Guess What's Coming Next
Lots of people have the idea that the internet will be free and open forever. Right now it seems that way, but it’s a little like New York in the settler days versus New York now — it’s inevitable that it’ll get crowded, particularly as industries that once delivered product over one platform (like TV, media, etc.) are all dumped onto the same, single one. Lots of people don’t see the internet this way yet but will soon. New platforms are not created for everybody’s fun in a society — they are created to be communications and information distribution platforms. The web by design is the best ever seen. No other platform delivers multiple types of communications and information in one, is as fault resistant or can be accessed anywhere and by so many devices. You used to buy your newspaper (print), sit down in front of your television (broadcast) and answer your phone (PSTN or mobile network) all over different platforms — in the future, thanks to the internet they will all be over one. It’s hot stuff.
Unfortunately, it’s not us but the platform that ultimately decides what happens when. If more business people looked here versus on the applications/website side, they’d be able to adapt far better. They could see what the users need to be shown how to do things on the internet to move everything along, and develop the right kind of devices. This would make everything down to making money easier. We hold the internet back more than it holds itself by failing to understand this. That’s also why so many are struggling with making money online — ten years ago everybody took the wrong approach and continues mostly to do the same now. Faced with this new thing that just appeared that nobody really understood, people assumed a lot of things that really weren’t true, like that users won’t pay internet based services or content. We’re left to find our way out of a bit of a snarly mess today. In the end, however, the outcome will be as such. We just took the long and somewhat painful way around.
I’m not exactly convinced the future won’t include something like this. A mandatory internet users license probably sounds like it could never happen, but with everybody nice and dependent on a single, sole platform to communicate, receive information, etc. would users really have much choice? Imagine what a nominal registration fee could bring to state and local government, and you can bet cyber warfare - not just cyber crime as we see today - would only potentially drive mandatory registration all the more. Carriers who provide internet access would only benefit to work with the government to tack it onto internet service fees. After all, it might just influence future position regarding issues like net neutrality. The internet is ultimately piped and owned by the carriers — fat chance that there’ll be any upstart telcos who’ll lay down their own internet network to counteract a mandatory registration act over the current internet platform. This baby costs billions and many years to build. Not even Google owns the pipes. Guess what that means: No option. Wow.
