This article was taken from the March 2014 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by <span class="s1">subscribing online.
Vint Cerf is a co-chair of Campus Party, a cofounder of the Internet Society and known as one of the "fathers of the internet".
Here he explains how the internet of things will incorporate utilities, appliances and Star Trek.
The greatest surprise for me, in terms of public engagement in the use of the internet and especially the web, was the massive influx of content and the rapidly growing population of self-taught webmasters. Most content creators were motivated by the satisfaction that the information they shared was useful to someone. Of course, the avalanche of content flowing into the internet led to the need for ways to discover information of interest, which led to the invention of search tools.
What might we anticipate over the next 25 years? The internet of things -- in which most appliances at home, at work, in cars and on or even in our persons will be capable of communicating through the internet -- is well on its way. Wireless communication will advance, with new technologies allowing much more efficient sharing of frequencies by multiple transceivers. Cloud computing will continue to evolve and standards for inter-cloud interaction will be developed. New storage technologies are already on the horizon with lifetimes measured in exa years (over a billion billion).
Artificially intelligent machines will augment reality for us.
Appliances like Google Glass or its descendants will become partners in ordinary discourse, making real the universal translators and tricorders of Star Trek. Smart cities will emerge.
The smart power grid will extend to all resources including water and gas. Direct neural interaction with smart devices and the internet will become the norm. Cochlear implants will be joined by ocular and spinal implants.
10 more experts comment in our Web at 25 series...
Privacy, security and safety will become serious concerns and international agreements will be developed to cope with abuses.
Social conventions will emerge, just as they did for technologies in the past. The political impact will continue to be felt in the next quarter century, but perhaps there will be more attention paid to critical evaluation of internet content, as people learn to think more analytically about what they see and hear. Online polling may become more common if security and authenticity can be assured.
Entertainment will become increasingly interactive and dynamic.
Crowdsourced stories, films, songs and art will be more feasible as the internet spreads around the world and to all sectors of society. Our values will be challenged by broad exposure to a wide range of ideas unless, of course, our filtering and searching and notification tools confine us to an echo chamber of parochial thinking.
There is no reason to think that the next quarter of a century will be any less amazing than the last.
More from Wired's Web at 25 series
- Tim Berners-Lee: the past, present and future
- Marc Andreessen: embed the internet
- Jimmy Wales: the developing world
- Mikko Hypponen: government surveillance
- Joi Ito: 'it's a living, evolving organism'
- Nigel Shadbolt: augmented intelligence
- Keren Elazari: biocomputing mechanisms
- Nick D'Aloisio: natural language
- Ze Frank: 8 things to expect next
- Arianna Huffington: the net grows up
- 8 internet memes you forgot you shared
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
