Google has a vision of what the ‘Next Internet’ will be and how the Internet could change for everyone around the world. Google sees a world in which about 70% of the people are connected to not just a broadband connection, but a gigbyte network for both computers and hand held devices alike. A world in which even our washing machines are connected and controlled by an Internet service of some type.
On the Google blog site it also states the following:
The Internet will transform the video medium as well. From its largely programmed, scheduled and streamed delivery today, video will become an interactive medium in which the choice of content and advertising will be under consumer control. Product placement will become an opportunity for viewers to click on items of interest in the field of view to learn more about them including but not limited to commercial information. Hyperlinks will associate the racing scene in Star Wars I with the chariot race in Ben Hur. Conventional videoconferencing will be augmented by remotely controlled robots with an ability to move around, focus cameras and microphones, and perhaps even directly interact with the local environment under user control.
The Internet will also become more closely integrated with other parts of our daily lives, and it will change them accordingly. Power distribution grids, for example, will become a part of the Internet’s information universe. We will be able to track and manage electrical power demand and our automobiles will participate in the generation as well as the consumption of electricity. By sharing information through the Internet about energy-consuming and energy-producing devices and systems, we will be able to make them more efficient.
But will these visions of the future really come true?
I recall my Dad telling me about the 1939 Worlds Fair in which a world was envisioned in which cars no longer used roadways, but instead flew through the air with no traffic congestion. Some 70 years later we still sit in traffic, crawling to work on our crowded roadways.
With this in mind, will the Internet really change the way we live?
Comments welcome.
No…