My aunt turned 100 years old this past weekend -- an unbelievable milestone. As part of the celebration, my family did some research and re-printed this list of stats from Quipster, which describes what America was like in 1909, the year my aunt was born. I’ve tried to verify the figures through numerous sources and have made some changes.
Here are some of the highlights:
The cost of a postage stamp was two cents.
The average life expectancy of non-white males was 34 years.
Only 8 percent of homes had a telephone.
There were only 8,000 automobiles with 144 miles of paved roads.
The maximum speed limit was 10 mph.
The average wage was 22 cents an hour.
Ninety-five percent of births took place at home.
Ninety percent of all doctors had no college education.
The population of Las Vegas was 30.
Twenty percent of adults couldn’t read or write.
It’s mind-boggling to look back on long snapshots of history. It’s mind-numbing to look forward. In fact, it’s so unfathomable to forecast what the Internet will look like in 100 years that the exercise borders on the absurd. Will there even be an Internet in 2109? If there is, will someone even be able to associate it with what we know today as the Internet?
Here’s my take on what we might expect to see a century from now on the 'Net:
I’ve written that the online and physical worlds will collide, and I see this trend evolving toward microscopic components embedded in humans connected to a vast network of intelligence.
These components will function like organs; access to the information Web will be controlled by thoughts.
Life expectancy of more than 100 years will be the norm. Embedded technology will alert people to health problems, assist in diagnoses, take action to repair damage in bodies, and accelerate healing.
The idea of computers, devices, displays, and communications infrastructure as discrete physical objects will disappear. Individuals will have access to information through some type of ubiquitous “virtual reality display.”
Information access will be instantaneous and accomplished via some type of neurological interaction with an enormous network of interconnected knowledge.
The consumption of information will occur through a type of simulated reality with visual and tactile sensors and olfactory inputs as well.
Everything that ever happens to an individual will be recorded and stored in massive data repositories that can be easily and instantaneously searched, viewed, and shared.
In short, the Internet as we know it will be unrecognizable 100 years from today, although the basic concept of computers talking to each other will remain. The biggest difference is that the Internet will be vastly more intelligent and useful than it is today. The source of that intelligence will come, not only from static stored information, but from real-time interactions among connected humans and analytics that make possible things we haven’t even imagined.
Perhaps some of us will even be around to try it.
— David Vellante spent 15 years at IDC and is a founder of The Wikibon Project. He can be reached on Twitter at @dvellante.
Internet decline is in procession- 4 billion people worldwide now have access to the Web.
2020-2030
2). Web 4.0 is transforming the Web landscape
2030-2040
3). Pc proccessing power is now eqiuvalent to ALL HUMAN BRAINS ON EARTH. Logging on by thinking: Special googles sent to every user completely eliminating need for keys or mose. Mo
niters are nearly 5 times bigger than the biggest movie screen of today.
2040-2060
4). COMPUTER SCIENCE IS PERFECTED- you are more likely to meet someone in VR then in reality. Face recognition tech now every user knows each other bigger memory space.
2060-2110
5)Proccesing power equal to A BILLION EARTH's WORTH OF AI BRAINS- more AI beings than humans
2110-2200
No more pure homo-sapiens: Non Biological Humans now becoming intimately merged with machines
2200-4000
AI is now every being: Planet-Sized computers: only 0.0001% of beings objecting and using Web terroism At least one major colony around Saturn is devestated.
4000-10000
Every being is now digital virtual VR Life Spans 5000+
10000-10000000
Andromeda's and Milky Way's intelligent population now exists as holograms.
Internet decline is in procession- 4 billion people worldwide now have access to the Web.
2020-2030
2). Web 4.0 is transforming the Web landscape
2030-2040
3). Pc proccessing power is now eqiuvalent to ALL HUMAN BRAINS ON EARTH. Logging on by thinking: Special googles sent to every user completely eliminating need for keys or mose. Mo
niters are nearly 5 times bigger than the biggest movie screen of today.
2040-2060
4). COMPUTER SCIENCE IS PERFECTED- you are more likely to meet someone in VR then in reality. Face recognition tech now every user knows each other bigger memory space.
2060-2110
5)Proccesing power equal to A BILLION EARTH's WORTH OF AI BRAINS- more AI beings than humans
2110-2200
No more pure homo-sapiens: Non Biological Humans now becoming intimately merged with machines
2200-4000
AI is now every being: Planet-Sized computers: only 0.0001% of beings objecting and using Web terroism At least one major colony around Saturn is devestated.
4000-10000
Every being is now digital virtual VR Life Spans 5000+
10000-10000000
Andromeda's and Milky Way's intelligent population now exists as holograms.
Internet decline is in procession- 4 billion people worldwide now have access to the Web.
2020-2030
2). Web 4.0 is transforming the Web landscape
2030-2040
3). Pc proccessing power is now eqiuvalent to ALL HUMAN BRAINS ON EARTH. Logging on by thinking: Special googles sent to every user completely eliminating need for keys or mose. Mo
niters are nearly 5 times bigger than the biggest movie screen of today.
2040-2060
4). COMPUTER SCIENCE IS PERFECTED- you are more likely to meet someone in VR then in reality. Face recognition tech now every user knows each other bigger memory space.
2060-2110
5)Proccesing power equal to A BILLION EARTH's WORTH OF AI BRAINS- more AI beings than humans
2110-2200
No more pure homo-sapiens: Non Biological Humans now becoming intimately merged with machines
2200-4000
AI is now every being: Planet-Sized computers: only 0.0001% of beings objecting and using Web terroism At least one major colony around Saturn is devestated.
4000-10000
Every being is now digital virtual VR Life Spans 5000+
10000-10000000
Andromeda's and Milky Way's intelligent population now exists as holograms.
fear, leadership, sanity and technology... and wars! many of them. When Africa ends up with all the resources of the World, there will be lots of people fighting for it.
I agree, Taimur. It's already a fact that n some European countries Internet access is already available free in public places. Mobile Internet for laptops and netbooks is becoming more and more popular, which could be the first step for making real a free and available service for everybody, everywhere.
It's truly amazing to think how all that has changed in 100 "short" years. What INCREDIBLE leaps forward. It is honeslty hard to imagine what things will look like in regards to the internet based on the radical changes with the first 100 :-)
Perhaps the '100 years from now' idea might seem a bit speculative and doubtful, there are things that, we can more confidently say, are likely to happen in the next 10 years.
Some of these related to the internet might be:
In almost all developed countries and in most of the developing countries, internet access will be completely free and will be available everywhere. Be it with the help of ad-based wi-fi networks or broadcasted via gsm towrs, it would be everywhere and free.
Most digital devices and equipments such as digital cameras, printers and mp3/mp4 players will have wi-fi connectivity and will allow data to be sent to and received from the internet.
Websites will no longer be confined to the fixed set of domain suffixes that we currently have. There would be a much flexible system for web addresses. Also, the "http://www" prefix will also no longer be there.
Of course there are other countless developments which, we can imagine, shall take place. Please comment on what do you think about the above.
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I had the opportunity recently to meet with Jeff Kubacki the CIO of Kroll, a global risk management consulting firm and a unit of Marsh & McLennan Companies with more than 50 offices worldwide. Kubacki has been the CIO of Kroll for about three years and seems to have a good process for aligning IT strategy with business priorities.
At Twitter’s Chirp developer conference last week, the company confirmed that Twitter has more than 100 million registered users, 300,000 new users per day, and 180 million unique users per month. So I guess it’s inevitable that Twitter would finally start to “grow up.”
The Twittersphere is buzzing with rumors that Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO) is considering shelling out $100 million for Foursquare, the hot startup du jour that offers location-based services.
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An email from Ukraine teaches us that perhaps those who complain about the Internet just haven’t figured out how to spam people’s inboxes with requests for pens and balloons… or something.
Hospitals get instrumented and data flows like blood through veins, transforming the delivery and quality of healthcare. Here’s a quick look from HIMSS, the biggest healthcare IT show on the block.
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There's a public-policy war on copyright that nobody is winning, and inconsistencies in viewpoint and interpretation seem to be multiplying. We need to step back and think our policies over again, or we risk having a strategy that fails everyone.
Ultraviolet is an industry-wide attempt to standardize video content delivery across multiple platforms. Apart from the fact that it’s based in the cloud, relies on the DRM system, and isn’t backed by Apple… it sounds great!
The FCC's Sixth Broadband Report has a hidden secret. But here’s a hint: The regulatory body plans to regulate broadband as a telecommunications service.
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