What comes after the Internet? - Is there an "after"?

[builtforcwc]

With all the centralization, censorship and destruction of small internet communities by the corporate giants who want all traffic to funnel through Twitter and YouTube occurring lately, I have to wonder what comes next, in the long long term. People probably thought the radio was the pinnacle of tech when it came out, but then cable came, and now internet. Assuming we don't hit a technological wall that prevents us from further innovation, or some global catastrophe occurs that sends us backwards into another dark age, what comes after the Internet?

If society-changing inventions follow a flowchart of sorts, it stands to reason that there needs to be a next step after this one that will serve a similar function but in a superior format, and will eventually replace the old one. What kind of tech would replace the net, and how? How do we create something that grants instantaneous communication across the globe, audiovisual and interactive media to be downloaded, etc with greater efficiency and ease of use than what we're already using?

Is it even possible? Will we just keep making internet speeds faster and infrastructures more widespread and reliable? Is there ever going to be an alternative to Internet, or is that impossible?

Mind, I'm not asking this for fedposting purposes. It just seems that every invention either gets refined ad infinitum or replaced when it can't be, so I feel that principle should be applied to the world wide web as well.

 

[scallion]

Nothing good

 

[awoo]

If we knew than we'd all be billionaires investing in the new tech

Maybe VR? That's still an extension of the internet

 

[CAPTAIN MATI]

I don't know what comes after the internet, but I know that what comes even after it will be YER MUM.

 

[verissimus]

Either the Matrix or SKYNET

 

[Blue Screen of Death]

I don't think there's going to be an "after."
It's more likely that the infrastructure just gets improved more and more over time.

The only way something would come after is if it collapsed on itself or something like that, and we had to make something new as a result of that.

 

[I Love Beef]

I honestly believe that to progress regarding the internet, some of us would need to go back down the path and onto the other fork of keeping on doing the web 1.0 thing of making our own websites and webrings and stuff.

As much as Facebook and the lot of big corps are the overseers of this technological world, I doubt they will persist considering computer technology's gotten more streamlined and possible for your average joe to have their own server or website without paying out the ass for it.

So literally, not relying on social media I'd say is the next big thing, maybe. If some one grass rooted individual site domain space with cost economical tech to host at your home without massive headaches, I can see that happening.

 

[tehpope]

BBS' and HAM Radio? Idk. I'll cosign the idea that there isn't anything after the internet. Just an evolution of its ideas. Probably people who care about privacy and what not will go to I2P or TOR.

 

[Haim Arlosoroff]

People probably thought the radio was the pinnacle of tech when it came out, but then cable came, and now internet. Assuming we don't hit a technological wall that prevents us from further innovation, or some global catastrophe occurs that sends us backwards into another dark age, what comes after the Internet?

It started with the Town crier, then the printing press and the newspaper (with its advertising model), then the radio and the TV, now we have podcasts/social media/youtube and whatever you can get up to with cheap general computing devices wired up together with Internet Protocols. The utility of the infrastructure is the key idea, the printing press wasn't optimal until the newspaper used it, the electric transmission of audio and later video in radio and later cable/satellite TV wasn't optimal until telephony connected everyone together. The internet will be no different. First a series of simple HTML read-only websites, then video and Videochat took over. Camgirls seem to have chanced upon the financial model for the technology but optimally it shows up as Superchats taking place within a Live chat beside some social focal point which like a TV show brings strangers together. This model will persist, I believe, through the modern censorious backlash. People would rather live in a world with Superchats directing a live Snuff Film somewhere in the bowels of the Internet than live in a world with a boot stamping on a face forever so in the worst possible usage the model is still more acceptable than a lack of it - or at least as ignorable for internet users as Jeffery Epstein was for New Yorkers.

Superchats and Live Events, and the celebrity that results will probably push us toward a new decentralized internet of Onion or some other protocol with monetary protections something like a "exposing only your quickly sourced prepaid reloadable VISA to an iffy website" level of risk allowing you to purchase forms of personal prominence in a live event to your fellow watchers and maybe the streamer themselves. I think D-Live's (or was it a prior one's?) visible stickers on top of the stream, or speak-to-text with the streamer, will merge with an Infowars style network of younger people delivering Red Letter Media style cultural commentary. Hopefully containing a news service loaded with less of one particular politics. Hopefully something between a website like YouTube and a protocol like Onion eventually allows you to find Live Media, post it anywhere as plain text, with browsers understanding it as a new form of link, your browser automatically displaying the feed, and you being able to watch and support the streamer without even having to click off the parent website. That would become a quick favorite replacing a lot of social media if it merged tagging it for friends to see, and commenting in a live chat. Something like the Insert Media on this website's posting but your browser would take the link and form an appropriately-sized window automatically within the Google Chat or a Kiwi Farms post.

What kind of tech would replace the net, and how?

That's unlikely as the amount of undersea cabling isn't easily as replaceable as a telegraph pole, we need a certain amount of physical infrastructure to give you a live stream from Australia which a Smart phone there and in your hand need in order to talk to each other. That isn't really ready for a revolution yet, as there is simply nothing like a radio transmission instead of a telephone pole for the internet at the scale we need it to be.

How do we create something that grants instantaneous communication across the globe, audiovisual and interactive media to be downloaded, etc with greater efficiency and ease of use than what we're already using?

Wirelessly, but how? What is a 1 and a 0 which can reach from your hand to someone in another place of the world such that a device can detect and understand it? HD video just needs so much infrastructure!

Is it even possible? Will we just keep making internet speeds faster and infrastructures more widespread and reliable? Is there ever going to be an alternative to Internet, or is that impossible?

There will be meta-growth as the Ones and Zeros come to mean more to each device at either end but the middle probably is staying put categorically as a revolution of bandwidth like from 56k to Gbps just isn't conceivable yet. Maybe something which jumps to space and back but once we're putting things the scale of the internet's infrastructure up there we're probably going to be doing a lot more up there which would change things wildly and unpredictably.

 

[SSj_Ness]

The "height" of technology is probably something resembling Borg hive-mind/constant-connection shit. Internet is already seeping into every technology and our biology is next, think nanomachines like Metal Gear and Google Glass/DBZ-style Scouters for our bodies. A less invasive option could be a net-connected suit that serves similar purposes.

They've been talking about an "Internet of things" for a while, Watch Dogs style "smart cities". That's all basically the next advancement, not so much anything new but evolutionary technology instead of revolutionary.

 

[Hecate]

I'm putting my money on horse and messenger pigeon futures

 

[Billy Beer]

seems as the internet is just quick teletext, which is quick telegrams, which is just quick written letters, I'm going to guess it will be communication but quicker.

The only way to be quicker than typing is thinking.

The next Internet will be thought to text, which is a silent spoken word or 'telepathy' ala grey aliens.

 

[We!]

internet 2.0

 

[Rabid Hog]

telepathy

 

[Unassuming Local Guy]

seems as the internet is just quick teletext, which is quick telegrams, which is just quick written letters, I'm going to guess it will be communication but quicker.

The only way to be quicker than typing is thinking.

The next Internet will be thought to text, which is a silent spoken word or 'telepathy' ala grey aliens.

I think that'll be the next next next internet. It's coming, but it's at least 30 years away. Probably closer to 50. The technology barely exists at all, and what it can do is so limited as to be useless. There'll be something in the interim.

It'll be some sort of wearable, I think. I really thought Google Glass was going to be the next big thing, but I suppose the problem there is control. It came out too early. Voice is just now getting good enough to be a primary form of control, so I think in 5 to 10 years everyone's going to be wearing their computers and talking to them.

After that, some sort of retinal projection. A computer in a contact lens. That's slightly less realistic because even contact lenses that are essentially just shaped water still make your eye feel like there's a chunk of granite in it after a short period, but maybe by then people will be okay with having a numbing agent drip fed onto their eyeball all day.

These are technically advances in computing, not the internet itself, but smartphones revolutionized the internet. The internet takes its form around the most popular way to access it. Once wearables become a thing the internet will become primarily designed around voice commands and eyepieces, much like it's primarily designed around smartphones now.

 

[Zero Day Defense]

Either the Wired, or your mom.

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

Marriage. Then comes AMD with the baby carriage. That's not all, that's not all. Here's comes Intel drinking Jeff Bezos.

 

[Large]

the end.

 

[Never Scored]

Phone lines are subject to common carrier laws in the US. I legit think if things get too bad, people who are technically savvy and really want to talk shit are going invest in some USB dialup modems and a phone line and literally go back to talking about lolcows and shit on BBS. You can't stop people from making phone calls, and if your BBS is private, it'd be exempt from hate speech laws in most western countries, so you'll have your little 56k shitposting utopia with you and 20 bros playing RedDragon and making fun of internet trannies and no one will be able to do shit unless they radically change the laws.

Would it be possible to create an open source app for Android phones that you give access to your phone and it reads tones on phone calls like an acoustic modem so you can transmit simple text posts/hyperlinks over phone calls exempting them from internet regulation?

 

[cummytummies]

If society-changing inventions follow a flowchart of sorts, it stands to reason that there needs to be a next step after this one that will serve a similar function but in a superior format, and will eventually replace the old one. What kind of tech would replace the net, and how? How do we create something that grants instantaneous communication across the globe, audiovisual and interactive media to be downloaded, etc with greater efficiency and ease of use than what we're already using?

Is it even possible? Will we just keep making internet speeds faster and infrastructures more widespread and reliable? Is there ever going to be an alternative to Internet, or is that impossible?

If it will be superior, it won't you whose interests it will be designed around.

28c3: The coming war on general computation

Download hiqh quality version: http://bit.ly/sTTFytDescription: http://events.ccc.de/congress/2011/Fahrplan/events/4848.en.htmlCory Doctorow: The coming war ...

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Internet is such a wide concept I have a feeling whatever next evolution of it will just be more "internet". It's not like today's portable supercomputer affordable to a 10-year-old African child capable of live streaming video to a million viewers with no prior setup is really the same technology as two machines the size of a pick-up truck in a college basement sending one piece of electronic mail to each other.

It'll just get faster, smaller, smarter and more invasive. Utilizing implants or augmented reality or wearable computers and other more creative methods of interfacing. It's all just computers and networking in the end, pumped up by ever-increasing computational power and advances in microtechnology. If you're asking about an invention so advanced it couldn't even be lumped together with "computers and networks" then it would be so far in the future we have no clue how to even guess. It would be something indistinguishable from magic to us.