The future internet, according to Carl

Interested parties
I've always believed that any discussion needs an understanding of the forces at play, their motivations, and modus operandi. The Internet is not a unified technology that can be controlled by a single entity. Many have tried already, and no doubt many more will try again but in its current form it cannot be controlled. The best that any person or organisation can do is attempt to guide its development.

So who are the interested parties? They range from governments, corporations, non-government interest groups, down to individuals. Pretty much everyone has an opinion, so perhaps I should be asking who are the most likely parties to try to influence the Internet. This brings a little more clarity if we change our categories to those with a financial interest, those with political motivations, or those with individual egos. Taken in this light, some of the recent developments start to make a lot more sense. I'll start by clarifying my categories.

Financially interested parties include any entity or individual that stands to gain or lose in a monetary sense from the growth and development of the Internet. Financial gains or losses needn't be restricted to immediate cashflow. I can think of many whose assets, credits (eg tax, environmental), or interest receipts might be affected.

The politically motivated include any group with intentions of imposing their will on other parts of the global population. I make no apologies for this broad definition. Anyone who believes that governments, religious groups, and other special interest groups have no interest in influencing the Internet are very mistaken.

Finally, people with an ego, and this is the category I fall into. I have my own motivations for wanting to influence the growth and development of the Internet, one of which is related to my absolute belief that the singularity is approaching. I meet others on a daily basis whose motivations are completely different, but nevertheless no less important to them.

So, when you read this article, or hear of other developments taking place, ask yourself which category the instigator falls into.

Domain names
Why on earth do we have domain names? Originally they were a plain text alternative to IP addresses that were difficult to remember. Fair enough, but what is the practical effect of domain names now. Anyone can buy a domain name, of almost any type, with any keywords forming part of the name. Those who feel the need to protect their name from abuse are compelled to register and then continue to pay for an intangible across multiple top-levels. Others simply register multiple domain names in an attempt to manipulate search engine results. Domain name registrars may seem like a sophisticated form of protection racket to the former, and a licence to print money for the latter.

I predict that root name-servers of the future will include sophisticated software so that a request for 'serendipity blog homepage' will automatically redirect you to the correct page instead of having to type 'www.s9y.org'. You would no longer go to Google or Yahoo to find the homepage address for serendipity blog, but you might if you didn't know the name.

Search engines would no longer operate like the url equivalent of the telephone book. If this type of smart logic was built directly into the software running the root nameservers then it wouldn't be much stretch of the imagination to think that an individual or corporation could specifiy to their ISP or content provider that any search globally for their name should be directed to a main homepage. We could also take this one step further so that any multinational body could specify their local site receive the request instead of the group homepage. Sure this can be done already using scripting, but I'm talking about taking it back to the nameserver where other implications become evident.

Now I know that my prediction is full of holes, and you're probably thinking of a hundred and one reasons why this won't work. Well, why don't you imagine that there are no root nameservers. Imagine that all requests are handled in plain text (or speech) through Google's vast network of servers, or perhaps Yahoo's network of servers, or even the Microsoft network of servers, and that the network you default to is determined by your ISP/network provider as part of the contractual relationship they have with the search engine. Makes you think doesn't it?

Application service providers
A few years ago ASP's were the buzzword of the day. Everyone seemed to be expecting their imminent arrival, and yet here we are in 2006 and it seems the industry pundits were mistaken. So what happened? The idea of application provision hasn't disappeared, in fact if anything its coming to dominate the thinking of the key players, and a lot of development is happening behind the scenes, and well away from the prying eyes of the average observer.

The organisations that will emerge and dominate application provision has changed, and ISP's frankly don't have the economic muscle to compete in this arena. This is a huge market, and as less developed countries embrace Internet technology, it will grow even further. To successfully compete in this arena it won't be sufficient that the software exists, the service providers also need to provide content. It is only by providing both that they will be able to guarantee an audience for their service. A casual glance at the open source community proves the software exists or is being written, and we know that the content exists because otherwise we would have no libraries or audio-visual studios.

What doesn't exist at present is an organisation that controls both. And this is why the buzz about ASP's seems to have disappeared. The industry heavyweights are in a race against time and each other to be the first to market. I could give examples, but I don't intend to divulge any confidentialities, however I can suggest that search engines are not the only organisations racing to be first. Some of the most serious contenders currently dominate the media industry. All of the contenders though have one major problem. They are currently industry based, ie technology, media, or communications.

This puts them in the curious position of desperately needing staff to develop software and content. A quick solution has been to identify the most promising small players and buy them out. But as more players enter the arena, the number of eligible takeovers has dwindled. In the content arena other options are now being worked on such as Google's book project, but organisations needing software really have only one option. Find and dominate an open source application. I'll let you figure out the ramifications of this, and perhaps a quick thought to recent copyright battles in the EU might be instructive.