Internet problems of the future. What awaits us?
It is more and more obvious that the Internet will become in the history of mankind the same fateful phenomenon as the printing press. In 1450, ten years after Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, even the most astute observers hardly began to grasp what changes this machine would entail. Over time, the printing press made possible the wide dissemination of nationalism, since communities of people speaking the same language were able to communicate with each other independently, in a common language, which became the basis for a sense of community. The printing press snatched the information from the clinging hands of churches and kings, allowing people to read the Bible on their own - and sharply reject its reading, which the authorities used to strengthen their power. Communication technologies radically modify our brain, turning us into a different biological species.
Neuroscientist Susan Greenfield says that the culture of information technology reshapes the structure of our central nervous system, shortens the period during which we are able to concentrate, and depletes our imagination. Suppose we have access to the Library of Alexandria, but we do not look through anything but the site map and pictures. This, I fear sometimes, is a venomous spider living in the World Wide Web.
Recently, an experiment was conducted: children from Michigan were provided with computers that they could put in their bedrooms, agreeing in return for scientists to track how these machines are used. It turned out that the more time children spent on the Internet, the better their reading and assessment skills at school became. (Watching television has the opposite effect - the more children watch TV, the worse they read and learn). However, on average, the time spent reading books is reduced — people prefer the Internet. Thus, if you read something on the Internet — basically, of course, nonsense — then it’s easier for you to read paper books, but at the same time you don’t want to read them. Come and figure it out, plus it or minus ...
Almost unnoticed threat hung over the future of the Internet. After a few years, the Internet may stop due to the huge number of users who want to watch videos online. The rapidly growing number of visitors to sites such as YouTube and iPlayer BBC leads to a sharp increase in the load on communication channels. Experts warn that if in the near future to upgrade the infrastructure of the network does not spend billions of dollars, the speed of the Internet can seriously slow down, and the collapse of the network will be a disaster for the economy, writes The Daily Telegraph.
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Co-chairman of the American industrial group Alliance for Internet Innovation Larry Irving, who lobbies to improve the Internet, said: “The streets of major cities such as New York or London are designed for a certain flow of traffic. At certain times you can drive quite freely, and sometimes you get stuck in traffic. London does not stop, but the process of movement slows down dramatically. Roughly the same thing happens with the Internet. ”
According to Irving, the Internet communication channels were originally designed only for the transmission of audio information. Transferring video files can lead to severe overload. The expert claims that Internet traffic in the United States is increasing annually by 50%, while the possibility of growth is limited to 40%. Britain is experiencing the same problems.
Over the past year in Britain, the demand for video hosting has sharply increased. Hitwise, a company monitoring traffic on the Internet, registered a 178% increase in visitors to such sites. Last year, the volume of traffic of only one YouTube site was equal to the volume of traffic that users of the entire Internet sent in 2000.
Large corporations that provide broadband access services own the material “highways” of the Internet: wires, circuits, and switches, which travel through the pages of their websites, before being downloaded to your computer. These corporations are lobbying in the US and Europe for the idea of ​​turning these highways into a two-lane freeway, where the speed of access will be determined by the amount you pay.
If their proposal is accepted, the situation will become as follows: large corporations such as Nike and Microsoft will pay at the highest rate and spread their information over the speed lane - users will see their pages instantly. If you are just an unknown blogger, make a standard payment and get stuck in traffic jams — updating or viewing your page will take much longer. This is called "multi-tier" Internet. His appearance can not be allowed. Internet is so beautiful that access to it is so cheap: we all connect and have fun on equal terms. As part of the new model, we will no longer compete with each other on a fairly open market of ideas; on the contrary, all disputes will be even more biased in favor of the rich.
In a situation where the Internet is fundamentally reworking our minds and souls - exactly how, we are just starting to understand - we must fight for equal access to it for everyone. Otherwise, in the World of Tomorrow everyone will be driven by corporations, and inequality will be built right into the cables that connect us all to each other.
Many years have passed since the invention of the Internet. Can we already catch the changes that he brings with him? Just as the printing press allowed national communities to rally, the Internet allows multinational groups of people to perceive themselves as a single organism. It is strange that the first group that realized this cutting-edge potential, turned out to be those who yearn for the harsh morality that prevailed in the deserts in the 7th century - radical Islamists.
In the information war, the Internet has become the most accessible and effective battlefield. Every day, videos of extremist content appear on the network. This has become a serious threat to society, and interethnic and inter-religious conflicts are intensifying. Governments are beginning to prevent the spread of extremism in the network. Here are just some methods?
Indonesia blocked the access of its Internet users to the site YouTube, the same fate befell MySpace. The reason for the ban - the placement of videos of anti-Islamic nature, according to CNN.
We are talking about the Dutch film “Fitna” (“Smoot”), filmed by the ultra-right politician Heert Wilders. Hosted on March 27 from the Internet, the 17-minute film demonstrates, in particular, documentary shots of the terrorist acts committed in September 2001 in New York and shows the victims of the terrorist attacks.
These shots are accompanied by quotations from the holy book of Muslims with translation into English and Dutch. At the same time, phrases from the Qur'an are quoted, which contain appeals to “burn“ infidels ”in fire, cut off their heads”. At the same time, the film demonstrates the speeches of leaders of extremist organizations who declare that Islam should dominate the world.
Vice-Speaker of the Federation Council Alexander Torshin proposed to develop common criteria on the basis of which extremist websites can be considered terrorist. It is reported by ITAR-TASS.
The senator, who heads the temporary commissions of the Federation Council to investigate the terrorist attack in Beslan and on the situation in the North Caucasus, also considers it necessary to establish methods for identifying such sites, international and national monitoring of their activities. These measures "will create a mechanism for closing such sites," Torshin told reporters.
The Vice-Speaker stressed the need for “immediate measures to counter information terrorism and anti-terrorism outreach activities”.
According to Torshin, 59 non-governmental organizations supporting Chechen separatists and terrorists are now operating abroad, up to hundreds of anti-Russian propaganda actions are held in Europe each year. The senator noted that “even official structures in a number of western countries use the information obtained from such shares to assess the situation in the regions of the Russian Federation or even use them as a pretext for further propaganda actions”.
The information space is “the arena of confrontation between ideologies and very powerful weapons, so that the unlimited freedom of disseminating information can be equated to the free trade in arms or potent dangerous substances,” Torshin said.
He believes that the role of the Internet as a "means of propaganda of terror" is increasing. So, according to him, “10 years ago, terrorist organizations supported only 12 sites, and now, according to some estimates, from 5 to 6 thousand, including about 150 Russian-speaking”.
However, “the Internet has not yet been officially recognized by the mass media and does not fall under the law on mass media and, accordingly, under the restrictions imposed on them,” and therefore it is necessary to work out a set of measures at the legislative level aimed at countering terrorism, Torshin is convinced .
According to Sir Tim Berners-Lee , a man who is considered the inventor of the world wide web, the Internet will be very different from the modern virtual space. Bernersu-Lee sees the Internet, where all information, applications and data are inextricably linked and intertwined with each other - everything will work together with everything else and in practice will allow us to live, almost without getting out of the Internet.
IT professionals call this the " semantic network ." At the moment, search engines such as Google are focusing on links and links between sites, rather than analyzing the specific information that is contained on these sites. The semantic network, on the contrary, will focus on the meaning of the information on the page.
Computers will “capture” the context of information, be able to identify and evaluate complex connections between people, geographic points and information, and summarize all of this in order to provide valuable search results and generally facilitate online work.
“The semantic network is not a separate network, but a continuation of the current one,” said Berners-Lee. “Information acquires a well-defined meaning that helps computers and people work better together.”
In connection with this, I want to remind you of the very recent news about the emerging cooperation between Google and the US FBI: “The popular search engine Google has been recruited by US intelligence agencies. According to The Times, structures such as the National Security Agency bought servers that use Google’s search technology to process information gathered through an agent network around the world. ”...
Neuroscientist Susan Greenfield says that the culture of information technology reshapes the structure of our central nervous system, shortens the period during which we are able to concentrate, and depletes our imagination. Suppose we have access to the Library of Alexandria, but we do not look through anything but the site map and pictures. This, I fear sometimes, is a venomous spider living in the World Wide Web.
Recently, an experiment was conducted: children from Michigan were provided with computers that they could put in their bedrooms, agreeing in return for scientists to track how these machines are used. It turned out that the more time children spent on the Internet, the better their reading and assessment skills at school became. (Watching television has the opposite effect - the more children watch TV, the worse they read and learn). However, on average, the time spent reading books is reduced — people prefer the Internet. Thus, if you read something on the Internet — basically, of course, nonsense — then it’s easier for you to read paper books, but at the same time you don’t want to read them. Come and figure it out, plus it or minus ...
Stratification of society
Almost unnoticed threat hung over the future of the Internet. After a few years, the Internet may stop due to the huge number of users who want to watch videos online. The rapidly growing number of visitors to sites such as YouTube and iPlayer BBC leads to a sharp increase in the load on communication channels. Experts warn that if in the near future to upgrade the infrastructure of the network does not spend billions of dollars, the speed of the Internet can seriously slow down, and the collapse of the network will be a disaster for the economy, writes The Daily Telegraph.
')
Co-chairman of the American industrial group Alliance for Internet Innovation Larry Irving, who lobbies to improve the Internet, said: “The streets of major cities such as New York or London are designed for a certain flow of traffic. At certain times you can drive quite freely, and sometimes you get stuck in traffic. London does not stop, but the process of movement slows down dramatically. Roughly the same thing happens with the Internet. ”
According to Irving, the Internet communication channels were originally designed only for the transmission of audio information. Transferring video files can lead to severe overload. The expert claims that Internet traffic in the United States is increasing annually by 50%, while the possibility of growth is limited to 40%. Britain is experiencing the same problems.
Over the past year in Britain, the demand for video hosting has sharply increased. Hitwise, a company monitoring traffic on the Internet, registered a 178% increase in visitors to such sites. Last year, the volume of traffic of only one YouTube site was equal to the volume of traffic that users of the entire Internet sent in 2000.
Large corporations that provide broadband access services own the material “highways” of the Internet: wires, circuits, and switches, which travel through the pages of their websites, before being downloaded to your computer. These corporations are lobbying in the US and Europe for the idea of ​​turning these highways into a two-lane freeway, where the speed of access will be determined by the amount you pay.
If their proposal is accepted, the situation will become as follows: large corporations such as Nike and Microsoft will pay at the highest rate and spread their information over the speed lane - users will see their pages instantly. If you are just an unknown blogger, make a standard payment and get stuck in traffic jams — updating or viewing your page will take much longer. This is called "multi-tier" Internet. His appearance can not be allowed. Internet is so beautiful that access to it is so cheap: we all connect and have fun on equal terms. As part of the new model, we will no longer compete with each other on a fairly open market of ideas; on the contrary, all disputes will be even more biased in favor of the rich.
In a situation where the Internet is fundamentally reworking our minds and souls - exactly how, we are just starting to understand - we must fight for equal access to it for everyone. Otherwise, in the World of Tomorrow everyone will be driven by corporations, and inequality will be built right into the cables that connect us all to each other.
Many years have passed since the invention of the Internet. Can we already catch the changes that he brings with him? Just as the printing press allowed national communities to rally, the Internet allows multinational groups of people to perceive themselves as a single organism. It is strange that the first group that realized this cutting-edge potential, turned out to be those who yearn for the harsh morality that prevailed in the deserts in the 7th century - radical Islamists.
Indonesia has blocked access to YouTube and MySpace due to Fitna.
In the information war, the Internet has become the most accessible and effective battlefield. Every day, videos of extremist content appear on the network. This has become a serious threat to society, and interethnic and inter-religious conflicts are intensifying. Governments are beginning to prevent the spread of extremism in the network. Here are just some methods?
Indonesia blocked the access of its Internet users to the site YouTube, the same fate befell MySpace. The reason for the ban - the placement of videos of anti-Islamic nature, according to CNN.
We are talking about the Dutch film “Fitna” (“Smoot”), filmed by the ultra-right politician Heert Wilders. Hosted on March 27 from the Internet, the 17-minute film demonstrates, in particular, documentary shots of the terrorist acts committed in September 2001 in New York and shows the victims of the terrorist attacks.
These shots are accompanied by quotations from the holy book of Muslims with translation into English and Dutch. At the same time, phrases from the Qur'an are quoted, which contain appeals to “burn“ infidels ”in fire, cut off their heads”. At the same time, the film demonstrates the speeches of leaders of extremist organizations who declare that Islam should dominate the world.
And how are things with us?
Vice-Speaker of the Federation Council Alexander Torshin proposed to develop common criteria on the basis of which extremist websites can be considered terrorist. It is reported by ITAR-TASS.
The senator, who heads the temporary commissions of the Federation Council to investigate the terrorist attack in Beslan and on the situation in the North Caucasus, also considers it necessary to establish methods for identifying such sites, international and national monitoring of their activities. These measures "will create a mechanism for closing such sites," Torshin told reporters.
The Vice-Speaker stressed the need for “immediate measures to counter information terrorism and anti-terrorism outreach activities”.
According to Torshin, 59 non-governmental organizations supporting Chechen separatists and terrorists are now operating abroad, up to hundreds of anti-Russian propaganda actions are held in Europe each year. The senator noted that “even official structures in a number of western countries use the information obtained from such shares to assess the situation in the regions of the Russian Federation or even use them as a pretext for further propaganda actions”.
The information space is “the arena of confrontation between ideologies and very powerful weapons, so that the unlimited freedom of disseminating information can be equated to the free trade in arms or potent dangerous substances,” Torshin said.
He believes that the role of the Internet as a "means of propaganda of terror" is increasing. So, according to him, “10 years ago, terrorist organizations supported only 12 sites, and now, according to some estimates, from 5 to 6 thousand, including about 150 Russian-speaking”.
However, “the Internet has not yet been officially recognized by the mass media and does not fall under the law on mass media and, accordingly, under the restrictions imposed on them,” and therefore it is necessary to work out a set of measures at the legislative level aimed at countering terrorism, Torshin is convinced .
Under the hood
According to Sir Tim Berners-Lee , a man who is considered the inventor of the world wide web, the Internet will be very different from the modern virtual space. Bernersu-Lee sees the Internet, where all information, applications and data are inextricably linked and intertwined with each other - everything will work together with everything else and in practice will allow us to live, almost without getting out of the Internet.
IT professionals call this the " semantic network ." At the moment, search engines such as Google are focusing on links and links between sites, rather than analyzing the specific information that is contained on these sites. The semantic network, on the contrary, will focus on the meaning of the information on the page.
Computers will “capture” the context of information, be able to identify and evaluate complex connections between people, geographic points and information, and summarize all of this in order to provide valuable search results and generally facilitate online work.
“The semantic network is not a separate network, but a continuation of the current one,” said Berners-Lee. “Information acquires a well-defined meaning that helps computers and people work better together.”
In connection with this, I want to remind you of the very recent news about the emerging cooperation between Google and the US FBI: “The popular search engine Google has been recruited by US intelligence agencies. According to The Times, structures such as the National Security Agency bought servers that use Google’s search technology to process information gathered through an agent network around the world. ”...
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/23222/
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