:51 PM PT
[...] in my surfing time I have met an interesting information about the important changes that will evoke internet to an other kind of net. The article is very [...]
7:10 PM PT
[...] The end of the Internet [...]
7:22 AM PT
[...] GigaOM y las 10 maneras en que Internet (como la conocemos) puede morir [...]
2:17 AM PT
[...] apuestas sobre cuál de entre estas diez muertes acabará con ella. Lo vi en Enrique Dans, y él en GigaOm; y antes de que eso ocurra, Internet se quedará anticuada, así lo piensa despuesdegoogle. Pero, [...]
7:20 AM PT
[...] Podéis leer el post original aquí. [...]
12:14 AM PT
[...] Segun Atalaya, una de sus 12 formas sobre la posible muerte de Internet. Segun Alistair: [...]
5:42 AM PT
[...] Abril, 2008 · No Comments En el blog GigaOm sale un artículo muy interesante de Diez maneras de como la internet que conocemos puede morir. Los dejo porque lo econtré muy interesnate y vale la pena tenerlo en cuenta. No sé… es [...]
9:24 AM PT
[...] 10 Ways the Internet (As We Know It) Will Die - GigaOM [...]
8:11 AM PT
[...] Podéis leer el post original aquí. [...]
1:26 PM PT
[...] this month, GigaOm’s Alistair Croll wrote a terrificly depressing and honest piece about the ways the Inte… and, as a result, some of the potential disasters that could bring it to its knees in the [...]
5:58 AM PT
[...] A principios de abril, Alistair Croll publicaba un post en el blog GigaOm donde recopilaba -medio en broma, medio en serio- lo que considera las diez [...]
4:17 PM PT
[...] read more | digg story [...]
6:34 PM PT
[...] Interesante artículo de Alistair Croll donde enumera 10 formas en la que la Internet como la conocemos podría dejar de existir: [...]
12:07 AM PT
[...] a que está en inglés, es divertido ver este recopilatorio de las 10 posibilidades que pueden provocar que el Internet que conocemos hoy en dÃa, acabe [...]
10:16 PM PT
[...] 10 Ways the Internet (As We Know It) Will Die [...]
10:38 AM PT
[...] a month ago, I wrote a piece on ways the Internet could die. It was an interesting experience: The story got Dugg, comments went through the roof, and lots of [...]
5:38 AM PT
[...] artículo de Alistair Croll en GigaOm, “10 Ways the Internet (As We Know It) Will Die“, con sus buenos y preocupantes visos de realidad: la entrada enumera diez problemas o [...]
12:13 PM PT
[...] recent item in Gigaom.com identified ten ways “the Internet (as we know it) will die,” number four of which is “Death by a thousand fragments”: In his book “The Big [...]
2:02 PM PT
[...] por una amiga de otro país, no puede ser vista porque está prohibida por el gobierno. Estos y otros son los principales motivos que harían que Internet cambie o desaparezca de la manera como se [...]
12:11 AM PT
[...] omoară astia Internetu’ [...]
10:54 PM PT
[...] France is banning illegal Internet downloaders, according to Times UK Online, following some other bans. Also checkout, 10 Ways The Internet (As We Know It) Will Die [...]
2:02 PM PT
[...] 10 Ways the Internet (As We Know It) Will Die Just in case you think it can’t happen… I’d pay particular attention to #8. [...]
106 comments so far
2:27 AM PT
I’m sorry, but this is a useless article.
4:09 AM PT
What an interesting post! Thanks for sparking more reflection.
5:00 AM PT
I think that, while many of your suggestions are possible, you missed what is, in my view, perhaps the most likely occurrence. It comes down to one word: Flash. Well, not just Flash, but also Silverlight and whatever other frameworks follow in their footsteps.
Since it’s inception, what has allowed the Internet flourish is open standards like HTML, and the ability for any page to have it’s source available and legible to both humans and machines. The simple fact that you can borrow and repurpose other people’s code so easily has allowed the Web to evolve. It’s also what allows companies like Google to come along and index everything, making the entire Internet accessible for the common man.
Along comes Flash. Somehow, it’s become a de facto standard, but it’s still proprietary. If you look at how Adobe rules the graphic design world, it’s pretty clear that Adobe is not exactly a benevolent dictator, but that’s not even the bad part. No, the bad part is that Flash is all about opaque blobs of binary data. It can’t be easily manipulated, neither can it be indexed or parsed in any meaningful way.
If you look at the music and movie industries, it’s pretty obvious that content providers like to protect their revenue streams. The way that virtually all sites make money, GigaOm included, is through the sale of ads. Ads are easy to block and as Firefox’s market share grows, the numbers of people blocking ads increases in lockstep. Maybe not for another decade, but it will eventually become a serious problem, or at least one that larger corporations will want to address.
The large news sites will likely be the forerunners. For example, they all offer video content, but never in downloadable form (MPEG, for example). In the case of MSN, videos don’t even play on the same pages at the story. There’s a whole separate Flash portal that they keep all of their videos locked away inside. And use of Flash is reserved only for videos, either. On CNN, some news stories are only delivered as Flash, particularly ones with photographic slideshows accompanying the text.
I think that it’s possible that we’ll see a lot more of this kind of behavior. Flash has historically been used for it’s interactivity and visual flare, but increasingly it’s becoming a kind of DRM for web-content. Certainly, ubiquitous Flash deployment is one way that the Internet (as we know it) will die.
6:43 AM PT
What a waste of my time. Find something better do to man. GigaOm knows better. useless piece of crap.
7:21 AM PT
You missed the biggest potential internet stumbling block, peering issues.
As the margins get thinner, and the stakes get higher, what used to be gentleman’s agreemtns between technocracies, has devolved into pissing matches over IP border gateway disputes and traffic metering.
Don’t believe me? There have been several loss of service event over just this issue of peering in 2008 alone, well covered by the technology press.
Now, one or two we can route around, but if the squabbling gets out of hand between leviathans (verizon, L3, France Telecom), then you will have trouble with a capital ‘T’, that Rhymes with ‘P’, and that stands for packet.
9:15 AM PT
This is just an article to attract traffic from the social bookmarking sites. It has no real merit. Top 10 is always the way to go. If only the internet was that simple.
9:21 AM PT
After reading a couple of the comments to this story, Mr. Croll, I feel you missed one other way that the Internet will die: haters. People that hate everything and feel they possess the inalienable right to express their hate for all thought that is either original, their own (but spelled correctly) or diametrical to their own.
The ‘Net is drenched in hate. Even the haters hate themselves for hating original ideas which, if left unattended, will cause a fissure in the space-time continuum thus freezing all attempts to risk original thought online.
Once that haters have rung original thought out of the ‘Net and humans become risk adverse to expression the Internet will die and the last LOLCat will finally get some sleep.
11:18 AM PT
Oh, for godsakes.
Whatever shred of credibility I might have been willing to accept you just destroyed with that absurd statement.
12:25 PM PT
I think he was referring to CERN’s blackhole project:
(link)
It’s tough for some people to keep up with world events, I guess…
1:21 PM PT
I’m surprised that more on the commenters on this article are not concerned about the potential end of net neutrality.
1:46 PM PT
Or all of those things can, will and already do happen. But there’s too much money to be made on the net for it to go away. It will continue and services will continue and even innovation will continue. I love it when people say “this will kill all innovation.” I guess people really don’t know any history at all. Innovation is what we do as a race. Maybe it won’t be on the net. Maybe all this tyrannical, mean, fascist anti-net stuff will spur innovation. Don’t count people out. People find a way, heck it is the challenge of overcoming that is the spice of life. Be a little more positive.
1:53 PM PT
How about the Internet having a fatal Heart Attack due to excessive and useless blogging .!!
2:04 PM PT
malaysia or indonesia (memory doesn’t serve that well) proved that dictatorships can permit free internet use without free internet use leading to revolution. allowing freedom of speech on the internet, takes the heat off of dictators, while concurrently doing nothing for dissidents. all you get is some ventilation.
2:08 PM PT
I’m so happy hackers exist. Any company oppressing the internet will be plagued with hacker activity. I’m so glad the most talented technical minds will always think for themselves.
2:15 PM PT
Death by a thousand fragments?
IF ANYTHING, we were more fragmented before the internet/wiki’s/forums etc etc.
an yes we need to mix our POV’s together, sadly conservative opinions dont hold a candel to modern thought. a good reason to avoid the light.
2:22 PM PT
@ williamP: I agree. Thanks for all the scare tactics, and yes, Net Neutrality is something that we need to take a stand on, but come on. CERN sucking us into a Micro Black Hole…? Highly (read: VERY!) unlikely anything like that is going to happen, and if it does, it’ll be for such a minute amount of time, it won’t do anything anyway, which, if the writers of this article did something a bit more that surface-scratching research, they’d know. But hey, humans (as a species) are pretty moronic, and I can easily see the Internet becoming something it’s not.
And there, what you just read, was just as useless as this article, How’s it feel to have wasted even more of your life? You’ll never get these moments back, you know…
2:26 PM PT
“the Facebook generation won’t miss”
You mean the “MySpace” generation right?
Cuz up to the last poll myspace users outnumbered fakebook 20 to 1
2:43 PM PT
or the sun could blow up, or the moon crash into the earth, or we could uninvent electricity……
Basically the net will evolve as to how the majority its citizens accept it to be so. The closest match to anything remotely true in the articles in either 7. the net stop being neutral - which we as net citizens will fight tooth and nail and dump isp’s responsible or 8. the lawyers get involved. where the world isnt the USA, so even the long fingers of the riaa,mpaa cant mess up the whole internet.
2:56 PM PT
@0. Or perhaps Tom was referring to the fact that the notion of a black hole wreaking havoc on earth because of the project was absurd. I guess it’s tough for some people to read between the lines.
3:03 PM PT
and you could run outside tomorrow and get trampled by a herd of giraffe! get a grip ma!
3:59 PM PT
wow, are u from india or something? I mean, I’m a computer science graduate and I definetly enjoy a varierty of discussion concerning teh internets but wow… i can spot a shitpile noob who really has no concept of major topics involving hm, idk, computers in general? Why is it that people like this feel the need to get a blog, then draw in as many readers as possible?
4:08 PM PT
I worry a little when I read about the Semantic web (the little I know) and how it will be computers performing all of our small tasks and finding relationships between data/people on the web. What are people supposed to do, that’s how you exercise your brain and discover new things, by exploring and making connections. It like when everyone started using calculators (showing my age), the kids in school stopped learning how to do long division. I’m not a technophobe but I don’t want AI replacing the complex and creative thinking of individual people.
I think the Snowe bill in discussion in Congress could also have a chilling effect. It basically takes the right of small domain holders to retain their domain names if challenged by a business entity. This doesn’t involve copyright infringement it just comes from the view that a commercial entity has more “right” to a domain name than any individual or small organization. I think the bill is stalled but I’m sure new versions will be introduced. I find that chilling.
4:16 PM PT
I was expecting more, much more substance than what you delivered. Internet will end because of these things? I was expecting a serious analysis of web 3.0 or something similar.
5:12 PM PT
The Mediterranean cable breaks were no “accidents”, security videos of the area of the breaks showed no vessels in the area of the time of the breaks.
5:29 PM PT
It “is” something to ponder isn’t it. Which way we will we go…Hmmm! Will we regulate ourselves more because we don’t trust ourselves, or will we free ourselves for a while, because were tired of the amount of regulation, weve already put upon ourselves?
Human animals seem to thrive on being self regulated ie.. religion, government, Law and policing, militaries, organized sports, beauty pagents, and on and on. So I would say “It is logical to assume that humans will continue down the same path with technology”. We will rane it in, and regulate it, just like we do with everything else. It is in our nature and instinct to do so. We may go overboard, at first, but eventually we will agree on some “level” we will tolorate for a while.We cannot change our nature, just like we cannot stop the universe from expanding. So there you have it, it’s not a matter of if, it’s just a matter of when,how and how much.
5:33 PM PT
10 ways my ass. 7, 8, and 9 are relevant, but way to force a top 10 list to get more pageviews.
5:58 PM PT
10 happened in Oryx and Crake.
The others seem likely too.
6:30 PM PT
Great article.
I’d like to echo both Keith Shepard’s and WilliamP’s comments: I think they are worthy inclusions to the list.
6:31 PM PT
Taxes. Government regulation. Homeland Security freaks turning the whole thing into a spyfest, to “protect” us.
6:49 PM PT
Nigel Lawson said:
“I was expecting more, much more substance than what you delivered. Internet will end because of these things? I was expecting a serious analysis of web 3.0 or something similar.”
And what do your expectations have to do with anything - arrogant much?
8:14 PM PT
“What goes up must come down”, anon
8:25 PM PT
I would like to point out to all the inane commenters, that GigaOM never said the internet would die; he said it would cease to exist as we know it. Television ceased to exist the way my parents knew it back in the 60’s. But is that good or bad? Yeah, it’s expensive and ruled by the providers I guess, but it’s hard to look at a 60″ flat screen and say “Hey, I want to go back to the 60’s when we all had an antanae and the reception was free.” The internet I knew in college ceased to exist with the development of high speed. That’s a good thing. Payphones are about to cease existing because we all have our own mobile everywhere we go. But will anyone miss looking for a payphone, finding change, then finding out it’s out of order anyway? Unlikely.
8:25 PM PT
I could see number 5 happening. Nice read. Dugg.
8:26 PM PT
@williamP you are 100% correct…this article is DOA
8:42 PM PT
Well the lawyers are needed, there’s ought to be some sort of regulation… I mean with internet crimes, copyright infringement, data privacy issues, defamation…etc
9:48 PM PT
The Rick Roll is getting out of hand and will end the Internet as we know it.
10:17 PM PT
Great! Let the sucker die “as we know it”. Much of it is junk, I look forward to an innovative improvement.
10:43 PM PT
This really is tosh! But congrats for getting so many comments.
11:05 PM PT
I think we all know that LOLCAT will end the internet, as well as space and time.
11:21 PM PT
internet will die of obesity. It’s growing at almost 4% per MONTH and with more data comes risk of irrelevance.
12:49 AM PT
This article is retarded. It’s wild speculation used in another shitty 10 (insert whatever here) article. This is the cancer that is killing the internets. We need some chemo STAT!
2:33 AM PT
We have already experienced how worse a BGP isssue can be, when (YouTube went downlink) .
6:06 AM PT
Thanks for the checklist. I’m sure some 12 y/o anti-socialite is now hard at work.
6:10 AM PT
Everyone of these was impossible or a flat out false claim. The Internet is on the computers of the people, and the people arn’t going do all die, and neither are their computers. If it goes down, we will just plug it back in. Don’t give in to this fear mongering propaganda people.
6:14 AM PT
i was about to stop reading til i got to #8
your friends in high places will signal the death of the internet…if you want to see what they have in store see how comfy and cozy they are in bed with the communist party of china
6:22 AM PT
Just so as you know for future referance, any network backbone company worth their salt includes out-of-band access (i.e. dial-up telephone) access to their routers to prevent BGP corruption issues taking their network down until someone can get on site.
6:46 AM PT
I think an article like this deserves a fitting response, WACKJOB……..
7:29 AM PT
please, please,please, the net will never end, is like other media, tv, radio, magazines, why not internet only?
8:14 AM PT
I think Nick Carr makes a very interesting and important point when he points out the cyber-balkanization of the Internet. From niche marketing to SEO, I think it’s definitely something to keep an eye on. It would be a shame if the diversity of the Internet was ignored. Glad to see you included this.
8:20 AM PT
At least we can count on one thing: Lolcats will survive, no matter what.
8:27 AM PT
nice analysis, but where is argument…?
keepsmile>/a>:D
8:36 AM PT
Travis Monroe said:
“Great! Let the sucker die “as we know it”. Much of it is junk, I look forward to an innovative improvement.”
And some other similar comments were made by others.
I’m kinds for that idea too!!
The interesting part of this discussion is that no one has really defined what constitutes as “death”, in the first place…
The “‘Net” needs interconnected networks to join the various devices that make up the ‘Net, but is that really the ‘Net? Sure, I guess, because no interconnected networks = no ‘Net.
But isn’t the ‘Net really the actual content that’s on those computers?
Hold on, what’s the content worth without someone to actually make use of it?!!
Hmmm…
8:54 AM PT
I think number 11 should be that the internet becomes overly commercialized and aggrevates us us into an innovation cycle. Just as Tivo became a solution to avoid the relentless waves of television advertising, a new solution may emerge to help us avoid the relentless waves of pop ups, banners, flashlet inserts…. Consider the impact to content businesses (and the internet itself) if content could no longer be monetized through advertising.
9:22 AM PT
Fairly comprehension, though I’m primarily worried about 7, 8, and 9, the socio-political destruction of the Internet.
Way back when, Big Business had a vision of the Internet as another passive media-distribution outlet, with plenty of tollbooths. As with all conservative institutions, Big Business has very few ideas, and never fully abandons any of them.
9:33 AM PT
Good! Let’s get rid of this f**king thing once and for all. Let’s get back to picking up the phone and actually meeting in person. Let’s get back to driving down to the beach to check the surf instead of spotting it on a camera. Let’s hold meetings where everyone is actually in attendance and has to show up to an office. Let’s spend more and more time standing in line at the post office to deliver a package and kill more and more trees sending massive amounts of papers back and forth. On second thought…let’s not. Viva Internet!
9:43 AM PT
Interesting, it would seem CERN is already making the Internet as we know it obsolete. Seven years in the making and debutes this year…
The Grid
(link)
“At speeds about 10,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection, “the grid” will be able to send the entire Rolling Stones back catalogue from Britain to Japan in less than two seconds”
The grid was made to move data collected from LHC…
“The power of the grid will become apparent this summer after what scientists at Cern have termed their “red button” day - the switching-on of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the new particle accelerator built to probe the origin of the universe. The grid will be activated at the same time to capture the data it generates.
Cern, based near Geneva, started the grid computing project seven years ago when researchers realised the LHC would generate annual data equivalent to 56m CDs - enough to make a stack 40 miles high.”
9:55 AM PT
There’s one more reason: Cern’s (the company who invented the Internet–no, not Al Gore–is revolutionizing the Net again.
(link)
10:12 AM PT
This is really helpful (and funny!)Several of us at OurPrerogative study social media and the future of the internets as a part of our non-blogging life and it’s great to see this stuff in …er, print.
10:26 AM PT
Change it into “could die”. Will is a future indicative word. For what your article has proposed are subjective instances on an uncertain future and therefore in the English language you must use a subjunctive tense.
This is a horrible blog. Full of great content, I can’t deny. But there is no correlation to your title and the content. In actuality, a lot of these cases are not just only hypothetical, but there implications would do a lot more than destroy the internet. Most likely these instances can lead to a immense disruption on the world’s economical and communication structure, which would then lead to chaos. Even with the internet somehow surviving the whole situation, I highly doubt I am checking my Yahoo! email in this new chaotic environment.
Guys, think outside the box.
10:26 AM PT
I’m with those who felt that the only item on this list to be genuinely concerned about is the loss of net neutrality. I see that as a real issue in the looming future, and I’m not so optimistic that the community of users “just won’t stand for it,” as some appear to believe.
10:56 AM PT
The availbility of “The Grid” enforces my earlier comments about the high-level architecture of the ‘Net.
The “‘Net” is made up of three high-level layers: Hardware infrastructure, sofware/applications, and humans + their content.
The “Web” is not the “‘Net”, technically. The “Web” is a large distributed application that sits on top of the hardware layer; it includes many distributed viewers that enable users to see and interact with the content. If the hardware dies, then the “Web” dies, but the opposite is not true. The “Web” is only useful if the humans have content to fill it up, and that content must be of interest to other humans.
As long as there are humans, content, a hardware layer, and one or more applications to present the content, the ‘Net will live. In fact, the ‘Net could live without applications, but there would be no purpose for it.
What is likely to happen is a gradual transition from the “‘Net” to “The Grid”, or some other similar endeavor. The “Web” may be replaced by a similar application that is built to run efficiently on “The Grid”, or perhaps the current “Web” will eventually be routed over “The Grid”. It’s also possible that certain content will be routed over the appropriate hardware layer, based on the content’s profile. But this is just a transition from one hardware layer to another, more evolved, one.
Regardless, this distinction between hardware, software, users/content is an important one.
Perhaps all it takes for the ‘Net to die “as we know it” is for the the “Web” to die “as we know it”. But if the “Web” dies, it’s likely because it was replaced by a better application. The ‘Net will still exist, however.
For the ‘Net to die outright, something more catastrophic needs to happen.
Personally, I vote for a massive solar flare…
11:22 AM PT
@WilliamP. I agree.
This is a post explicitly designed to stimulate conversation.
Good flypaper effect. (http://adecon101.blogspot.com/2008/03/how-to-sem-or-flypaper-effect-for.html)
12:40 PM PT
I think the concept of Great Firewalls or Walled Gardens is one of the most likely scenarios.
If you study the evolution of literacy in Gutenburg’s time you will discover that the concept of national languages and statewide schooling, starting in Spain, was introduced to impose censorship by making citizens illiterate to literature of other dialects and other countries. Diversity was simply taught out of the populous.
I think constraints on information access according to political agendas is highly likely in the future.
12:50 PM PT
Followup to ways the Internet will die
Well, it’s been a strange experience reading comments around this post. I figured it’s time to answer some of them and