I first mention the effect that the web would have on commerce. Although the dot-com bubble did kill off some of the more ridiculous e-commerce startups, and one area that I specifically mentioned (food sales) has never really taken off to the extent that other areas have, for the most part my prediction remains true: you can get anything on the internet now. If you wanted, you could do all of your shopping over the web and never have to leave your house. This benefits not only large, established companies, but anybody who has gotten their start selling homemade gadgets on eBay.

The internet has also let to a great deal of time-saving. We still don’t have the widespread use of fridges that signal when you are running low on food, but other time savers are all over the place. I used to write many checks a month to pay my various bills, then mail the payment (and pay for a stamp). These days, I pay everything but my bus pass with a few clicks of the mouse: even my rent, which I pay by check, is not a check written and mailed by me, but one written and mailed by ING Direct. I can’t say that I’ve put all this free time to excellent use, but I’m certainly thankful for the convenience.

The problem with finding stuff on the internet is still very salient, but it has improved. We still don’t have search engines that can do plain text searches well (The overhyped and underdelivering WolframAlpha, which is supposed to do these things, choked on my search for “Find the top 10 stocks for the period from 11/6/98 to 4/20/99″). We have, however, come a long way from the time of AltaVista and Webcrawler in terms of finding good, relevant information more easily. Google is responsible for much of that, and Google can even do simple calculations and conversions natively. Figuring out plain English searching is something that will be solved.

Socially, everything that I predicted has pretty much come to pass. Many people have huge online social presences on the web, and increasing numbers of people have never met in real life and yet have very fulfilling relationships that exist in computer-space. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, blogs, online discussion forums, sites like Reddit and Digg…all of these sites allow people who are widely separated geographically but share common interests to come together and have real communities. At the same time, it’s dehumanizing: spamming, trolling, arguing, and conning are a lot easier to do when you aren’t doing it to somebody’s face, just a screen name. Rarely do people go up to strangers, yell “UR GAY”, and run away, but sadly, this kind of behaviour is common in the web. On balance, though, the positives definitely outweigh the negatives.

Cybersecurity, and especially the use of the web for warfare, is something that is very important but seems to be ignored by the vast majority of people. Sure, we worry about identity theft and fraud and other, more personal, web-based attacks, but the web as a tool of warfare hasn’t yet come to prominence. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist: just today there are reports that North Korea was behind several high-profile denial-of-service attacks in July. The Department of Homeland Security takes this threat seriously, and is looking for experts to help defend our country’s infrastructure. In future conflicts, especially conflicts between countries of similar technical ability, I think this will be a very big issue.

The web has undoubtedly had a huge democratizing effect on media. Not only blogs, but sites like YouTube and even Craigslist make it pretty easy for user-generated content to get spread far and wide for free, away from the old-fashioned “gatekeepers” that used to dictate what was written, said, seen, and heard. Traditional media outlets still haven’t fully determined how to use the internet effectively. The MPAA and RIAA fight losing battles against piracy: when I wrote that email, Napster was just a few months away, and to this day file sharing continues mainly unabated. Newspapers are rapidly losing circulation and haven’t yet found a way to monetize their websites. Network television continue its decline. VoIP services like Vonage give you free long-distance not only in the U.S., but to many foreign countries as well. Those who grow up only having cell phones, not landlines, will never think about having to dial 1 before a long-distance number, let alone what a long-distance calling card is.

There wasn’t really anything that I was completely off-base about. Yes, the Y2K bug was completely overblown, and technology hasn’t quite advanced as far as it could have, but it hasn’t stopped advancing. The one bit that may have been most wrong, though, turned out to be anything but: you may argue that my last paragraph, about the usefulness of my pager, would be horribly outdated now that we have netbooks, iPhones, and other connected devices, but the joke’s on you: not only do I have a pager for work, but I have the very same model pager I had when I wrote that ten years ago. Funny, and sad.

• Current Mood: Tired

I’m sure you could find many an article on how the Internet is affecting out culture, but most articles of that kind are pretty much worthless in my opinion.  As far as I see it, the Internet is just now moving into the area where it is a help rather than an expensive, flashy toy.  The biggest reason for this change is the amount of shopping that can be done through the web now.  You can get anything now, literally.  The last bastion of non-Internet sales has always been food, but there are finally a few start-up companies that are selling groceries over the web (if I remember correctly, Austin has such a company).  There is not much left.  You don’t need to leave your computer now to survive.

As a positive, this can lead to more free time available for people.  We are not far from refrigerators scanning their contents to see what you are running low on, and then using the Internet to order more food.  We already have electronic bills and money-transfers, so you don’t need to bother writing out checks every month for your phone, electricity, and what have you.  Obviously, these are time savers, but what are people doing with the extra time?  Just look at how many adult web sites there are out there.

One problem with the internet is the dearth of usable information.  Sure, everything is on there somewhere, but how do you find it?  It’s not easy, though that problem is just about solved as well.  For years, companies have been working on "robots" that scan the Internet for things that you want.  They are almost here, and in some cases some rudimentary alerts exist: every time some McGovern thing goes up on EBay, for example, I am notified.  Soon, you will be able to type in plain English something like "Find the top 10 stocks for the period from 11/6/98 to 4/2099" and you will have the information a short while later.  If you tried to do that search yourself, you probably wouldn’t know where to start.

Socially, there are already changes.  You have these people who have relationships only over the web.  There are psychological effects of the Internet, like the finding that people who spend hours a day suffer more from depression.  At least in the foreseeable future I doubt that the Internet will abolish all human contact, but it is dehumanizing in a way.  It is a bit easier to avoid people and still get things accomplished with the Internet, and when identities are no more than what you type in a chat room, it is not a normal thing.  Many people now have identities on the web, such as web pages and chat names and all that jazz.  Lord knows I do.  But still, it is not making a huge difference, for who visits my web page?  Do I ever visit the pages of others?  Maybe in the future this will become a bigger deal.

I think the Internet as a weapon of war is the most interesting.  The CIA just said that by 2015 Iraq and North Korea will have long-distance missiles capable of hitting the U.S., and China will have them before then.  Which is all good and scary, but I think that the guerilla wars of the future will be fought electronically.  When so much commerce and business is conducted online, it is easy for a hacker to screw things up in a big way.  An enemy may not bomb the U.S.; they may just drain our bank accounts.  I think we will see the potential for such warfare next year with the Y2K bug.  If things can get pretty screwed up by that, then it proves anybody can screw things up badly.

I don’t know what to say about media control.  It will always be determined by supply and demand, and I think that the Internet will do a lot to reverse the conglomeration process.  For example, in the music industry, no longer do you have to have a record label to sell your music.  Just record it, put it in MP3 format and slap it on the web.  More cable TV channels means more small channels with limited programming appeal can reach a large audience and become profitable, if not sensible.  We may be close to free long-distance.  Sure, the big networks are doing weird things, but who cares anymore?  Their share has decreased from like 90% thirty years ago to a lot less today.

Hey, I like technology.  My work pager, this 2.5 cubic inch piece of plastic, gives me national and world headlines every hour, sports scores, weather forecasts, and text messages that anybody can send me from my web page or our security monitor web page.  Sounds fun to me.

• Current Mood: Headache
• Currently Listening To: "Foxy Lady", Jimi Hendrix