Future of the Internet

Kevin Kelly on the next 5000 days of the web. This is on the basis that as of December 2007, when this was filmed, the web was 5000 days old, and he explains how based on processing power, memory and number of links, we have built something that is roughly equivalent to one human brain in that time. Then he applies Moore's Law.

So over the next 5000 days, we will not see cloud computing in the sense that it is usually portrayed, where all those lots of machines that we have at the moment just shift their storage and systems onto the network - instead, we'll see those machines just become screens into one single worldwide machine.



Personally I just get excited by the whole Matrixness of this, but the analogy that I really love (and the reference I followed up from Faris to find this clip) is an improvement on 'social media is like air'. It is this: The most comparable technology to the internet is the alphabet: it utterly transformed communication and data recording, and we take it for granted to such an extent that it is invisible.