A brand new internet?

Within the next decade or so we could see the development of a brand new internet which could change the way we use the web forever.

The internet has brought us many amazing things, online shopping, dating, and a plethora of other facets which have made our lives a whole lot easier. But it has also brought the world many negative creations; identity fraud, spam, child pornography and online predators. Now experts are saying we need to start all over again with a completely new internet in order to eradicate these problems. However other experts are worried that developing a completely new prototype which can deal with the negative aspects of the current internet may end up not being able to do the things the old model could do perfectly well. Do we really want to go back to the place we were forty years ago?

Experts throughout the world are working on new concepts for the internet including ‘mesh networks’ in which many computers will share one connection. This will make the internet faster and safer as there will only be one pipeline instead of many parallel ones, making the internet harder to hack in to. The Global Environment for Network Innovations (Geni) in America has put forward a £175 million proposal for a new model which is supported by the National Science Foundation, and the Future and Internet Research (Fire) programme undetaken by the European Union has a project in the pipeline estimated to cost around £27 million. All these developments aim to make the internet a better place to be, with less online crime and harassment. These developments are set to be available within the next ten to fifteen years, and for the people who receive the 93% of emails which are spam, or have been affected by internet fraud which cost the country over £400m last year, these changes can’t come fast enough.

Source:
Guardian