I think it is safe to say that by 2020 the Internet as we know it today will not exists. All we will have is a bunch of walled gardens, under full surveillance from both the government and corporations. And most people will not even notice or care.
I think it's safe to say you're exaggerating, and while there will be local pockets of utter confusion (North Korea, some US ISPs) on the whole it will be fine.
That's not to say we don't need to fight for rights, to keep this sort of thing from happening, but that I have confidence that we can and will fight these things successfully.
If in 2010 I told you the next presidential candidate for the USA was retweeting 4chan memes, you'd have probably said I was exaggerating. All I'm saying is things are changing quicker than we can imagine.
I don't think I'm exaggerating. When you read this article, and read what corporations are doing, and politicians are advocating, it's easy to see where this is going. In addition to that you have ICANN stewardship transfer, which might make it easier for other countries to influence how the Internet works. We also have growing number of hacks/leaks that will be used to push the "need for firewalls" and "warnings" from experts that "someone" if probing our defences. It all does not make me hopeful that we can keep the internet free.
Between surveillance states, cyber attacks, and probable rising energy costs, it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of things general became much less global. If you want to hear one of the greatest pessimists of our age, I recommend James Howard Kunstler. He's written some books, does some podcast appearances, and keeps a blog. He's the first person I ever saw put forth a convincing argument for why the internet may be a temporary phenomenon.
There's too much money or power otherwise. Perhaps the discussion to have is not about the degrees of surveillance or walled gardens, but public access to mass surveillance records collected by government agencies. If everyone had access to everything, it would be a check on the absolute power of powerful institutions to corrupt them absolutely.
I'm not evangelizing the idea, I just think it's something worth debating and I don't see enough of it yet.
Nah, just point your DNS queries to 8.8.8.8 (two times Adolf Hitler's birthday, easy to remember) and you'll be fine. Or, if Google is blocked, use another root server. Or, if all root servers are blocked, use a VPN. Or, if all VPNs are blocked, invent a distributed DNS system that adds .realuk as a new top-level domain.
If VPNs are blocked then DNS filtering likely is not your only problem. You would already be behind a something akin to the great firewall.
And you also have to consider that when you start using counter-measures then you're already retreating and relying on foreign, more-free societies to support you. What if they succumb to the same thing too which obviously is not so far-fetched since it already happened to your society?
astrodust|9 years ago
That's not to say we don't need to fight for rights, to keep this sort of thing from happening, but that I have confidence that we can and will fight these things successfully.
Australia, as one example, has tried on many occasions to put up very restrictive firewalls and has mostly failed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Austral...
Stay vigilant, stay informed, and you can control the future.
antihero|9 years ago
mariusz79|9 years ago
tbihl|9 years ago
rm_-rf_slash|9 years ago
I'm not evangelizing the idea, I just think it's something worth debating and I don't see enough of it yet.
JohnStrange|9 years ago
the8472|9 years ago
If VPNs are blocked then DNS filtering likely is not your only problem. You would already be behind a something akin to the great firewall.
And you also have to consider that when you start using counter-measures then you're already retreating and relying on foreign, more-free societies to support you. What if they succumb to the same thing too which obviously is not so far-fetched since it already happened to your society?
mariusz79|9 years ago
unknown|9 years ago
[deleted]