Towards a Future Internet workshop

Towards a Future Internet: expert workshop

Study background
Carried out for European Commission DG Information Society under SMART programme
Runs Feb. 2009 – Nov. 2010
Study team: Colin Blackman,Ian Brown, Jonathan Cave, Simon Forge,Karmen Guevara,Lara Srivastava,Motohiro Tsuchiya & MalteZiewitz
Advisory panel: Rudolf van der Berg, Erik Bohlin, Jon Crowcroft, Xavier Dalloz, William Drake, Chris Marsden, Ian Miles & Jun Murai

Goals of the study
To explore what a future Internet should be - by researching the possible social, psychological, technological and economic options for its development and their likely socio- economic impacts:
Explore the past - examine prior studies - analyse how the current Internet evolved to date, its main drivers and effects
Define possible future scenarios and assess likely socio-economic impacts - investigate the interrelations between technological, social, psychological and economic trends and developments related to a future Internet, verified using Delphi surveys
Produce a single preferred vision for Europe of a Future Internet, in terms of each of the 4 forces
3

Scenarios
not predictions of the future, but internally consistent stimulants for discussion that take into account the likely social, technical and economic trends identified by environment scan, over 200 expert respondents to our online Delphi survey and our first workshop in Brussels

Smooth Trip - the knowledge-based Internet economy
Internet pervasive across public and private life; a major engine of social progress and economic growth
Online education and retraining critical to a high-value-add European economy with ageing workforce
Work and relationships increasingly conducted remotely. Many services (e.g. healthcare) provided partially online, through collaboration between SMEs
Digital divides narrowed due to focus on usability, lower cost and greater demand-driven innovation

Smooth Trip - the knowledge-based Internet economy
Internet development incremental, in response to commercial and public needs. Clients are mobile with augmented reality, projected UIs and fluid interaction with “things” and environmental sensors
Strong govt. emphasis on consumer protection and privacy increases user trust and online interaction
Some govts. impose restrictions on access in line with legal and cultural norms; some businesses use increased controls to capture greater revenue share. Online user resistance to both strengthens

Going Green - the green Internet economy
Internet is foundation of a sustainable society and an emerging green economy based around monitoring, controlling, adjustment, management, automation and substitution of carbon-intensive activities
ICTs become much more energy-efficient. Virtualised server farms migrate seamlessly between under-utilised renewable energy sources
Mobile platforms (inc. LEO comms), computational linguistics, geospatial technologies and visual analytics become key to disaster response

Going Green - the green Internet economy
Home working becomes norm; telepresence replaces much business travel and some tourism
Social networking tools reduce social divisions within and between nations, and used to build political support for collective action to cope with environmental disasters
Remote regions and developing countries highly connected as the basis for outsourcing of much information work

Commercial Big Brother
Internet replaces broadcast TV, as a largely commercial channel for entertainment, retailing and advertising
High-speed access is built to the home only with govt. subsidy and removal of regulatory constraints, strengthening large ISP dominance
Immersive, interactive video content consumes most user time and 95% of bandwidth. Access is mainly through DRM-heavy proprietary hardware
Merged ISPs/search engines/social networking sites offer walled gardens featuring high-quality access to video content and interactive services. They slowly merge with major entertainment conglomerates, with close links to retailers

Commercial Big Brother
Tacit cooperation between governments and the providers of the new “opiate of the masses”, who block access to politically controversial content. Internet becomes increasingly fragmented and nationalised
Users are intensively profiled to support targeted advertising, with no effective global privacy regulation
Security concerns used to justify lock-down of network, with e-ID requirements severely restricting anonymous speech and data retention laws squeezing user privacy

Emergence of the e-Demos
Power migrates to the people in a user-built ‘Connected Society’. “Prosumers” have a wide choice of net access, easily-programmable devices and tools to build shared secure environments for work and leisure
Strong political demand for “user rights” such as privacy, free expression, transparency, trust, fraud-resistance, consumer protection and fair, honest governance
Much stronger participation in online communities, which build social cohesion and political power of formerly disconnected minority groups

Emergence of the e-Demos
Heavy demand in developing world for low-cost access devices leads to a global market of 10bn+ clients and peer production of many services
Low barriers to entry lead to a global online marketplace of billions of micro-enterprises. Infrastructure operators are regulated as public utilities
Security mechanisms are collaborative rather than controlling
A messy, inefficient and highly diverse society populates the “managed chaos” of the Internet

Goals for today
Compare the different scenarios, in terms of their social and economic impact: which elements from each are the most desirable for a more sustainable (or otherwise better) world?
How will current technological, social and economic trends lead to the different scenarios proposed? What is the impact of different architectural choices (NGN, clean-slate approaches, non-IP, end-to-end principle, openness, embedded security) in enabling the different scenarios?
How will policy options (e.g. network neutrality) impact on the emergence of the different scenarios? What should be the future priorities for ICT research in Internet architectures and infrastructures?

Agenda

http://www.internetfutures.eu	378
http://www.slideshare.net	11
http://www.noeq.net	9
http://mariaelenameneses.com	8
http://enmediostec.blogspot.com	7
http://translate.googleusercontent.com	1
http://voicesfromoxford.org	1

Towards a Future Internet workshop

by Ian Brown on Mar 17, 2010

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Towards a Future Internet workshop — Presentation Transcript