The Web: 10 Years From Now

By James Mowery

The year is now 2018—with the press of a button, you are instantly propelled into your desktop environment which makes computers of today appear like old fashioned typewriters. With pin-point precision, your computer scours the web to locate and separate news items that you are interested in by interpreting your recent browsing habits, interests, purchases, emails, social communications, and even food consumptions. It is only moments later when you are dictating your latest entry on your blog that will be viewable by all of your friends and followers. Right after, an alert notifies you that your best friend has left a voice message on your cell phone, but through voice recognition, your computer is alerted to the fact that the meeting planned for tomorrow was cancelled. No worries, though, as your calendar instantly updated itself to reflect the changes at the very moment the message was received.

Does all of that sound too easy? Well, I am here to tell you that it is just a glimpse into the future which awaits us all. Producers, consumers, advertisers, governments, schools, and others alike will be anticipating these changes, but while no one can possibly be sure of the future, there are hints from our past and present which provide insight to the unknown. But to get there, we must begin with the past.

In 1985, TCP/IP protocol was starting to gain momentum, and soon after, a 56 kilobit per second network was created for the first time. This network started a chain of events which would forever change the way we would be connected. Granted, it was not until the 1990s when your average computer user could afford basic internet access, but the impacts were nothing less than extraordinary.

Oh how the times change: Today’s internet is capable of transmitting over 750,000 times faster than what was available only 23 years ago, and microprocessing speeds have increased at a faster rate than that. Ironically, we are now presented with newer technologies so fast that it is almost impossible to have the latest and greatest—within six months, everything usually gets ousted by a faster and/or more efficient product.

However, as great as today’s technology appears to be, we’ve only taken baby steps towards tremendous achievements that have yet to be envisioned by the world’s most intelligent minds today. No one knows when these changes will happen, but visionaries will still speculate as to how the future web will look and function, but everyone should agree that the future’s technology will be aimed at solving today’s problems.

Driven by Problems

Tech savvy users are now overloaded with information, and it is also beginning to spread to the average internet and computer user. This spread of information helps the masses become more computer literate, but at what cost? Ironically, we have barely scratched the surface with the amount of content we will be interacting with in later times.

If the exponential growth of networking and microprocessing technology continues to maintain Moore’s Law, in 10 years, breathtaking advancements will occur which might make today’s technology seem unimpressive at best.

Solutions will be developed over the next few years to deal with the problems that surround us today, but they will only act as band-aids over what is essentially internal bleeding. There will be a breaking point: When this threshold is reached, revolutionary developments will occur that will change the way we see and use technology forever.

Information

The massive influx of information that came with the turn of the 21st century will continue to be a problem throughout the future. Companies will be created with goals for solving these issues—they will be pushing the limits of artificial intelligence and social technology in the process.

The production and consumption of content on the internet will skyrocket to all-time highs, and new ways to store and share data will be developed while internet service providers attempt to keep up with demands. Cloud computing, a concept that is popular today, will be a common method of securely storing and backing up data. Hard-disk drives will be less important as web-based storage becomes cheaper and wireless internet connections become more efficient. New developments will allow you to have your data shared with the people you want instantly.

In the future, as teraflops of data traverse the internet with every passing second, people will require products and services that can limit the amount of information being presented to them. Within moments of identifying yourself on a computer terminal, your profile will help bring relevant content to your attention. Dedicated systems will sift through information by learning a user’s likes and dislikes. It will not be perfect—unfortunately, nothing ever will be—but computer systems will continuously learn. The algorithms used to sort this data will be put under constant scrutiny to ensure that they are meeting a user’s standards.

All this information is great to take in, but being able to share it with others is where the true value is at.

Social Networking

Long gone are the days when you visit a website like Facebook or MySpace to keep in touch with people. Instantaneous connections to your friends will be all the rage. It might be a fairly frequent event to end up having your friends know more about your schedule than you do, as invasive as it sounds.

Everything your contacts do could potentially be shared with you by way of social networks. However, just like most information in general, there is the risk of being overwhelmed. Social networks must utilize smart filtering techniques, social compatibility, and personal preference profiles to determine which information you are likely to be interested in knowing. You might not care that your pal Billy has to go get a haircut, but you might be interested in knowing that Jessica is going to a dance later that evening.

Maybe even more impressive is the fact that location aware systems will be a common technology in the future. Technologies like GPS will allow your location to always be known by your friends, and social networks will find creative ways to exploit this information. Obviously, privacy is of the highest concern when people know where you are at, and advertisers certainly wouldn’t mind where you are located. Could you imagine billboards being targeted towards you? Regardless, social networks will begin leveraging personal geo-location data in ways that will make us both fascinated and concerned at the same time. This will be a hot debate in the future.

Social networks will also integrate with publishing platforms to bring their users relevant content, and interestingly, all these systems are going to be interconnected.

Blogging

If you look at what a blog is today, many people define it as a collection of thoughts by a person or group.

Similarly, If you could see what a blog might be in 10 years from now, people will still define it as a collection of thoughts by a person or group.

Just as newspapers, magazines, and books haven’t changed all that much over time, blogs will still be blogs. They will not change much from what they are today, but print newspapers will not see the same outcome. The ways we view and interact with blogs will change dramatically, and the amount of people that visit blogs as their primary source of news and information will skyrocket to insurmountable levels.

The differences between bloggers and journalists will continue to be blurred as news reports happen instantaneously: Bloggers are able to give accurate and truthful insight before professional journalists even have a chance. News organizations will be battling with bloggers and live reports from everyday people.

Live blogging is already picking up steam as a popular way to reach a group of people. It is a phenomenon that will force news corporations to develop tools to analyze stories through social networks before their competitors can. Can you imagine everyday social network users being paid to report on stories if they come across important events? Well no need to imagine it because this is exactly what will be happening in the future.

The future of the commercial blogging is completely dependent on how well systems are designed to bring great content to users. Venture capitalists should be ready to invest in technologies aimed to do just that, and it all could very well happen at one place—the feed reader.

Feed Reading

With all the information that users will be sure to consume, there needs to be a way to organize it in a reasonable manner. Feed reading technology will still have its roots with technology commonly available today, but everything from finding content to storing and sharing it will be handled within the same application. Newspapers, blogs, social streams, and weather information will all be accessed from the same central location, and while these methods are put in use, the questions about how content producers will generate money will arise.

XML and RSS are probably some of the most under-appreciated technological advancements today: That is a shame considering how much of an impact they will have on the future. These technologies are gateways to better content management and delivery.

Future feed readers will have two primary goals. One of these goals is the automation of common tasks performed by users today. Organizing and filtering content is a big problem today. There is far too much content on the web that is just not worth reading, and feed readers will be able to detect which content is not up to par. The less work the user has to do, the more effective the system will be.

The other goal will be the discovery of new content. Doing is, by no stretch of the imagination, a difficult task—even today. Systems will have to be developed which analyze content the instant it is published, and since publishing platforms and new media formats will grow, the importance of these systems that detect content will be vital for the survival of the blogosphere.

I analyze around 7,500 pieces of content per week—image how it would be if I was required to analyze even 10 times more than that over the next few years.

Privacy

Privacy is a big issue nowadays, and groups like DataPortability will be on the forefront of helping users regain control of their personal information. The movement has already begun today. Unfortunately, there are also companies, like Facebook, that want to hold on to your information: It is priceless information to advertisers.

The political ramifications are immense. There is a serious potential for government supported services to be created which will act as a broker for your online activity. Each attempt by a non-governmental person, group, or company to access your data will be controlled by you. It is one way to really deal with privacy issues, but at the cost of having your data centralized.

Encryption technologies will ensure that your data will be safer than ever before. However, there is always the danger of a catastrophic failure in any system, and no matter how secure something is, to assume as such is dangerous. All these services will be optional, but it might be a step in the right direction.

It makes you question if there will be such a concept of privacy in the future? How would social networks exist and still maintain privacy? It is something that even I cannot imagine.

Beyond

People quickly forget how fast these technological advancements are happening, but we all must be careful. Complex problems can sometimes be solved with simple solutions, but we do not live in a simple world any longer. Developers and manufacturers have to learn and adapt from previous mistakes, and privacy must be maintained.

If you think that 10 years from now sounds interesting, just try thinking about 20 years, 50 years, or even 100 years into the future. Some of you reading this article right now will live to see those times, and if you recall what we started with only 10 years ago, it just seems unimaginable and fascinating on all ends of the technological spectrum.