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Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt Predicts the Internet Will Split in Two By 2028 -- and One Part Will Be Led By China (yahoo.com)
Speaking at a private event in San Francisco this week, Eric Schmidt said he believes within the next decade there will be two distinct internets: one led by the U.S. and the other by China. At the event, economist Tyler Cowen asked, "What are the chances that the internet fragments over the years?" To which former Google CEO said: I think the most likely scenario now is not a splintering, but rather a bifurcation into a Chinese-led internet and a non-Chinese internet led by America. If you look at China, and I was just there, the scale of the companies that are being built, the services being built, the wealth that is being created is phenomenal. Chinese Internet is a greater percentage of the GDP of China, which is a big number, than the same percentage of the US, which is also a big number. If you think of China as like 'Oh yeah, they're good with the Internet,' you're missing the point.
Globalization means that they get to play too. I think you're going to see fantastic leadership in products and services from China. There's a real danger that along with those products and services comes a different leadership regime from government, with censorship, controls, etc. Look at the way BRI works -- their Belt and Road Initiative, which involves 60-ish countries -- it's perfectly possible those countries will begin to take on the infrastructure that China has with some loss of freedom.
Globalization means that they get to play too. I think you're going to see fantastic leadership in products and services from China. There's a real danger that along with those products and services comes a different leadership regime from government, with censorship, controls, etc. Look at the way BRI works -- their Belt and Road Initiative, which involves 60-ish countries -- it's perfectly possible those countries will begin to take on the infrastructure that China has with some loss of freedom.
How big we'll likely never know since China's government statistics are about as reliable as their Happy Meal toys.
In a decade you won't even have to be on the "web proper" to be networked in.
Once you get proper Web 3.0 decentralized networks running - like the Akasha beta you don't need web proper. All you need to be is attached to another node, even without web-proper access and you can communicate anywhere. I hope to see neighborhood mesh networks be it WiFi or cable-over-the-fence networks, as long as you've got a machine or two somewhere connected to the web then you've got worldwide communication going. Once we figure out how to make IPFS have some reasonable naming systems the old-school web will matter less and less.
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The whole Belt and Road initiative is running into some problems, receiving a lot of pushback from many countries that are realizing it's no picnic to be controlled by China.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
... hit you in the ass on the way to your fully firewalled future. They are 90% there already. This reminds me. We geeks need to find some type of new network outside of the corporate internet. The wingtips have mostly ruined it and turned it into a giant strip mall. However, say for example there was a grassroots nationwide wifi network, the FCC would come along and ban it. That or the wingtips would figure out how to buy it and ruin that, too. Ugh. It's hard to escape the suit weasels.
We should cut off China, and all other evil dictatorships, from the internet now. If they can't stop murdering people that disagree with them, they do not deserve to be part of the civilized world.
When it pops it’s Japan’s lost decade times 10. All the garbage real estate. All the rich owning 10 apartments while 90% own nothing. All the shit build quality. My wife is chinese, I’ve been to lower tier cities where I’m the only white guy in 100 miles. There is some really shocking shit there.
China is effectively already its own internet. The EU seems to be doing everything they can to follow their lead. There are several smaller nations already doing the same thing.
Bullshit
Don't underestimate the adversary. China's aggressively expanding their sphere of influence in Asia and Africa. Do you not see that?
If you do see that, do you not see that they'll do the same in the internet? Do you want a 'net dominated by Chinese companies, Chinese ethics, Chinese censorship?
I don't want this. I think China has an axe to grind with the US, and they'll do whatever they can to undermine our commerce -- like they have been doing in the past few decades.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
You note that he said the Chinese internet versus the American internet, which is arguable but probably effectively true. That's two (big) countries that comprise about 25% of the world's population. The rest of the world has to decide what to do.
China is obvious: don't insult pooh bear, don't contradict the government, don't stir up dissent, don't rock the boat, be good happy citizen in harmonious society. America lets you say anything you want: but don't fuck with corporate interests particularly with IP, you will be thrown in jail just as quickly.
So the question is what does the the remaining 75% of the world use? They will probably pick and choose. They will probably get their entertainment and software from the Chinese internet. They will probably get their social, and their porn from the "American" internet. The question is where will they get their drugs and mutually agreed upon contraband...
I fear for the worst. There's a lot of flippant accusations about surveilance and censorship of the rest of the world in the Chinese internet, but more than anything it's about keeping America's slimy, spying, sabotaging tentacles out of there, which is sensible.
The problem with America is that they're growing increasingly paranoid and consider all the other countries to be enemies, and have even committed hostile actions, subversion and sabotage against European networks, of everything. Chine on the other hand done or stated anything to that extent, and always said that cooperation is the only way forward.
Worth taking into account when you consider what side you'd like to be on.
China wants to exclude itself from the internet and have essentially its own version of the internet where everything their politicians disagree with is deleted --- that's not splitting the internet though: that's islanding China from the rest of the world: that's damage. As we well know, the Internet wants to re-route around such damage.
There's nothing in here about the Internet "splitting". All it amounts to is that China is already using the Internet a lot and most Americans know nothing about it because they can't read Chinese. They are going to use their own sites and services instead of running to use companies like Google.
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Sure the manufacturing is done in China (just because its cheap) but in many cases the internet equipment companies themselves are actually American and European.
If you think of China as like 'Oh yeah, they're not a Nazi super-state so it's okay to trade with them,' you're missing the point.
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
The core premise of this commentary seems to be that China hasn't basically already created the theorized divide between their "internet" and the rest of the world. I'm not so sure that people operating from behind The Great Firewall would entirely agree with that premise.
Basically, China already tries to segregate their Internet from everyone else's. The odds that they will sever every single tie to the US Internet is laughable, and if they don't do that, it's still one Internet.
Mostly because those that can influence it pretty much want the Chinese Variant of the Internet, a network, controlled by the government and built for the benefit of the industry.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You've never been to a shitty American city have you? Did you get mugged in the Chinese city or were they all civilized?
How many Americans own apartments/houses?
Here's a cluewho's 90% and who's 65%
It is expensive to build brick/mortar from which to sell. OTOH, selling via internet is dirt cheap. The west is still locked into mentality that distributors and/or box stores are main sources. IOW, we are throwing our money away on middle men. Then add in the fact that china pays less to mail small items to most other nations, than a developed nation pays to mail in their own city. China will want control as trump/GOP try to stop china from being unfair, but offhand, I think trump is being just as unfair as china.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Really? Which small European nations have firewalls themselves and blocked other western nations?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Looking at the activity logs of my servers that have public IPv4 addresses, all the traffic I get already from China is spam, bot scans of web pages, and constant port scanning and SSH dictionary attacks.
On top of that, I am pretty much 100% certain that if I put up a web page of interest to Chinese in China and it got popular and the government of China didn't like then nobody there would be able to see it anymore.
If the Internet did bifurcate as Schmidt says, what would be so different?
Drugs will be from the local country, just like now.
There will still be servers in other countries.
I understand that things needs to be dumbed down, but only two networks? Sure. What about the Ruskies? And if 2 are possible, I am sure the EU will be able to have one as well.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Vatican City. It has a litteral wall. Made from stone.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
China has many, many problems it is facing.
More problems than the US.
For as much power, wealth and influence they have at the moment, their window of opportunity for world domination, eg, "The Chinese Century" is rapidly closing and they know it.
The reason Xi is tightening control is because he knows the people of China are sick of the CCP and the corruption, etc;
Also, as others have pointed out, the BRI is having problems also. Those who have signed onto it are now seeing the error of their ways and that they are now beholden to China. The beginning of the backlash to Chinese influence is what we are seeing.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Someone can invent a device that connects to BOTH the American Internet and the Chinese Internet, and routes traffic between the two, making them look one one big Internet.
Gonna be a lot of work though.
and data wants to be free.
Gut feeling says that SpaceLink will be doing just this.
Of course, Googleowns a chunk of it, and will likely own more before the first customers.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Uh no. Schmidt is no longer with Google and has not been for some time.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
relax.
Your angst is going to give you a fucking heart attack.
The best thing that can happen is for these companies to do this. SpaceLink is coming and will be coming in a BIG way.
Likewise, this will encourage local gov to build out fiber as a utility.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
That would signal the end of the Internet, and begin the era of Walled_Gardens_2p0. Face it, we're almost there right now, globally-speaking.
Thanks by the free offenses!
Maybe, but I think the media overestimates it... It was very worse, in the past. IMHO, China, today, has many economic interests to be more closed than it already is...
Can you provide a link/source that supports that?
Vatican City. It has a litteral wall. Made from stone.
Nope, Vatican doesn't touch the Tiber, so no litteral wall either. There's a street or a park on the other side of the wall on all its length.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Look, there are other internets.
Faster ones.
Able to leap tall Gigabytes in a flash.
Just saying.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
China is effectively already its own internet
Afaict it depends what you mean by "effectively it's own Internet".
On the one hand china blocks a large number of big name western search/social/entertainment sites that dominate the Internet experiance in the west. On the other hand they certainly have not cut off communication completely.
The EU seems to be doing everything they can to follow their lead.
The EU seems to be taking rather a different approach, rather than blocking foreign corps it threatens them with legal sanctions (which it may or may not be able to enforce). This has resulted in a few sites (mostly smaller american news sites afaict) refusing to serve Europeans but all the big american players are still active here.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
There is no journalist material about this?! Why I (or anyone) must believe this?
No source offside China? No journalistic articles?
There is no such thing as globalization.
That term would imply that it was a two way street.
What is often called Globalization is just money and technology going from West to East.
Tyler Cowen isn't an economist, simply a Koch brothers paid-stooge.
Sure, you can call him a pseudo-economist, but please never call him a real economist.
This is wrong. The Chinese were actually quite intrigued and interested in the Jesuits. The issue wasn't the Jesuits, the issues was with other sects like Franciscan monks who basically stated that ancestor worship was a form of devil worshiping, etc. Jesuits were accepting of such practices however. The crisis came about when the Franciscans tattle to the pope that the Jesuits were allowing devil worshiping... The pope calls back the Jesuits and leave the Franciscans and other orders like the Dominicans, who keep telling the emperor that their culture was essentially evil and akin to devil worshiping. At that point the emperor says fuck off, and kicks them all out.
Prior to that the Chinese court was VERY interested in the science that the Jesuits were bringing in.
Confucian world view doesn't care about independent thought. It cares about relationships. Besides which there are MANY other philosophies where the individual is more important in China.
That's already happened.
The Chinese one is called "wechat", and nobody in the West uses it, because the TOS basically say that the Chinese Communist Party owns your soul, as well as all of your personal data and human rights. It's supposed to be super convenient, though. So they say. Has every feature you want. Except privacy.
The other one is called "the internet", and you can't really access most of it in China, because it's blocked. I mean, there are a few public-internet sites still reachable from China. Because they cooperate with the censorship. Baidu, for example. Taobao. But you can't use Google, Wikipedia, YouTube, or any other site that's major in the rest of the world. It's all blocked.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
The Chinese government has systematically banned or neutered almost every US website or website company that has won a sizeable chunk of market share in China.
At the same time, their policy on corporate ownership insures that the companies inside the great firewall are majority owned by the Chinese.
At the same time, large US companies outside of China are constantly faced by monopoly threats by the US government. They're also prevent from merging to create bigger companies. And they don't have the protection of the US goverment for the most part: they can be bought lock stock and barrel by the Chinese.
With a population that dwarves the US, Chinese companies will continue to grow larger and more powerful and will continue to snap up US companies. Their own internet will remain their own through protectionism. Startups will get purchased if they show any promise with the enormous cash reserves the chinese enjoy. And in the end there will only be ONE internet - the one owned by the Chinese. The US will be on the outside looking in.
The great firewall is becoming ever thicker. By the month.
For most Chinese, the outside internet will not exist in a few years. Nor need it. Lots of internal news and social media sites. The Chinese equivalent of StackExchange will be quite good enough. And a few carefully monitored Chinese will still have external access.
The famine was created by Chairman Mao, not natural elements. Google The Great Leap Forward. It was truly horrendous, for everyone that died there were hundreds that went desperately hungry. All completely unnecessary.
Mao's photo hangs proudly over Tiananmen square.
It doesn't threaten foreign corps, its rules apply to all companies, European or foreign. It's just that American companies are not used to having to obey the law so they come unstuck in European courts.
It doesn't matter if you want it or not. A global, open Internet is impossible, governments will not give up control that easily. There will eventually be a US internet, a Chinese internet, a European internet etc.
I'm not sure if "effectively it is own internet" means anything.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Normally laws apply to those within the jurisdiction of a government.
However the EU has decided that these laws apply to anyone interacting with an EU client, regardless of whether or not the site operator has a presense in the EU. In response a bunch of smaller american news sites seem to have decided not to take the risk and just block anyone who appears to be from Europe.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register