A New Internet?

Source: "Do We Need a New Internet?" JOHN MARKOFF, The New York Times February 14, 2009.

"Despite a thriving global computer security industry that is projected to reach $79 billion in revenues next year, and the fact that in 2002 Microsoft itself began an intense corporatewide effort to improve the security of its software, Internet security has continued to deteriorate globally......

"(T)here is a growing belief among engineers and security experts that Internet security and privacy have become so maddeningly elusive that the only way to fix the problem is to start over.

"What a new Internet might look like is still widely debated, but one alternative would, in effect, create a “gated community” where users would give up their anonymity and certain freedoms in return for safety. Today that is already the case for many corporate and government Internet users. As a new and more secure network becomes widely adopted, the current Internet might end up as the bad neighborhood of cyberspace. You would enter at your own risk and keep an eye over your shoulder while you were there."

Comment: The one thing I have learned for sure since I first learned to program a computer more than 50 years ago is that I am usually surprised by what happens in the Information Revolution.

I find it hard to imagine life without the Internet I have grown to treat as part of my life and as a fundamental part of the "surround" with which I amplify my thinking.

My failure of imagination does not prevent unforeseen changes from taking place. That has already happened from the trailblazing growth of the computer game industry, to the magnitude of online pornography and gambling, to the change in the world due to the impact of the Internet in making new services "tradable". JAD