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Hannu H. Kari Gives The Internet 2 More Years
erick99 writes "Dr. Hannu Kari says the Internet will will collapse in 2006 as reported in an article on ARS Technica. Yes, this is the same Dr. Kari who has predicted doom before, but it is still an entertaining read and there is more than a grain of truth in his reasoning." Reader Titney writes adds a couple of excerpts from an article on NewsRoom Finland: "The entire system will crumble to bits as the sheer bulk of rubbish circling around in the net exceeds the public pain threshold. ... When the internet is no longer operational for business purposes, one has to time warp back 10 to 20 years and make do without information networks"
For example, I used to enjoy debates on newsgroups, but last I checked (several years ago), they were just full of trash. The topics I was interested in had been largely abandoned by those that were actually knowledgable in the fields due in great part to this.
Another example is Yahoo message boards. Here we see what the lack of pretty much any moderation entails. Spam infested, crapflood infested, it's pretty difficult to get any meaningful discussion there.
I think what will happen is that there will be heavier moderation and more stringent entrance requirements for various online forums. The Internet will still function, it just won't be as open as it once was.
does this guy seriously think people will just sit by and let this happen, even assumning it's possible? I think it's safe to say at the first sign of problems around 6 gillion nerds world wide would start working on fixes and sending them to anyone who might possibly give a damn. Given the number of users, even IF this is a problem, it could be solved quickly.
Is this like the predication that we'd run out of IP addresses in the late 1990's. We all know that happened. Wait, no it didn't. Humans fixed the problem with private networks and NATing. In the process, they improved security and sanctity of their networks.
It's a funny thing, networks. You see, since humans control them, they make changes and adjustments in response to the needs of the network. Thus the network grows, adapts, and becomes a more powerful entity.
That being said, there are two things I wish I could exorcise from the net: Spam and viruses. These two creatures are responsible for more useless traffic than just about anything else. It would also be nice if protocols like GNUTella died or were fixed. The number of useless packets generated by such protocols is amazing.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Well, the public telephone network suffered from the problem of unsolicited bulk marketers calling people during dinner.
It still survives. But it did have a few adjustments made to it.
- CallerIDs to screen calls.
- Answering machines to screen calls. Turning off the ringers to remove the sense of urgency that used to be ascribed to incoming phone calls.
- Legislation for donotcall.gov.
- Paying the telephone company more for unlisted landlines.
- Not giving out phone numbers to any entry point to the direct marketing industry databases.
- Moving to cell phones that are automatically unlisted.
I guess I see the internet just evolving around the problems in multiple ways.I hate to say goodbye to anonymity in email that is abused by spammers because it has a special place for whistleblowers. But perhaps blog postings can still serve that purpose.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
When people and programs automatically accept incoming messages only from signed correspondants who match their contact database, all the rest of the messages will be treated as spam. The Net will lose its youthful trust, and much of its optimism and openness to change, which will inhibit innovation and social growth. But it won't die. It will grow old, bitter and rich.
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make install -not war
*cough*Mathus*cough*
Just as a broken clock is right twice a day, eventually some doomsayer is going to be right, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say it won't be Dr. Kari, and it will not be in 2006.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Only the people who believed the internet was some kind of nirvana, where all the sins of mankind were going to be washed away by technology, are disappointed with the way things are going. The rest of us deal with the quirks and it still proves most useful. And businesses are the most locked in. Are we going to go back to modems and BBSs? Not if we want to stay in business. We will deal. The internet will deal. And mankind will remain unchanged in the face of technology.
why not just make your own network now and only let people you deem worthy on it now. what? no one wants to be on your elitist network? pity....
-You're wasting your time. Alfador only likes me.
The Internet is a playground with no dried up old teachers to tell us not to hang upside down on the monkey bars. But groups and structures based on groups mature just like individuals, only slower. As the Internet evolves it will become self-policing. As we can see already with moderated forums, the relevant information can be made to bubble to the top with some small effort of users of said information. It is in the self interest of all Internet users to make it a viable place to find and exchange information. We are all selfish, and I think we'll get what we want. The other advantage the Internet has is that there are a lot of smart people using it and smart people are even better at figuring out how to get what they want than the average Joe. Perhaps the Internet would have already "collapsed" in a useful sense were it not for Google and others. Where there's a will there's a way.
Certainly the "public pain threshold" was reached long ago on T.V., and longer ago before that on radio, and still, we've got our boob tubes, and ear jocks every morning, afternoon, and night.
The public doesn't really care about advertising, in whatever form it comes. Certainly not enough, anyway, to give up their lazy lifestyles of channel surfing and station tuning.
Comments like this make me embarrassed to be a geek (albeit an old one).
Not everyone has the luxury of "hiding" their email address. For many of us, our work *requires* making our email address public--even to the point of posting it on a website. In my case, it also appears in a magazine each month.
So, get off your high horse and take a peek at the real world. You will see things that utterly amaze.
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
It means the internet, our internet, can go back to what it was before the companies started fucking it up; a medium for free information exchange.
Back when it was "our internet" (as you put it), there was nowhere near the amount of free information exchange as there is today, in large part DUE to contributions by companies across the world.
Companies haven't fucked up the internet, they've given us more things we can do over the internet. The things that actually trash the internet are: script kiddies, virus writers, spammers, and evil countries.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
If Canter and Siegel had been punished properly for their crime (been barred for ever from a connection) we wouldn't be in the position we are now. If upstream and backbone sites actually enforced non-spam, non-open-relay, etc rules, we'd be closer to a fully functioning network.
My good friend and colleague Dr Jennings was wont to say "the network is too important to be left to the networkers" -- and I still say he was wrong, dead wrong. The network is too important to be taken out of the hands of the networkers.
And what's all this crap about back 10 to 20 years "before we had an information network"? Excuse me, but 20 years ago I was happily using BITNET, the X.25 networks, and the IP networks (hell, UUCP too if it comes to that). Slow, primitive, but it sure looked like an information network to me.
Maybe the good doctor is confusing the Internet with the Web?
I donno. It's already a pain in the ass to find anything generic on Google, Yahoo, what have you. Instead you get a thousand and one fake "Search Engine" sites, that have googlebombed their way up the rankings. It works for very, VERY specific querys still, but even then, you'll get at least 1 page in the top 10 that's like www.findsearchmonkey-hotwomansex-freetvfreesatteli tefreecabletv-makemoneynow.com/.html
Email is slowly going the way of Usenet -- there's discussion going on, but there's a lot more junk than discussion. Eventually Email will be that crazy thing those old time geeks use, while everyone else uses, well, something else.
So if you can't communicate because of spam, and you can't find anything because of spam, then it becomes a pain in the ass to use the Internet, and that's what he means by Public Pain Threshold. When the general public decides that it's too big of a pain in the ass to do anything on the Internet, the Internet will start to shrink.
In the real world people filter.
I've never had any problems giving out my email address. Junk goes in the spam filter, which I clean out once a month (when I admined for a company we had someone check every 2-3 days but never had any FPs to my knowledge).
I get maybe 1 spam gets through the filters in a week. Easy to handle.
the public pain threshhold? WTF is this guy talking about?
Yeah, if that were all it took, television would be as extinct as travel by zeppelin.