TheEndOfFreeInternet

Quora Answer : Will the internet even exist in the next 20 years?

Nov 29, 2017

The protocol will still exist.

But there is now a real danger that "the internet" will have been successfully enclosed by private corporations.

What will that look like?

• the end of net neutrality means that the phone companies / network providers can choose to prioritise packets from certain companies / services. They start to demand a premium from popular services.
• most people don't notice or care because they only use a few popular services anyway : Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Pinterest, Netflix etc. These large corporations complain but start to pay the premium to be first class citizens. Packets from other services / web-addresses get deprioritized.
• the commercial Content Delivery Networks probably play a role here. Basically anyone who wants to provide content to the public will need to go via a CDN because they'll be the ones cutting the deals between the phone companies and any company smaller than Facebook and Google. That's probably how Quora and Pinterest etc. will keep going.
• Meanwhile, governments will continue to try to reassert control over internet content. In the name of clamping down on piracy, pornography, fake news, terrorism, online harassment, illegal crypto-currencies etc. they'll start putting more pressure on online services to police their content. Facebook and Google will be increasingly required to co-operate. Smaller services will find they need to be vetted to get onto the CDN.
• Also networking "hardware" is increasingly moved into software. Routers become generic boxes whose protocols are just software configuration.
• Finally, phone companies, CDNs and router companies figure out some "improved" protocols which make the shaping and inspection of traffic more efficient. Stripped of the need to route generic packets from anywhere to anywhere, this new infrastructure, brought through a software update, is sold to the consumers as an "upgrade".

By now, consumer IP is dead. Email protocols stop working. (Google and other "web-mail" providers arrange an alternative that looks the same but works over the new protocol. Or perhaps integrates directly with other messaging providers.) Communication is via Facebook and Twitter which work on the new protocol. Other P2P protocols that rely on IP also stop working. No more bittorrent, btsync, syncthing, webrtc etc.

IP survives as a "legacy system" for corporate users of course. Too many large companies still depend on it. But it will now be expensive, like most "enterprise" kit.

Within 20 years, we'll find that the remaining "free" internet, where any ordinary person can hire a web-server and put up their own content independent of any of the major corporations or systematic government oversight is reduced to a tiny minority of hobbyists like amateur radio. Most people never access it or even know of its existence.

If you don't like this scenario, NOW is the time to do something about it.

Not just do what you can to defend net-neutrality, but start to use the free / peer-to-peer, open protocols that we still have. Run your own web-site or blog. Use RSS to share content. Use webrtc to do your video conferencing, and bittorrent to share legitimate files. Do what you can to make sure that there is just too much demand and usage of the open protocols and internet that the large corporations can't afford to try to switch it off because they know they'll be losing too many customers.

Once most people aren't using the internet, taking it away becomes easy.