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July/August 2008

The Future of the Web

We asked technology innovators, luminaries, and users what the Web might be in five to ten years.

By Kristina Grifantini
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Sir Tim Berners-Lee
Director of the World Wide Web Consortium and inventor of the Web; Cambridge, MA

"I would like to see the Internet reach people in rural areas and help alleviate poverty. I would like to see more people reaching the Web from devices big and small, fixed and mobile. I look forward to more voice technology--in hands-busy scenarios such as driving, and also to increase accessibility (e.g., for people with low vision). The long tail of video on the Web is creating a new market of direct access to independent films and also has the potential to help with literacy issues. I hope for the proliferation of Linked Open Data: the Semantic Web 'done right.' I hope that governments will open their data stores to all citizens. A mashup sphere will feast on a wealth of Semantic Web data and herald the next wave of progress and creativity on the Web."

Vint Cerf
Vice president and chief Internet evangelist at Google and co-designer of the TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the Internet; McLean, VA

"There will be higher-speed Internet access by fiber and wireless media. Seventy percent of all mobiles will be Internet enabled in 10 years or less. Gigabit speeds in wired and wireless modes will be more widely available. Many more appliances (home, work, car, on your person) will be online. IPTV will offer radical new consumer-controlled advertising opportunities. IPv6 will be the dominant mode of access and use of the Internet. Multi­touch and voiced interfaces will be very common. Devices will discover each other when they are local and interact in a P2P fashion."

Richard Stallman
Main developer of the GNU/Linux system and founder of the Free Software Movement; Cambridge, MA

"No one can see the future, because it depends on you. But I see a danger in the Web today: doing your computing on servers running software you can't change or study, and entrusting your data to U.S. companies required to give it to Big Brother without even a search warrant. Don't risk this practice!"

Bjarne Stroustrup
Professor at Texas A&M University and designer of the C++ programming language; College Station, TX

"The total end of privacy. Governments, politicians, criminals, and friends will trawl through years of accumulated data (ours and what others collected) with unbelievably sophisticated tools. Obscurity and time passed will no longer be covers."

Mena Trott
President and cofounder of Six Apart; San Francisco

"With the popularity of blogging and online video and photo sharing, we already know that people want to publish significant portions of their lives online. In 10 years, I can easily see someone putting 75 percent of their day online. But it won't all be public. The ­majority will be for that person's eyes only; it will be more a record for that individual."

Leah Culver
Cofounder of Pownce; San Francisco

"Open standards will always be the future of the Web. Developers should be able to rely on their programs' running well on multiple platforms. Simple and open API standards such as Microformats, ­OpenSocial, OAuth, and OEmbed will help developers build the next generation of Web applications that we love."

Jonathan Zittrain
Professor of law and cofounder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School and author of The Future of the Internet--and How to Stop It; Cambridge, MA

"The future of the Web may be its past: an abandonment of open standards and services (like the collective hallucination that is our distributed e-mail system) and a return to the gated communities that offered consistency and security--and also lock-in. To avoid this future, application developers must pressure the makers of cool new platforms like Facebook and Google Apps (or the iPhone, for that matter) to abandon their ability to kill any apps at any time for any reason."
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July/August 2008

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Comments

  • future of the web
    bigrobhollins on 06/23/2008 at 10:07 AM
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    i see a web of complete security and availability.  the speeds, apps, and general technology of a future wherein we have at our disposal termnals and devices to access and work-with all sources of data pertinent to our individual lives; forever growing and maturing.  i see ipod and the like disapperaing into our phones while the radio and tv become universally present and tunable to our own like. a massive generator of revenue, as it is, the web will only add more color to life across the spectrum of earthly existence.
    Rate this comment: 12345
    • Re: future of the web
      z0rr0 on 06/23/2008 at 10:47 AM
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      I fear a web serving greed and power. Greed via charges for non-value transactions by the billions and incomprehensible complexity imposed on naive customers. Power, primarily governments, through increasingly intrusive data accumulation and controls on the public agenda. What I fear most is not the risk of these, but our apparent acquiescence to both.
      Rate this comment: 12345
  • The Future is Intelligence
    rkimbrell on 06/23/2008 at 11:09 AM
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    In a recent editorial in New Scientist (http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/mg19826585.300-comment-dont-expect-et-to-look-like-us.html) Steve Dick commented that we shouldn't expect ET to look like us.  Since we have only one example of intelligent live to go by, we naturally expect ET to look (and think) like us.  He suggests we widen our horizons and think about the possibilities of intelligence in a broader perspective.  Another comment in the current issue of Wired got me thinking about this.  Links in the Web have some similarities to brain synapses - the more links there are to a page or site, the "stronger" the connection.  This is the basis for Google's search algorithm (and we know what junk that can retrieve).  However, there are some features that are coming to the Web that might change that.  First is ontology-based Web 2.0 where retrieval might be orders of magnitude better (assuming Web 2.0 actually arrives). 

    At the moment, I'd put the Web's intelligence at the level of, say, a primitive worm - though it lacks a worm's motivation to eat and procreate.  Perhaps if we consider ourselves as part of that intelligence some kind of motivation could be inferred.  The Web, then, would be a symbiotic organism existing as a hive-mind with us as the providers of sustenance and procreation. 

    The Web lacks other features of higher intelligence as well.  For example, we have a memory mechanism that allows us to recall past events and envision the future (this is the same mechanism for both functions).  We have sensors that can see and interpret light, sound, and other features of our environment.  The Web has only a rudimentary ability to see and hear - say like a frog, which can sense movement and track changes in a scene.  Well, maybe the Web isn't as good as a frog - back to the worm.  However, give Google and the universities a chance and we'll have features on the web that can interpret pictures.  With an ontology and speech recognition perhaps we'll have speech understanding.  Here, then, would be a couple of sensors that could operate in cyberspace, at least, and real-space as well. 

    The Web is evolving.  SkyNet is nigh.
    Rate this comment: 12345
    • Re: The Future is Intelligence
      Shiladie on 06/23/2008 at 12:10 PM
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      Interesting extrapolation in that article, I'm of the camp hoping it does develop it's own intelligence, hehe.
      anyways, it is interesting to see the different known faces of the industry speaking out to what they believe will come of the future.  It will definitely be an interesting next 10 years for the community of the internet.
      Rate this comment: 12345
  • Danger ahead
    aquiles on 06/23/2008 at 3:05 PM
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    Stallman is absolutely right, vendor lock-in could become an unimaginable nightmare as people upload their data onto servers and there's nothing that protects them from any misuse of their data or even to the kidnapping of it from providers. Just think about this scenario: "Thank you for using our service. Starting today we'll begin charging $200-a-month per account. If you wish to access your data again click here and have your credit card ready."

    The Web as a platform is a great idea but beginning from the AMP stack and all the way into the programs and scripts that generate the Web services that power the Web as a platform, everything must be open and free.

    Beyond that, users should always be able to recover their data from any server at will and wipe it out too.
    Rate this comment: 12345
  • Web OS, Giant data graph, openness
    vinaymodi on 07/17/2008 at 11:17 AM
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    I read the views of great technology thinkers here. Without considering myself into that category, I would also like to say something as I see the Internet world evolving: In next 5 to 10 years, we may see cloud computing coming up more effectively and democratization of services by creating technology platforms for people to create their own applications. We may see the emergence of Web OS by the same cloud computing companies and research institutes. This can be visualized and compared with the best practices in off line businesses: keeping the inventory with somebody else and focusing on the core business and reducing cost (keep your data and processing part with somebody else and focus on delivering the services at lower cost).

    Semantic Web will be taken more seriously and will be understood much better by ordinary web developers and therefore, data will be connected in intra and inter cloud computing system. Linked open data will become the choice of many more web developers and in fact the corporates and Government departments. A much better connection and understanding of Web OS, Cloud computing, and Linked open data will evolve. Voice based services will be taking major leap, connecting to services through voice over mobile will become easy and reality. Several innovative applications will emerge in this field and will take technology to deeper parts of the world where people are illiterate or have language barriers. Voice enabled browsers will replace the current browsers. Sites like Wikipedia will be taken as the topic/subject dictionary.

    Regards,
    Vinay Modi
    www.voicepitara.com
    Rate this comment: 12345
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