There is a big change coming to the Internet which has the potential to radically shift the nature of the Internet itself and how all of the nodes which participate in it collectively will be able to interact. If we were smart, we should be pushing for this change to occur, because the shift is so significant it has the possibility to open up completely new realms of informational hierarchic interchange and organization.
The change has sweeping implications not just technologically, but also socially and certainly politically as well.
The present way the Internet works is that there are essentially two separate classes of nodes which participate on the Internet – servers and regular users. One fundamental difference between the two is that servers are addressable machines which have public addresses that can be accessed by all other systems, whereas most regular user’s machines sit behind routing devices which essentially buffer their computers from the public space, on the one hand potentially protecting them from attack, but also cutting them off from public accessibility.
This problem with regular Internet users’ systems is exacerbated by the fact that Internet service providers typically do not provide permanent addresses to home accounts. Imagine how it would be in the real world if only certain organizations had the privilege of a thing called a mailing address, and everyone else had to use collective addresses that did not belong to just their own residence, but possibly to pools of many residences. And imagine if the home users’ addresses were not even allowed to stay the same, but changed periodically, often at least once every 24 hours. It would be insane, would it not?
The fundamental problem is that there are privileged nodes on the Internet – such as the big sites Google, Yahoo, Craigslist, Facebook, etc. – and unprivileged ones, such as (more than likely) yours and mine. Private organizations invest hundreds of millions of dollars on infrastructure designed to capitalize on cornering niches of routine Internet usage and functionality.
For example, to have the “privilege” of having an actual permanent address for your computer, Internet service providers charge extra money. And even when you have such an address, you must go through still more hoops if you want the privilege to participate as an equal peer amongst other servers.
As another example, your computer and mine cannot actually participate as equal peers in the sending of email (via the SMTP protocol) via the Internet because, due to security fears and other issues, only privileged systems are designated as being valid mail senders and will not accept mail from non-privileged systems. You and I are forced to use the systems of the privileged nodes (i.e. gmail, Yahoo mail, etc.) because our own systems are not deemed worthy of participating equally with others.
Of course this has been done mostly to eliminate spam, yet even still, it is estimated that around 95% of all email traffic in the world consists of spam. Clearly that system, even with its massive inconvenience, is not working very well. There has to be a better way. The entire protocol and mode in which interoperation for Internet mail occurs needs to be re-thought out from the beginning, and things like identity and verifiability of sender and addressee need to be implemented at the protocol level. (I have long been aware that one of the fundamental things lacking with the present Internet is the lack of strict identity. I would like to address this in more detail in another post, yet essentially because of weak identity and verifiability there are all sorts of problems that occur, from scams on eBay to mail spam and phishing attacks. There needs to be a solid infrastructure for identity to exist. Many people will decry this as being a loss – a loss of freedom and anonymity, yet I would also argue that the price that must necessarily be paid to participate in a fully functional system that does not break down requires the concept of strong identity. Things like email and eBay are essentially community interoperations which, as long as there exists no strong system of identity, fundamentally break down. Also, the other side to anonymity is the idea of reputation, and reputation, just as in the real world, is a true asset for any individual or company. Reputation provides a way to build trust and, instead of the cludgy implementations of security designed to protect us and filter out garbage, as circles of reputation are built it would become easy to simply filter out low reputation sources of information. For example, in forums where there are trolls, you can simply choose to filter out these sources because they are coupled with actual, verifiable identities. Filtering is one of the most basic empowerments not just in the real world but in the virtual world as well, but filtering requires identification. I imagine a future in which all humans essentially are assigned their own unique address or identification credentials which can stay with them for life. They can also chose to create new credentials, with the disadvantage being that they will therefore have to establish a new reputation from scratch.)
This is one of those things where you have to get your mind out of the narrow thinking which seems to govern much innovation in Internet entrepreneurship today, where companies basically look for empty niches to exploit in order to get there first and establish themselves before others do in order to corner some aspect of functionality which eventually they hope becomes an indispensable component of the routines of interchange and functionality of the Internet.
You have to go back to the types of thinking that went on in the very early days of the Internet, when the original protocols were developed which laid the ground for open participation of all nodes across the Internet based on open standards and maximum interoperability. Today it is taken as given that all of these groundwork technologies that are necessary for the Internet to operate the way it does just work, yet there are people who work behind the scenes of the Internet to ensure that this all keeps working and that all interoperating systems are in compliance with the standards.
All organizations and providers must dedicate staff to keeping their systems operational with these standards. It is accepted as given and necessary that this is what has to be done to make the Internet work. So we are already paying homage to this higher organization although it typically tends to not be as glorious and appealing as the exploitation of the little niches is with its potentially huge monetary rewards for cornering markets.
The big change that is set to occur is the fundamental changing of the addressing system of the entire Internet from the present protocol IPv4 to the new one, IPv6. IPv6 should make every single node which participates on the Internet its own, unique, addressable system. Any two computers on the Internet, no matter where they are, should be able to immediately address each other and share data. Every node should then have its own address and be accessible to all other nodes.
If this happens the way it is supposed to, hierarchies might start to topple as the once privileged status of major content providers dissipates and the privilege is shared equally amongst all nodes of the Internet.
I actually believe that the privilege of having a publicly accessible node on the Internet for all users is perhaps more important even than having mailing addresses, because the potential for interchange and participation is that much greater via the Internet.
To give some examples of this type of thinking, let’s say you want to post something for sale on Craigslist. In my world, when you want to post something for sale among your community, you would not go to the server of a private organization which has strict control over the operation of that service, instead your computer would know how to interoperate with the Community Bulletin Board Protocol, which would be a defined standard developed and maintained by technical experts that is designed for maximum interoperability, robustness, security, and features. On your computer you would run a program which knows how to interoperate with the Community Bulletin Board Protocol. It could be one of many programs, because anyone in the world could write their own program which uses that protocol. Of course programs which had the best features and the greatest usability would naturally become the most popular ones. All nodes on the Internet which have programs which use the Community Bulletin Board Protocol would be equally responsible for maintaining the actual community bulletin boards for their communities.
Or think that every computer could run programs which speak the Social Networking Protocol and, similarly, rather than the social network being managed and controlled by one entity, it would instead be defined by a protocol, the Social Networking Protocol, which would implement all of the features and requirements necessary to make it work. On your computer then, you would run one (or several if that makes you happy) of potentially many possible applications which are able to speak the Social Networking Protocol. Each computer, each node on the Internet, is equally responsible for maintaining the actual social network(s) which they choose to participate in.
Instead of resources being devoted to private companies trying to find the best ways to make profit, resources would be devoted to technical experts whose overriding interest is in developing the best, most interoperable, secure, and functional system available.
Of course this does not mean that all private enterprise on the Internet would disappear, but in fact it would lead to a much, much greater benefit which would eventually be far more valuable economically, socially, and politically. Rather than constrain free enterprise, it would simply focus it where it can be most useful and allow for a new hierarchical and informational organization which would lead to a more fundamental flourishing.
Finally, coupled with the above changes, perhaps the most fundamental change that must occur is the recognition that the data transmission infrastructure around the globe for *all* types of data belongs to the people to Earth and can never be privately controlled. We need to dethrone the privileged entities which control the airwaves and cables. We are the ones who have paid for that infrastructure – infrastructure that runs through every community of virtually every nation on Earth. Nothing could be more public than that.
Ultimately there should be one Earth public body that stewards the global information infrastructure and perhaps, as peoples of the world learn to cooperate in this regard, they can eventually cooperate in more areas of policy and resource management, leading to a true one world government.
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