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.
161 comments so far
2:27 AM PT
I’m sorry, but this is a useless article.
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 [...]
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.
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 [...]
12:25 PM PT
I think he was referring to CERN’s blackhole project:
http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/001313.html
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 .!!
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 = [...]
2:04 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
2:27 PM PT
[...] | incoming hURRLs | getting started | FAQ | blog Voila, the hURRL you reqested …1 hURRLs - http://gigaom.com/2008/04/06/10-ways-the-internet-will-die/ (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 [...]
2:43 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.
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 [...]
3:03 PM PT
and you could run outside tomorrow and get trampled by a herd of giraffe! get a grip ma!
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. [...]
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.
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, [...] [...]
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?
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. [...]
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
9:14 PM PT
[...] Ten Ways the Internet (as we know it) Will Die [...]
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.
10:30 PM PT
[...] The above is a great post from fellow blogger Alistair Croll. [...]
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.
11:58 PM PT
You are a complete f*cking idiot and you should NOT be writing articles! or anything else for that matter
I am not even going to try to debunk this crap. I’ve wasted 3 minutes of my life of this bullcrap an I am not going to waste any more.
consult a REAL technician and he’ll explain to you why you are wrong on so many counts.
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!
1:49 AM PT
[...] Source [Gigaom] [...]
2:13 AM PT
[...] read more | digg story [...]
2:14 AM PT
[...] read more | digg story [...]
2:33 AM PT
We have already experienced how worse a BGP isssue can be, when YouTube went down.
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?
8:01 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 [...]
8:14 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.
8:26 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. [...]
8:27 AM PT
nice analysis, but where is argument…?
keepsmile>/a>:D
8:33 AM PT
[...] to kill the internet in 10 (not so) easy [...]
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…
8:39 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 [...]
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
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article3689881.ece
“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.”
9:50 AM PT
[...] 10 Ways the Internet (As We Know It) Will Die - GigaOM (tags: Blog computers future technology death) [...]
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.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article3689881.ece
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.
10:20 AM PT
[...] source from: http://gigaom.com/2008/04/06/10-ways-the-internet-will-die/ [...]
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)
11:35 AM PT
[...] 10 Ways the Internet (As We Know It) Will Die - GigaOM (tags: Blog computers future technology death) [...]
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 clarify others.
First of all, this thread started as a discussion over beers a few weeks ago. It wasn’t really intended as “flypaper.” But it certainly seems to have attracted comments.
I started looking at the problem in the context of the OSI model – physical (cabling), network (BGP), service discovery (DNS) but the conversation quickly moved to the real threats of net neutrality, legal restrictions, balkanization, and so on. So the list seems a bit scattered (as many have pointed out.) There were, in fact, several other candidates that didn’t make the cut:
Some of the more interesting suggestions from here and Digg:
A couple of other points (since folks brought them up.)
Anyway, it’s been, umm, interesting to read all the feedback on this one.
1:18 PM PT
[...] come morirà internet? così, così, così, così, così (…) e pure [...]
1:39 PM PT
this might be true, but all these problems may be insignificant with changes in the way our systems work themselves..
http://arsespeak.wordpress.com
1:45 PM PT
According to this story, it’s already happening: http://thepixelsuite.wordpress.com/2008/04/06/the-internet-is-in-trouble/
1:47 PM PT
You’re kidding me right. I thought April fool’s was on April 1st. Did they change it this year? ;-)
2:29 PM PT
What about the pipes getting clogged faster than the ISP’s can (or will) add more pipes. As more people get their HD media on demand, available bandwidth will be consumed at a rapid pace. Could the Internet get GridLocked? Not likely to kill the Internet outright, but likely to cause a trough of disillusionment that might spur innovation and rebirth.
2:33 PM PT
I think Global Warming is to blame…
Global Warming Alarmists Beware… http://www.EvilCarbon.com
2:42 PM PT
What abt a massive charge from a solar flare or some such thing?
2:43 PM PT
I don’t know about the humans take themselves out part. If humans are gone, the lack of an Internet is a clear cut scenario and not meaningful.
2:44 PM PT
I agree with the first commenter’s thought.
2:53 PM PT
On the upside: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29601
The main question is: why are we relying on the internet for all of our essential information.
2:57 PM PT
So, the net dies because of software issues. Servers crashing or the Chinese getting pissed off with humanity? Quite interesting but I didn’t really buy it because the world can’t afford the net to die anymore whether communist governments want it to or otherwise. Your post had some nice insights though and I thought it was a valuable point of view.
2:58 PM PT
Tim
Because it’s a long way to the library.
And books take a long time to look through.
3:16 PM PT
The list was really stupid because:
1.I really liked some of the responses they made my sup turn and look over at me when i started laughing for no reason, but alas the net is not the web like posted above so the net will continue to exist even after hackers/companies/governments in that order of significant importance try to destroy it. Even if they get to a .sys edit resulting in Massive hardware failure this amazing event will only bring about something else that will just be temporary for the true future. If you saw the latest die hard movie something like that
2. Take a second to think about the future, in 15 years do you really thing that were going to even use cables to transfer data anymore…Seriously? I mean wireless data transfer will be approaching critical mass quite soon here which means after all your opinions said they were just meer babbling. With the invention of the PPAIMM (partial/programmable artificial intelligent micro machine which is just my quick acronym for something that will probably be named from the creator.) The net will become as free as air. I mean once moore’s law goes into the exponential phaze you will see. Think about when complex circuts becomes less dense than air. ISP’s will cease to exist. No one will regulate the net and it will be each individuals responsibility to protect themselves from intrusion.
3. The last point im going to make is the fact that the more knowledge you gain the overall more freedom you will gain. Information right now is not free because so much of it is profitable.
3:27 PM PT
Well, the title was catchy, but I was expecting to see what you thought the internet would become, not rambling about its complete demise. You didn’t say anything.
3:38 PM PT
Its an interesting article, I can’t imagine that the internet will die.
It may someday die as we know it. Just like our original x86 Epson Computers
or our original Commodore computers died. But they were just the tip of the iceberg
of the real computers to come.
The internet is our way to communicate, just like the phone was years ago. It won’t die it will evolve
The internet is all about communication, communication will never die.
John @ attachecologne.com
4:03 PM PT
Internet …die?
the TV, phone, etc have to die first.
The internet is in its teenagehood! It has yet to grow more.
but nice post to make us think nonetheless.
belshass.
http://www.thebestBLOGintheworld.com
5:35 PM PT
[...] read more | digg story [...]
5:45 PM PT
This is just not how the mechanics of something like the internet works. Anyone can create a network of computers, and share almost any sort of data they feel like it. this is a state of mind, a thought, an idea, not something that can simply be controlled. its like moonshine. prohibition happens; take it to the mountains. all a network needs is a dedicated group of users willing to submit and share information.
the internet is only a broad term encompassing this entire mindset/ideal/philosophy. those networks can also be private, run by private owner/operators, because all it really needs is capital. consider darknets for instance. so no, i disagree, the “internet as we know it” is here to stay, in whatever fashion. networking is networking is networking.
and as for corporations making a power grab, its pretty hard to hold sand in your fists for too long, and the more you squeeze, the more you lose… seriously how many analogies does it take? there is nothing for them to hold onto! business wont let other businesses take profit out of their own hands. comcast tries to charge google for usage, google offers its own net with an agreement between other websites…. simple
“You can’t stop the signal, Mel”
6:43 PM PT
[...] 10 Ways the Internet (As We Know It) Will Die - GigaOM [...]
6:49 PM PT
This is not productive.
I really thought I was going to get a little insight, but these are not great reasons. The internet will only die if it’s replaced. And if you try to think of what the internet is, which is a source of information then I don’t think anyone will even replace it. It may just change forms.
6:52 PM PT
Interesting blog but i dont think so
6:54 PM PT