If Moore’s Law continues, within 25 years a computer could equal the processing power of the human brain; 25 years after that, it could equal the total processing power of all the human brains on Earth. In the meantime, over a billion people (17.5% of the world) are connected to the Internet, the digital gap is beginning to close, and orders for the $100 MIT wireless laptop (XO 1) are coming in from developing countries—making the One Laptop per Child dream a step closer to reality and stimulating related efforts in Macedonia, Venezuela, and India. The Internet is moving from a system to find and read pages to users contributing and interacting with multimedia. YouTube sold for $1.65 billion just 21 months after it was founded; businesses are building offices in Second Life and other cyber worlds that compete with conventional reality for the attention of millions around the world; and Wikipedia is becoming a global collective intelligence. Most countries are creating e-government systems. The Internet will also support very low-cost nanotech sensors, cameras, and transceivers that are being put in buildings and other objects for marketing, security, and environmental management. Some suggest that a new Internet may have to be created to eliminate growing problems due to overwhelming new demand on the existing system. An additional billion users are expected by 2011.
There are 70 million blogs, and 120,000 more are added each day. Search engines now retrieve multimedia material, satellite imagery, and multiple languages with translation options. People are beginning to manage more of their data and software applications on the Web, as they did only on their personal computers previously, hence eliminating worries about software updates or file backups, but adding data privacy issues.
The Internet is already one of the most powerful forces for globalization, democratization, economic growth, and education in history, and now a planetary collective intelligence is emerging. The Web will become more intelligent, interconnecting different software, understanding terms in different contexts, and seeming more like a partner than a servant. Cyberspace is providing a global framework of data, images, and ideas, transcending national, linguistic, religious, and other boundaries and allowing the free exchange of opinions, thoughts, and aspirations. We already see countless thousands of far-flung beneficial projects proceeding around the world, unhampered by limitations of distance and time that would have made them impossible two decades ago.
E-commerce is helping to close the rich-poor gap. One billion mobile phones were shipped in 2006 and it is estimated that there will be 3 billion in use by the end of 2007. The iPhone and related devices are blurring the distinctions among phones, computers, iPods, and televisions. On-line business in China increased 50% in 2006 to $127.5 billion; at the other end of the economic spectrum, a Kinshasa entrepreneur is making $100 a month from three public cell phones.
These benefits do bring many complex problems. Gartner estimates U.S. users lose $2.8 billion from the theft of personal data (“phishing”). Spam’s primacy as a menace is declining as cyber crime becomes a thriving international business whose targets are large companies and massive data theft. On-line rogue pharmacies offer illegal or counterfeit drugs, and the Web is now the major recruitment and training tool for violent extremists. No economic model satisfactory to all players has been devised for a world in which users freely interchange valuable intellectual properties like musical recordings. Broadband carriers are fighting the concept of “net neutrality,” which would prevent them from charging on the basis of user or content type. Social networking sites provide a bonanza for sexual predators. The architecture of the Net itself has come under criticism for being outdated and highly insecure. All these difficulties need to be solved by applying to them the Web’s own capabilities for global “collaboratories,” embodying worldwide collective intelligence and rapid and flexible project management. Massive investments in educational software and multilanguage voice recognition and synthesis will be necessary for the poor majority. We should invent incentives to provide training for all, use tele-volunteers to help poorer regions, and improve hardware and software barriers to attacks and security breaches.
Challenge 6 will have been addressed seriously when Internet access and basic tele-education are free and available universally and when basic tele-medicine is commonplace everywhere.
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