> If Facebook or Gmail do fall from public grace, the only certain thing is that their successor won't be run by an american company.
Who's to say we'll ever see a major international company like that again? I foresee a future where DNS root server control is yanked away from the USG and the internet is partitioned.
The pendulum has peaked at globalization and now it's swinging towards isolationism. Whether we like it or not borders have been drawn along the previously wild-west-like internet, and it may take on the form of virtual Berlin Walls.
Hopefully someday we can enjoy the same euphoria that followed Germany's reunification but on a global scale, and that day may take a century to get here.
Yes, I can't wait to apply for virtual visas to visit foreign internet sites, which I guess we'll need after a full scale balkanization of the internet.
On a more serious note, I hope the internet stays together, but that the pendulum will start swinging back from "cloud" to decentralized, federated or even P2P protocols and services. Wasn't it originally meant that way? (with NNTP, email, ...).
I'd definitely read a sci-fi book based on those premises. Preferably, lead character would be developer. Not hacker; I'm not interested much in that point of view.
Kind of reminds me of an abstraction of the Snow Crash concept of city-state issued visas and specialized bar codes that allow you to walk into said city-state problem free.
The pendulum has peaked at globalization and now it's swinging towards isolationism. Whether we like it or not borders have been drawn along the previously wild-west-like internet, and it may take on the form of virtual Berlin Walls.
Brilliant insight. Globalization will probably be only a blink of an eye when compared to the history of human civilization. A snapshot in time when conditions were favorable.
Now the conditions are changing again: peak oil, international surveillance and rising labour costs in developing countries are all deal breakers.
Who's to say we'll ever see a major international company like that again? I foresee a future where DNS root server control is yanked away from the USG and the internet is partitioned.
The pendulum has peaked at globalization and now it's swinging towards isolationism. Whether we like it or not borders have been drawn along the previously wild-west-like internet, and it may take on the form of virtual Berlin Walls.
Hopefully someday we can enjoy the same euphoria that followed Germany's reunification but on a global scale, and that day may take a century to get here.