So..... is the internet ever going away?

[buildabetterlife]

Well.... is it?

What do you think?

Why? Why Not?

[buildabetterlife]

Personal Thoughts:
I tend to lean towards "No" due to the ridiculous amount of economic dependency we now have on it.

Google alone, for example rakes in billions, that's one company, and they are 99% online. Same with amazon, ebay, etc.

But what do YOU think?

[supertom]

Our current generation, on their death beds will realize that they wasted their whole life on something that isn't there, pseudo-social relationships... The worrying part is that its becoming primary and central to peoples lives. Even now when i go out, its liek time away from the PC, and i start thinking to myself and counting down the minutes, can wait to go home and check up on so and so.

Just record yourself using the internet for an hour, it will freak you out, like looking at a zombie, "is this person even alive?"

[Melchior]

I sure hope not, but only if it isn't replaced by something better.

As for if I think it's going away or not, I highly doubt it because of the increasingly 'essential' role it has on our lives.

[Plays With Life]

Yes. It will be replaced with a direct-neural, wireless interface that's pervasive across the entire planet.



I'm moving to Mars, when that happens.

[Michael Chui]

Originally Posted by Plays With Life

It will be replaced with a direct-neural, wireless interface that's pervasive across the entire planet.

Sunlight?

[Plays With Life]

Originally Posted by Michael Chui

Sunlight?

Sunlight as the carrier wave?

Not a bad idea!

But then the internet would only be on during the day.

[Cado]

Honestly, it's not a very good question. The internet is staying put unless society collapses at which point it's obvious why there wouldn't be an internet. Even if that scenario were ever to play out, there would no doubt be an effort to keep the internet up as long as possible because of how easily it allows people to communicate. It's an invaluable tool.

[davidchung]

Hopefully we will evolve one day to the point where we no longer need communication devices of any kind and can simply relay our thoughts through the power of our minds.

[Plays With Life]

Originally Posted by davidchung

Hopefully we will evolve one day to the point where we no longer need communication devices of any kind and can simply relay our thoughts through the power of our minds.

Yikes. Hopefully we'll have some spam filters on incoming thoughts.

[Michael Chui]

Originally Posted by Plays With Life

Sunlight as the carrier wave?

Not a bad idea!

But then the internet would only be on during the day.

Actually, sunlight reaches us during the night, too.

But not while the moon is in the new phase.

You guys ought to read Dan Simmons' Ilium and Olympos.

[Cado]

Originally Posted by davidchung

Hopefully we will evolve one day to the point where we no longer need communication devices of any kind and can simply relay our thoughts through the power of our minds.

Only if I can opt out of it. Perhaps I would change my mind were it to happen in my time, but I rather like the only fashioned way of communicating.

[UHF]

I foresee a time in the not too distant future when people become bored, tired and jaded by constant, usually non-relevant information being fed to them. Building physically meaningless communities and relationships. They'll want something real. Nobody will remember people they met online or the virtual world they were once part of or the things they virtually did.

I will name this new movement 'tangiblism'. Please remember me.

[Michael Chui]

If you people hate the pseudo-relationships and faux communities fosted by the Internet,

What the hell are you doing here?

[Daffy Duck]

Never going away. It will grow and grow to become more a part of our normal life.

[ar81]

Normal life?

BBC NEWS | Technology | Age of cyber warfare is 'dawning'

[Daffy Duck]

Originally Posted by ar81

Normal life?

BBC NEWS | Technology | Age of cyber warfare is 'dawning'

I don't see what your point is? Please explain.

If the point is that we will have war... well, we've had that since the beginning of known history.

[James81]

The internet is still rather fresh and new to us as a generation, so I forsee it being a huge thing for quite some time.

Eventually I imagine it will go the way of TV and become such an ingrained part of our society that it becomes impossible to imagine living without it. We're already kinda there, but there are still those of us who remember a time before the internet (the old fashioned bloke that we are ). Kids born within the last 10-15 years, though, are the generation who cannot fathom a world without it just like those of my generation cannot fathom a world without TV.

TV boomed in the 50's, and look at where we are today with that. The internet is booming right now. I give it another 30-50 years before a new technology as huge as the internet pops up and the cycle repeats, putting the internet on a back burner so to speak.

[James81]

And, honestly, if I had to take a wild stab at what that technology would be, the first thing that immediately comes to mind is robots.

[Cado]

Originally Posted by UHF

I foresee a time in the not too distant future when people become bored, tired and jaded by constant, usually non-relevant information being fed to them. Building physically meaningless communities and relationships. They'll want something real. Nobody will remember people they met online or the virtual world they were once part of or the things they virtually did.

I will name this new movement 'tangiblism'. Please remember me.

I could see something like that happening. If there's an imbalance of faux relationships, it's only a matter of time before the pendulum swings the other way. But you're only talking about social networks, not the internet. Social networks will likely come and go. Some already have-myspace has fallen behind facebook, even if it is still fairly popular. They've lost the branding war and that's what matters. Everybody talks about facebook, even if they're talking about social networking in general. It's kind of like how Google is a verb and how some people still call every video game system a Nintendo.

The internet itself, though? It's ingrained in commerce. It's changed what we think we know about business. We're not going to go back to a world of mail order over amazon.com. And we've only touched upon its ability to communicate information. I'm expecting internet trolls to become less common in the coming decades as the younger generation grows up and the quality of information is likely going to increase as users seek ways to ensure what they're finding and sending is accurate.

Don't forget the internet is a great way to keep in touch with people you actually know whether it's through e-mail or social networks or what have you.

In short, it will evolve. Everything does. But it will never disappear so long as there is the infrastructure for it.

[Sam988]

Internet going away? It barely just begun. Soon we'll be accessing and surfing the internet through chips implanted in our brains (Intel: Chips in brains will control computers by 2020), and then in the future (until 2100) we may even upload ourselves (our consciousness) to the internet.


Google up Ray Kurzweil and read some of his stuff for more info. Don't discard it before even thinking about it, though, but consider and think "why not"?

[celestialife]

The internet will never go away but it will undoubtedly change from how we know it to exist right now. It is the imprint of human consciousness and, perhaps, the future-internet will be the form in which humanity "wakes up" and becomes self-actualized as a single conscious entity.

[Andrew Brunelle]

It will only go away after the techno-industrial society crashes, and it may even still exist in local networks around the world.