The Internet is shaping the future

1. The Internet is shaping the future
Hundreds, if not thousands, of visions of the future of the Internet have been created, the
common denominator being that none of them imagine a world without the Internet.
The Internet can be called the most influential technical achievement of the last half century,
which is connected to almost all areas of social life, offering countless opportunities and also
presenting us with more and more new problems.
One name, billions of users
When talking about the Internet, everything seems clear at first glance, even though it is a
vague phenomenon. Is it just a technical infrastructure, a social and cultural phenomenon, or
rather a system that has acquired the ability to think independently? Most are referring to
services provided by a group of private companies that are used through a variety of
technical devices.
The super network of computer networks has been in use for almost 60 years, if we count
the beginning of the 1960s as the beginning, when the first ideas about connecting
computers arose. The Internet was developed as a computer network between universities.
Research and development was funded by the US Department of Defense, which wanted to
have an extremely reliable network for communication that would work even if a large part of
the communication cables were destroyed during a nuclear attack. To ensure this, the
internet was built as a distributed network with no central control point and peer-to-peer
nodes. When sending information from one node to another, it is divided into packets, with
each packet having a source and destination address. Thus, the information packet can
reach the destination via different paths, and if one of the node's computers falls out of line,
the information moves along another route. When all the packets that make up the message
have arrived,

2. The network ARPANET (named after the initials of the Advanced Research Projects Agency,
which led the work) connecting the mainframe computers of four universities became
operational on September 1, 1969. The network began to grow, the more computers joined
it. Initially, the growth was admittedly relatively slow, for example in 1972 there were 37
computers. By 1985, ARPANET already connected 100 subnets and had tens of thousands
of users. In connection with the end of the Cold War, the ARPANET was opened to everyone
in 1987 and was renamed the Internet. Estonia was connected to the global network
(FIDONET at that time) in 1990, and the first TCP/IP connection between Estonia and the
rest of the world was launched on March 26, 1992.
The Internet therefore represents a network of many relatively independent nodes physically
connected to each other, where information exchange is regulated by standards. A data
exchange protocol is a set of rules that computers use to send and receive data over a
network. Today, the most common internet service is definitely the web (World Wide Web,
WWW). The Web is an open-source information space where documents and other
resources are identified by Internet addresses (URL), linked together by hypertext links, and
are accessible via the Internet. The Web was created by English scientist Tim Berners-Lee
at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) in 1989, when he began connecting
scientific documents located on different computers with hypertext links. In 1990, he created
the first web browser ( browser), with which you can read HTML documents and move
around (navigate) the web. The first website that Berners-Lee created in December 1990
described the entire web creation process .
Initially, the development of network services was mainly done by researchers and
enthusiasts at the so-called grassroots level, inventing e-mail, newsgroups and networked
databases, among other things. The 1990s saw the emergence of the World Wide Web, web
browsers and e-commerce. Only then did the internet suddenly become the center of
advertising, economy, communication and entertainment. The Internet grew exponentially, it
was used for the most diverse and often illegal purposes. Just like any other technology, the
Internet opened up possibilities for new forms of economy, ways of communication and
leisure. Through the Internet, music and movies are shared, thoughts and opinions are
published in blogs and websites, and communication is done through all kinds of web
applications. All these areas of use have in turn shaped technology - the Internet itself.
In January 2021, 4.6 billion people used the internet, which is nearly 60% of the entire
world's population. 1 The largest number of internet users are in China, India and the USA.
More and more, the Internet is used with the help of mobile devices. The Internet connects
users who directly or indirectly shape its face as well. If until now the main users have come
from North America and Europe, the larger user base has already shifted to Asia, Latin

3. America and Africa. Canadian political science professor and philosopher Ronald Deibert
has written: "The Internet may have been born in Silicon Valley or Cambridge,
Massachusetts, but its future lies in the streets of Shanghai, Delhi, and Rio de Janeiro,
where its next billion users will come from." 2
A world without the Internet - it cannot
exist
To imagine the importance of the Internet, it is worth imagining the situation when it no
longer exists. For many, it would mean the collapse of the world. Hundreds, if not thousands,
of visions of the future of the Internet have been created, the common denominator being
that none of them imagine a world without the Internet. The existence of the Internet is taken
for granted and even those who do not use the Internet know of its existence.
The majority use the Internet to facilitate their lives, the minority tries to avoid it, and some
are also indifferent or information about the Internet has not yet reached them. It is clear that
if we cannot imagine life without the Internet, then the Internet is becoming the essence of
our current and possibly future civilization.
Once such a network has already been established, further development takes place based
on it. The development of the Internet is definitely influenced by security issues on the one
hand and the use of the network to earn money on the other. The Internet has become such
a large industry that it affects the entire economy. In developed countries, internet-related
accounts for 5-10% of GDP. 3 Economic and security issues are again closely related. On
the one hand, the reliability of the Internet must be ensured and the security risk reduced
through this, on the other hand, the information found on the Internet is used by state and
private companies and security organizations.
At first glance, perhaps unexpectedly, the Internet and the electronic equipment market are
also affected by the increase in the price of electricity, which accompanies the fight against

4. climate warming. Information processing is expensive in terms of energy. The human brain
accounts for approximately 20-25% of the energy expenditure of the human body, although
the brain makes up only 2% of the body's weight. This energy consumption is constant and
almost does not depend on human activity. 4 Data centers consume 200 terawatt-hours
(TWh) of electricity per year, which is 1% of the world's total energy consumption. The
energy consumption of the entire information and communication sector is ten times greater,
2,000 terawatt-hours per year, and it produces more than 4% of the world's carbon
emissions. For comparison, Eesti Energia produced 10 terawatt-hours of energy in 2020.
5Internet companies are already engaged in energy and material conservation, but such
activities will surely be accelerated even further. 6 For the consumer, this may lead to an
increase in the price of services.
Your, mine, our internet
The perception of the Internet has influenced its formation and development. It is not a case
of technological determinism, but a development dependent on people's decisions, tastes
and perceptions. How we imagine the nature of the Internet will largely determine what the
future of the Internet will look like. The stories we tell today create the reality of tomorrow.
The Internet is imagined as a libertarian utopia without government control, a global friendly
community, a big market. To a large extent, these ideas have been and are fiction, but it is
stories like these that largely determine future action.
The future of the Internet can be approached from many different starting points. It is easiest
to extrapolate from the current and see what developments are planned. These are mainly
technical issues that are centered around concepts such as ubiquitous computing ,
pervasive computing and ambient intelligence . The idea is that everything around us and
partly also inside the body acquires a data status, and the Internet penetrates everywhere,
capturing all space and time. Regardless of where we are and what we are doing, all activity
is connected to invisible computers. Such computing has completely changed the
relationship between man and the environment by adding the aspect of data and algorithms.
Much more exciting, but at the same time more complex, is to think about the future social
and cultural effects of the Internet. The most important impact of the Internet so far is the
transformation of human communication. To the extent that interactivity is part of the nature
of the Internet, mass media has not brought anything very new. However, it has become so
central that soon the main function of the Internet will be mediating communication. Internet
as a part of thinking also becomes a part of communication. Does this mean that
communication will be inextricably linked to the Internet in the future? Technology is getting
closer and closer, forming a single whole with the human body and mind, becoming a part of
our goals and values. There are obvious limits to physical growth, but apparently not to
mental development. Since the internet is in many ways related to the latter, the emerging
digital environment can offer solutions to many problems.

5. Cooperation is fundamental to the human species, and any tool that increases it will spread
unstoppably in society. In this sense, the Internet and, above all, mass media are the natural
environment of a person. Hence the extremely fast spread of this technology. It is not a
satanic plan of technology companies to occupy people's attention and time, but with the
help of technology, you can do what you want to do. Collective action can develop only in
constant mutual communication, and man is undoubtedly the most communicative species.
If we sometimes doubt a person's sanity, his ability to communicate constantly and with great
appetite cannot be doubted. Societies are developing more and more complex at an ever
faster pace. A large part of our lives consists of constant communication, which helps to
maintain complex social structures.
Digital technology is already an integral part of the social environment. Its impact on society
and culture is only beginning to manifest itself. It is not an inevitable development, digital
technology is used because it is useful, opens up new possibilities and offers excitement. As
a social animal, man must be in constant contact with others of his own kind, be they
humans or human-like computer programs. Digital technologies already offer the possibility
of almost constant togetherness. So we inevitably have to deal with the effects they cause
as well.
List of bad things: reading, cinema,
telephone, television and internet
Many dangers are associated with the Internet. Of course, they primarily threaten children
and teenagers, but this has also been claimed for other forms of communication, and these
concerns are by no means new. For example, in 19th century France, the great interest in
reading among young men was considered very worrying, as it was seen as a threat to
masculinity and was treated as a threat to the state. Reading could ruin a young person's
life, leave him unemployed, turn him into an anarchist, a criminal or a sexual pervert. As the
spread of books and the rise of interest in reading coincided with the lost Prussian War
(1870) and social crisis, reading was blamed for the country's lost pride and general decline.
Such a position was very widespread at that time. 7 So an activity that we consider highly
commendable was then considered downright dangerous.
It may seem strange, but phones were also once considered a big threat, and we are not
talking about 5G mobile phones at all. After the invention of the telephone by Alexander
Graham Bell in 1876, it was initially considered more of a toy. The more the telephone
communication spread, the more suspicions arose. It was feared that outsiders would
eavesdrop on conversations. It was also not at all impossible if parallel lines were used or if

6. telephone operators happened to be curious. Also, the voices coming from the phone were
supposed to drive you crazy or make you deaf. 8
The Child Welfare Committee operated at the League of Nations (1919–1946) created after
the First World War. This committee published a report in 1928 discussing the effects of the
cinema on the health and morals of children. Films were found to be clearly harmful to
children's thinking and morals and that "they are one of the main causes of crime among
children". 9
As can be seen from the above, the harmful effects of technology are considered particularly
dangerous for children and adolescents. The reason for this is again one of the basic
principles of culture and human development. When a person is born, he does not have a
ready-made culture, but he also does not take it over in its entirety from the environment into
which he finds himself. Acquiring culture also means shaping it in interaction with human
development. That is why childhood and adolescence are the stage where culture changes
the most. As a person grows and develops, a culture is also created, which grows and
develops in the same way as a person's biological body and nervous system. In short,
children are preparing to live in a different world than their parents, and it is no wonder that
the parents think this new world is strange, more morally corrupt or even doomed.
Adaptation to the digital ecosystem is also currently taking place, in which the internet forms
a central part, besides the digital world, humanity must also adapt to climate change and the
COVID epidemic. But there is nothing new in all this. As long as man has lived on Earth, he
has had to adapt to environmental changes caused by both natural factors and man himself.
Relationships between groups of people cause the greatest challenges. New technical
inventions with their new possibilities significantly develop the existing world. Life on Earth is
not easy for any species, including humans. From this perspective, the Internet almost
seems like a biological mutation that increases humanity's chances of survival.
We cope well with the Internet, it is much more problematic to find what we don't know about
yet. One thing is clear: the internet is not forever, one day it won't be anymore. Companies
that develop the Internet will disappear, services and their users will disappear. What comes
after the Internet - that is the question.
1 https://www.statista.com/statistics/617136/digital-population-worldwide
2 Ronald Deibert, Black code: inside the battle for cyberspace. McClelland & Stewart,
3 Christopher Hooton, Measuring The US Internet Sector: 2019.
https://internetassociation.org

7. 4 Michael W. Richardson, How Much Energy Does the Brain Use?, 2019.
https://www.brainfacts.org
Marcus E. Raichle, Debra A. Gusnard, Appraising the brain's energy budget. - Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2002, 99, 16, pp.
10237-10239.
5 Eesti Energia is leading Estonia's energy revolution, EE press release 2021.
6 Nicola Jones, How to stop data centers from gobbling up the world's electricity. – Nature
12. IX 2018. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06610-y
9 Report of the League of Nations Child Welfare Committee, 1928.
https://warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/archives_online/exhibitions/film/child_welfare