Steve Spengler :: Blog :: X Internet...the truth is out there

Read an article from T.H.E. Journal the other day on something called the 'X Internet.' The article was entitled the 'X Files' so it naturally caught my attention. Anyway, the focus of the article was on an Internet that far reaches what our Internet does today. Some refer to it as the 'far reaching Internet' or the 'pervasive Internet' or the 'embedded networking.' Whatever we call the Internet (let's face it...we're really talking about the Web), we all agree that it won't look like it looks now in a few years. I managed to follow the article out to Forrester Research (www.forrester.com) and found a little bluf from George F. Colony, Chairman of the Board and CEO, Forrester. He says:

"X Internet offers several important advantages over the Web: 1) It rides Moore's Law -- the wide availability of cheap, powerful, low real-estate processing; 2) it leverages ever dear bandwidth -- once the connection is made, a small number of bits will be exchanged, unlike the Web where lots of pages are shuttled out to the client; and 3) X Internet will be far more peer-to-peer -- unlike the server-centric Web."

Right now we're used to going places on the Web...navigate from Web server to Web server. Bandwidth becomes a huge issue so there's still a group of haves and have-nots. What the X Internet model suggests is that instead of the Web evolving (much like television over the last 20 some years) slowly and developing into a multi-level mish mash of conglomerates running the thing, it'll be maintained as part of one rather large peer-to-peer network. I find this extremely interesting because as I sit and watch television via the Internet these days, I don't think that the large conglomerates of the world see this coming. I'm sure if you speak to NBC, they'll tell you that eventually it will evolve into a communications structure and system much like network television. They're going to be left behind. I don't see this at all. What I do see are the innovators out there who are throwing content onto machines like YouTube, TeacherTube, etc. I find it extremely difficult to see the Web as a network television model.

So what I'm thinking is that in 2-3 years, the Web won't look anything like it does today. You and I...the people of the Web...will be ones controlling what's out there. Web pages will be gone. VR will be authentic, real, online worlds that people will visit to do whatever it is they do. We will learn, create, and share content/knowledge like we've never done before. That article in T.H.E. Journal suggests that the Web will be filled with services (and not the technical server side service things) that individuals will be able to actually participate and control.

Whatever the future of the Web holds...I know that none of us are prepared for it. How could we? As an educator, I see our students as really those who will receive this torch. There's no way that we can teach them about what the future is going to hold but we can prepare them to think in ways that will assist them in planning for the future...whatever it hold.

Steve