Dobrowolski, Tom: On the Future of the Internet
The Institute of Information Science and Book Warsaw University

Abstract

Enormous success of the Internet has caused that the access to the computer network is treated as a standard of civilisation. But this doesn't yet forejudge a future of the Internet. Growing costs of maintaining can cause in future degeneration of its global services. The Internet will never be absolutely safe, too. It is a price of an openness to be paid. However, it stops further development of an electronic market and handling of finances. Bankruptcies of many portals are connected with reduced profits from advertising. It causes a growing significance of state's allocations for the Internet. The future of the Internet depends on participating services. Optionally, the big Internet might be divided into private virtual networks.

Writing about an Internet's future has something of a magic on its own. Before I switch on my imagination, though - which is expected from me - let try to define basic principles of the Internet, hoping, that it follows its own logic and that some processes once started are not to be stopped, ever. Although, the Internet in question is an intelligent beast, which reluctantly reveals its secrets and takes a liking in looking at its reflections in false mirrors. This changeability of the Internet shows better than anything else features of the modern civilisation, which got rid of the stiff corset of information control - so typical for the civilisation of print and the beginning of mass-media. A change appeared to be a real kingdom of information. An invasion of electronic media is supported by a conviction that the kind of changes they induce, is a revolutionary one. As the idea of the progress has lost quite a bit of its seducing powers, it hides behind the Internet now, regardless that the thing is not freed from paradoxes, too.

The Internet's future, as it is outlined now, radically breaks with our previous fantasies about it, or - so to speak - our dreams of a world without limits. It turned out, that the Internet has been a replica of our real life to much greater degree than we wish to: having its own heaven and hell, with ruthless crackers , and having its appropriate norms of behaviour - sometimes executed with brutality. Even in this virtual world we are above all social animals.

The Internet is based on standards, or appropriately defined and explained technical rules of its functioning. The Internet's standards are social properties: they are tested and modified in public. This social aspect of the Internet was one of the factors of its tremendous success, as we practically deal with a net, which is neither controlled, nor ruled by anybody, which have neither centralised authorities, nor an owner, and offers only limited and post factum applied restrictions against those, who break its rules. So, the basic principles of the Internet are openness and hospitality. The future of it depends to much larger extend on continuity of those values then on a development of technology. The outstanding, worldly success of the Internet has made its name become a synonymous of the international network, and the utopia called informative society takes form of a transaction carried through an intercontinental network.

Off course, the openness of the Internet has its disadvantages. The problems of safety are the Internet's Achilles heel. Our privacy and our data are constantly endangered. The hackers breaks reveal weakness of protection systems. The Internet will never be absolutely safe. It is a price of an openness to be paid. However, it stops further development of an electronic trade and handling of finances. The protection of data from electronic stealing is costly and needs new investments again and again. All that puts up the prices of electronic trade and only in a long span of a time it will be an alternative for the traditional selling. Therefore lot of shops still maintain wait-and-see policy, i.e. adds up an offer of an electronic shopping not withholding the traditional sales.

Enormous propaganda success of the Internet has caused that the access to the computer web is treated as a standard of civilisation. The online searching became a basis for seeking information. But this doesn't yet forejudge a future of the Internet. It already starts to be too bit, too complex and too slow. There always be a temptation to divide it into parts, be it a separation of fast broadband networks for the privileged ones. It will ease joining together private virtual nets, which use its own, dedicated programming and the direct access to vast archives, search engines and subject indices. So, the networks don't have to be universal ones. A sign of this possible direction can be a development of extranets. Dedicated nets can be built parallelly to a big Internet. So, the future of the Internet in the same shape as the present one, is not guaranteed. Well, to its credit speaks the fact that it always has been something more than the technology. It is also, and perhaps most of all, a social phenomenon linked to democratised access to information.

The Internet can be treated as a technological forecast of an informative society. And there is some optimism in the very fact that our technocratic society cannot express itself in no other way but using an old pattern called utopia, well known from the past. Off course, the most interesting thing is to find out, if beyond the society, which we call informative, there is no camouflaged capitalism. Our doubts about it are absolutely justified as the vitality of capitalism is amazing - yet 70 years ago, or in other words, during the years of great depression, hardly ever one could bet a cent for its future. The strength of the capitalism is based on its ability to use economic behaviours, called market economy, which is something natural in the western world. Hence, nothing surprising in the argument, that an electronic trade, meaning a market, is going to be decisive for a future of the Internet - on the contrary, it is one of the most matured and probable hypothesis.

Indeed, the online services and bank networks first and then the commercial success of personal computers were foretelling success of cybernetic media, but the dynamic of the Internet's growth went beyond all expectations. We refer to a phenomenon, which took off just a while ago: it was introduced by charge-free distribution of Mosaic browsers (1993). Well, all necessary technology, which stood beyond that success, has functioned already before, so it would be justly to trace back a history of the Internet to ARPANET; as a matter of fact, the Internet, in a form known today, owes the most to an invention called World Wide Web. This particular network, whose synonymous is WWW became the story of a great modern narrative in Lyotardesque sense of the word. It has been accompanied by yet another great event: peaceful fall of the Berlin Wall, or so to speak, a real end of the Second World War. Only the coinciding of the two events explains real carnival, which conquested the media, when all of a sudden everything become possible, and the cyber-hyper-reality appeared as if spelled by some great magician. No surprise then, that at the end of the magical decade of the 90-ies, which without hesitation can be called an decade of the Internet, the best selling book turned out to be novels about little wizard, Harry Potter.

Fascinated by the phenomenon of the system World Wide Web, whose acronym is a synonym of the Internet, we tend to forget, that the Web was born as a result of quite long evolution of the Internet implements. Their inventors knew from the very beginning, that the most typical feature of an information presented inside a network is a facility of its distribution. On this very factor were based previously unknown forms of communication, such as discussion lists and Usenet news. When this first fascination of the facility of distribution of the electronic information had passed away, everybody's eyes were focused on data presentation proper for this medium. After experiences with e-mail's archives and discussion lists, which were difficult to manage, it became also known, that data presentation must be accompanied by a simple mechanism of their search. The Internet tools were complex by the very definition, as they were to combine different platforms and operational systems.

In the 90-ties the Internet opened its first global informative services. The first was Archi followed by WAIS and Gopher and finally the World Wide Web. Clients of those services can share the line with numerous servers - no matter where they are situated. If the network transmission goes well, the user has an impression, that all servers involved are working as a single local system, very complex but easy to use. Thus, a virtual world of the Web consists of an efficient network and well constructed browser.

The World Wide Web has caused a revolution in a distribution system of an information. In traditional systems, based on printing, the channels of distribution are narrow and they depend so much on local specific. An offer of the titles of books and magazines depends first of all on the editor's offer and richness of local libraries. The mass media, i.e. radio and television put an end to the limits of narrow channels of distribution of information, but give its users only an illusion of a choice. Now, an information becomes widely accessible , but the choice depends on the people of media. The Internet's electronic distribution of information has wide channel of distribution of a global range. Its tools - especially World Wide Web system - use multimedia technology available in the computer world. The Web becomes colourful, graphic, animated and interactive. It is as multimedial as television, although without its own means of expression, which would integrate all the components.

An invention of the WWW got a large support from the computer industry. Its obsession was to promote a personal computer and make it as popular as the television set. It was believed that the Web was going to conquer commercial market, or even replace a television. But the things didn't go that way - yet in an early phase of its development the Web became an Internet, and the Internet a Web, or universal information space, which we all own. The computer mechanism, which really conquered commercial market turned out to be a cell phone instead of the PC. A telecommunication has won the race with an information. Somewhere deep inside we are still nomads; even when we live a settled life we worship all these things, which make a journey easier - a car, cell phone and a credit card. So, understandably, the most exciting personal computer is a portable laptop. Its example shows clearly, where is the source of the mistake made by the computer industry. They focused on manufacturing expensive and too complicated products. Their goods were designated for offices and administration instead of a mass consumer. Well, what a lack of imagination! We do not need a single, universal computer unit, which would serve all our needs - as it would be, by its very nature, complex and costly. We are accustomed to everyday use of lots of things, which serve various, simple purposes.

Because of the importance of the system WWW for the future of the Internet, quite a lot on that theme has been said in papers of the W3 Consortium (www.w3.org). We owe to this organisation preservation of the Web's open character. In spite of incredible growth it still marks a universal informative space. As it turned out, an invention of Tim Berners Lee had a great developing potential. Its main advantage was harmonic combination of simplicity of an interface with complexity of its functions. The Web from the very beginning kept log files concerning its users and allowed the access to CGI. Some information about preferences of the internauts also unveil links to net resources, which can be seen on pages of the WWW. More and more often these information are being used by search engines. Huge advantage gained by Google over his rivals comes out of his attitude towards links. He puts on the top of the hierarchy those documents, which have a largest number of links, being thus, considered the most important by the Internet society. Slightly different mechanism has been used by Alexis' service, which finds out the most popular pages after considering the log files.

Another example of exploitation of the openness and universality of the Web are its meta-services. To answer questions they use search engines, subject indices, other meta-services!, encyclopaedia as well as dictionaries. Due to multi-faceted answers to queries a further quest becomes easier. A functioning of such services wouldn't be possible if the Internet/Web wasn't hospitable. An everyday great competition of popularity of the pages causes constant impact on the results of our search. As it appears, our informative needs are quite typical - they bear signs of social character.

A threat to an independence of search engines, the flag-ships of the Internet's fleet, has been created by growing costs of their maintenance. For this reason they are combined with portals and try to earn a living on their services: Google collects fees for quick up-dating the pages, and GoTo - for placing high in the ranks. From this, one can draw conclusion, that growing costs of maintaining the Internet as commonly accessible informative space, can cause in future degradation of its services. So, it is endangered not only by changing of policy of the big players (AOL, Microsoft), but also by the culture of free access.

In a popular understanding an informative society means simply total computerisation. It has been based on an equipment, which is costly, both to produce and to maintain. It already affected society. A consolidation process of big enterprises - possible due to expensive new technology - begins to change the market of labour. The Internet stands for a symbol of new technology. Alas, a level of its complexity grows and simple reserves of increasment are about to end. The Internet begins to slow down - no revolution can last forever. To provide the whole society an access to fast broadband network, or to materialise a concept of informative highways, needs enormous investments, and those are beyond reach, if there are no chances for a quick profits. As for now, economically speaking, usefulness of a quick replacement of the telephones by the videophones, or traditionally printed books and newspapers by electronic stuff and replacing video lending facilities with interactive television, is questionable. Quite a long time will have to pass before computer equipment will be as simple to use as other things of everyday use. Our natural need of a direct contact with other people and things cannot be compensated by the virtual world. The largest reserves are now in a local Internet, which (as it makes personal contacts easier) gives a chance to stir up socially suburban areas.

If the Internet hadn't existed, it would have been invented by the media. No other invention had such a positive response in a press, ever. Nothing is going to be the same, like it was before - that's an old leitmotif. Well, as it seems, a widening of a medial space did a good to all media. There is no simple analogy between all that happened after an invention of printing technique (according to influential interpretation of McLuhan), and consequences of an invention of the Internet. A quick replacement the traditional techniques of printing by the electronic ones, forecasted by theoreticians, didn't occur. The internet isn't also as competitive to the old media, as it was expected to be.

Considerations about the Internet are inscribed within a contemporary discourse about the media, so strongly influenced by McLuhan. Alas, the truthfulness of some of his opinions is rather doubtful - one famous assumption in particular: that due to electronic media the world became a global village. The Internet certainly is not this, what - according to McLuhan - it should have been, but on the contrary, a monstrously large information space. Over a billion pages WWW, 200 thousand of discussion lists, 30 thousand Usenet groups, several hundred thousand million internauts - these are numbers wiping out all our imaginary pictures of an idyllic, be it a global one. A majority of the internauts have never heard about each other and neither they seek mutual contacts. Inside the Internet there is nothing like a fair, which would gather all its users together. In this aspect it doesn't remind a television, which gathers huge audience around its great shows.

An invention if Internet is based on principle of skilful combining bits of information with synchronic and asynchronic telecommunication. Thus, the stimulation of a real life in the Internet is a natural thing and it doesn't need any special treatment. The Internet became a part of a contemporary pop culture, whose audience must be obviously a popular one. Because of it, searching online information - previously something exclusive - became something commonly accessible. Is the Internet impact on our popular culture comparable with the one the television imprints? Isn't an act of our submission to the media an evidence of our inclination for a narrative and suspense? As a good, intriguing stories are never too many the medial monster is always hungry. A film feeds on a novel and a television on a film. The Internet is a greater mystery than the old media, as it has a greater facility to imitate the real world, with all its chaos and impredictability. Its flag services are linked to an information search. Incredibly rapid growth of the Internet became a plot of yet another great narrative consumed by mass media. One can find there anything: fortunes gained in one day; the "Big Brother" (Microsoft); jolly good fellows from the Sherwood Forest (Netscape, AOL), holly brotherhoods (Linux programists), influential friends (Al Gore) and, finally, impetuous return of an American myth about ever expanding boarder. An Internet's "golden rush" was won mostly by the media.

The Internet has its own cultural identity. Understandably it is global and universal. The network, even though connected with political globalism is, obviously, a phenomenon of a wider spectrum, more interesting and more democratic, than the latter one. This marriage with globalism now becomes somehow inconvenient for the Internet, as it deprives it of an old innocence. No doubt, the political globalism has been overestimated. It is an ideology of a constant growth - endangered by every noticeable collapse of the world's prosperity. Besides, it has an alternative, i.e. regionalism -fitting much better our tradition. Which of the contemporary versions of a market economy will turn out more efficient, the globalism or regionalism remains still a polemic issue. The Internet fits into any liberal scheme. Its dynamism can be stopped only by authoritarianism (China).

A treatment of the Internet as a tool of globalisation comes out of presumption that the technology of information paves a way to westernization of non western societies. Well, there is no certainty here, whatsoever, only growing doubts instead1. One can also treat the Internet as an attempt to building a universal civilisation. Indeed, its tools are universal: similar services are being developed all over the world, regardless of a local differences. As a matter of fact, things appeared similar, in due time, with a railroad: its stations and cities growing rapidly around its major junctions. The travellers know very well the feeling of temporariness evoked by each visit to a train station and an ease with which we turn back nomads. This is one of the oldest atavisms - a roaming. So, there is nothing surprising, that metaphors describing the Internet are full of allusions to a journey, sailing and references to our hidden yearnings: adventurism and urge for new events and new acquaintances.

To globalism is linked potential political engagement of the Internet. And let us present here my own hypothesis. The greatest social success of the economy market was to create and develop a middle class. Those, who believe that turning this process aback is possible - and without serious social turmoil - are wrong 2. The middle class is a sleeping giant, and it is armed with access to the Internet and the cell phone. May one, who wants to see real political possibilities of the Net, let the giant awaken. So, in future, the middle class may use the Internet for a defence of its interests.

The Internet is an enormous promotion of an English as a language of an information and, thus, it continues the same process, which was started earlier in a computer world. This favours American services, which have at their hands greatest resources. The global services need now enormous financing. Although commercialisation of the Internet grows, its traditional services are still attractive, first of all e-mail, discussion lists and the Usenet's news.

The Internet's pioneers period is over, and not because it already revealed to all of us magical qualities, only because we begin to feel tired with this medial turmoil about it. Besides, limitlessly praised, it fell in hands of new users, who are not the old owners of PC's, simply enthusiastic by the possibility to accede the Net and well enough trained to avoid its traps. For the new computer users the Internet is too vast, too complex and beyond their reach! There is a stress producing period of learning awaiting for them, before they master it.

The Internet shows first signs of loosing its attractiveness - a fabulous boom of the years 1999-2000 couldn't last for ever. First, the Stock Exchange and then the media have found out that daydreamed fantasies cost and ought to be paid for. If the Internet would lose its unpaid services (portals, search engines, e-mail) it could lose a lot of its attractiveness. So, the "real" reality slowly takes advantage over the virtual one and, so, the Net have fallen victim into its own trap: it cannot charge its most popular services as it would slow down its avalanche growth, which has decisive impact on the Stock Exchange value of the Internet's enterprises. This, what happened to commercial services should be warning for us - despite being profitable, they never reached popular customer.

One prestigious loss the Internet has already been through: the conviction that one can only profit on it, died out. Well, one can even go bankrupt and that shows that the new economy is as merciless as an old one. The lesson was learned and even though media go on teaching on limitless possibilities of the Internet, they do it by a momentum and with less conviction.

Things look different about mutual links between media and the Internet - they are strong and natural. Nevertheless the Internet cannot be defined exclusively in terms of a mass media. It consists also services facilitating telecommunication either in forms previously unknown (online chats), or electronic rearrangements of earlier means (e-mail). The main purpose of media is to provide an information and entertainment, although it can be served in different proportions. A television generally majority of its time on the air dedicates to an entertainment, while daily press to an information. Yet there is an invention of the tabloids following outer looks of many Internet's portals. They are addressed to habits of an average customer, hiding beyond its tabloid pages hypertext maps, ready to get unfold.

As about an entertainment, the Internet was a success most of all in two spheres: pornography and music. Popular music couldn't resist the Internet's culture of free access (Napster), which stronger and stronger influences the market. For the first time traditional producers and the media (CD Music) distributors found themselves threatened and started to fight back the Internet. Unlike the earlier forecasts said, the Internet haven't stolen too much of an audience from the television. It became clear, that a mass consumer prefers watching shows, and that interactivity is not so much important for him as it was thought to be. A sequential form still prevails in most television and film narratives. A success of an interactive games haven't caused the other plots borrowing their appearances. Computer games create the world on its own, which has some impact on a popular culture, but hasn't dominated it. Similar thing happens to a virtual reality. Research carried by Reeves & Nass put an end to a conviction, that reliability of a computer simulation depends on the level of technology advancement3. It turned out that a knowledge of social behaviours of its users is of greater importance for the computer simulation than the technology, which supports it.

The technology, though, undoubtedly contributes in creation of myths. One of its great myths is a belief that it can lessen inequalities. The Internet added to the myth new hopes, especially in a sphere of virtual reality A unification was a tool, which diminished differences in industrial societies. The industrialism forcing it above all made an assumption, that the man must adjust himself into technology and not the opposite. A new technology haven't quite got rid of that absurdity, but leastwise it doesn't neglect the user's interface. The largest reserves are located within personalising the informative services. The Internet and cell phones are at their highest, when they face our everyday needs, or so to speak, when they create services being an extension of our real life.

A technology makes the best companion of a propaganda, which as a basic task mixes two orders: the present, which falls into empirical analysis, and the future - which doesn't. A marketing of new technologies is being organised on the same scheme. The media follow the same path, not because of their cynicism, but for the scheme appeals to an audience. We want to get changed, we are afraid of boredom, we believe that the technology is a core of contemporary civilisation. A changing, on the other hand, produces extreme reactions.

It is interesting that the most famous contemporary theories use a metaphor of a "changing enemy". Thus, we deal with an "end of a history", with "decay of a great epic" and with a "death of an author". Although, the assumption about "decay of a great epic", the one about an "end of a history" has opened right away a debate, which easily could be called a historical and the one about the "death of an author" we weren't told by members of the author's family, but by Roland Barthés - an author himself 4. A provocative, as it was conceived, topic of an "end", has shown right away its marketing strength and, at the same time a degree of social weariness of changing - one of the principles of a modern civilisation.

A projecting the future became yet another method of opposing reality. If the reality, which surrounds us is but a regressive projection of a future, or so to speak a future backed out in time, then it loses its significance. A break with the real world implicates disregarding resistance of a matter as one of the most important elements of the future development. Today, a traffic in our cites is slower than thirty years ago. Are we to treat it as anomaly or the correctness of development? We all complain about excess of an information. Did the Internet's development limit that flooding? - Certainly not. Did it make the flooding more bearable? - Again, the answer is, negative. No theory likes paradoxes and they all have problems with using them. So, lets not demand too much, from the Internet utopias. First of all, they have to be medial - otherwise they won't be presented. As they are basically aiming at being fit for the media, cognitively they are restricted to seeking those trends, which easily get idealised.

A conviction, that the hypertext concept is modification of writing and that its development depends most of all on the theory of text, whereas a technology, which serves it, is of lesser importance, leads to general considerations about a nature of media, where a reader and not an author of sparkling hypothesis, is supposed to find examples. A conviction, that the only barrier to our ideas is our imaginative capacity is equally true in the world of the Internet as anywhere else. A technology always forces limits and privileges simple solutions. A success is guaranteed by a synthesis of simplicity of attendance and complexity of services, of which the best example is the World Wide Web. A computer industry stubbornly goes back to its own ideas, among which as a first one counts data base, and nets, artificial intelligence, multimedia and virtual reality only next to it. The computer's real environment has been data transmission and processing.

The system WWW experiences a significant evolution - it becomes hierarchic. Today, it can be hardly imagined without portals, search engines and subject indices. Either we want it, or not, the Internet starts to act like a great universal database. Algorithms of search engines as well as arbitrary decisions of classifiers of subject indices, force their hierarchies onto documents. A huge surplus of WWW pages put an end to free surfing as a basic method of searching. Hypertext documents, theoretically built on free associations, have been submitted to virtual collections. Their symbol being thematic catalogues, used as a great filter of information. Although they contain only one thousandth of the whole Internet's resources of documents, they are among the most popular shop windows. The internauts are far more conservative than it was thought before. They search information in a form of documents and they do not wish them to be in excessive number. In other words, they prefer sequential, instead of associative, way of data collecting.

Most of the WWW servers maintains local character and can count on a limited number of visitors. The Internet's rapid growth doesn't multiply number of its most popular shop windows. Statistically speaking, the Internet is as global, as it is local. Until present none of the media had such proportions. The Internet's strength doesn't depend on its globality, only on the fact, that it splendidly puts together globality and localness. The best search engine of WWW Polish documents is global Google, although none of the Google's programmists ever planed so. An antinomy between a global and a local doesn't exist within the Internet's world - its cyberspace is universal.

The Internet was for many years exclusively an academic network and therefore it picked up a lot of academic habits. An example can be a copy rights. Universities never let the capitalist' version of copy rights to intellectual property be imposed on them and up today every library hardly copes with it. A knowledge within a university is still a property of the whole community, and the custom of quoting sources - a symbol of academic style. All those values were transplanted into the Internet. On them relies so typically cyber-culture of free access to an information and programming - one of the founds of its success. A radical change of this status quo probably isn't possible. A metaphor of an information as a fluid substance, which floods like a big river skipping all obstacles, has turned out correct one. In a post-industrial society an information is one of the main ingredients of our natural environment.

If every producer's dream would be finding a raw material in limitless excess and for the lowest price, then the producer of information have already found his raw material - only he doesn't seem to praise it. Same could be said about consumer, who doesn't complain because of a lack of information only because of its abundance. Even though information became a commercial good lots of its aspects doesn't have the appearance of the other merchandises. A lot of our questions don't have an answer, others get a contradictory ones. When we buy an information, we are not sure, if we are going to find out how to use it. An information is treated as a trading article by the right of social agreement. In spite of this ambivalence, the market is growing at the moment, mainly due to information exchange. A good example of which is mediation of the "Amazon" in a trade of second-hand books and CD records.

Refrences

1. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilization and the Remaking of World Order, New York : Simon & Schuster, c1996.
2. The different point of view is presented by Zygmunt Bauman, Globalization: The Human Consequences, Polity Press; Blackwell Publishers, c1998.
3. Byron Reeves & Clifford Nass: The media equation: how people treat computers, televisions, and new media like real people and places, Stanford, Calif. : CSLI Publications ; New York : Cambridge University Press, c1996.
4. Roland Barthes, S/Z, New York : Hill and Wang, 1974.