My thoughts when reading the material in this module were that we are already living "in the future" as discussed by experts from five years ago or more.
The Internet is developing at such a rate that many of the things being discussed as little as a few years ago are already here and that over the next ten to twenty years it will be entirely up to human beings imagination, or maybe more frightening, Artificial Intelligence developments.
Broadband capabilities are increasing yearly, although obviously in this country our major telecommunication companies still have a long way to go before they reach a satisfactory level of service, as has been discussed by this class.
Perhaps the way of the future is wireless technology, as we are already seeing a number of smaller companies using this to bring services to customers at a more competitive rate than the larger providers are doing.
We are seeing an increase in competition for service although the reliability is still to be proved. Looking at popular computing forum such as whirlpool provides evidence that we are still very much in the exploration period for advanced broadband and wireless technology
http://whirlpool.net.au/
Increasing delivery of multimedia – video, voice etc;
The advent of systems such as U tube and personal pages such as My Space and Facebook have already seen a vast increase in the Internet becoming a more visual than textual tool. In the past people have adapted social spaces with emoticons. The future is looking more and more like we will be using a visual medium online. Will the advent of Voip protocol eventually see the end of the telephone and the start of web cams a normal medium of communication. Having personally trialled a mobile system which was supposed to deliver Internet and phone connection on the same line, I can say that the particular companies technology is still a long way off perfect. However there is no doubt that once this technology is developed further and the bugs ironed out it could well be the way of the future.
Visual image is no doubt now replacing large parts of the world wide web from previously textual ones. You only have to look at the sophistication of the online gaming world and how far it has come from the original mud's and moos of the earlier days of the Internet.
Increasing security & authentication – smartcards, digital signatures etc
We have already seen a huge increase in financial transaction that take place on-line over the last ten years. Digital encryption for electronic financial purchases is now common place across most financial institutions. There are a lot of free down loadable sources for protection against viruses and spy ware. Society is becoming more and more cashless, that is we are using computer technology to use cards rather than cash for most transaction, regardless of if they are on line or using a card through a shopping centre.
Wifi / portable computing / communication devices
Wireless technology and portable computing are becoming commonplace in our society today. The mobile phone now has capabilities of browsing and interacting with the Internet. although this could still be considered expensive the future will probably see these applications become more commonplace and cheaper to use. Current business people will have the world at the fingertips rather than relying on being "in the office" I believe this could see a far more decenter ed workplace as information is becoming more diverse. It will be fascinating to see how far communication devices will develop in our life times.
Wireless technology is currently experiencing huge growth in the gaming industry with the advent of such programs such as Wii which is now expanding its market from games to fitness. It would now seem that more and more of our previous social/entertainment parts of life are being incorporated by the Internet and advanced technology.
Intelligent agents
Human computer interface is not a new concept however the idea of artificial intelligence seems to be manifesting itself in our lives in a slow creeping way rather than with a big bag. We now accept that we will be talking to machines when ringing large corporation rather than humans. We interact with machine intelligence in game play and even to the extent people are talking online to machines through msn programs.
Will the future see more advanced commonplace artificial intelligence. Time will tell.
PEW Internet and American Life Project have a detailed article titled Future of the Internet. (Fox, S. et al. 2005)
http://www.pewinternet.org/ppf/r/145/report_display.asp
It is a detailed examination into where the Internet is leading us. Written in 2004 many of the areas discussed such as music, politics, health care and education are already changing due to Internet, and areas that weren't considered to be affected also are, such as religion. You only have to look at the vast amount of religious sites and documentation on the web to see this. Google religion today and you get the following result:
Results 1 - 10 of about 387,000,000 for religion
The Internet is now a part of so many aspects of our day to day lives it is hard to imagine how much more it will develop into the next generation. I feel the only thing that is not in doubt is that develop it certainly will.
Davison, N. (n.d.). The Future of Broadband. Retrieved May 28, 2008, from http://www.ugo.com/channels/tech/features/futureofbroadband/default.asp.
Fox, S., Anderson, J., & Rainie, L. (2005, January 9). Pew Internet: The Future of the Internet. Retrieved May 1, 2008, from http://www.pewinternet.org/ppf/r/145/report_display.asp.
Whirlpool Broadband Forums. (n.d.). Retrieved May 28, 2008, from http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/.
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