Future Internet Research and Experimentation
- [European Union - ETH-Zurich]
- Overview
The internet has fundamentally transformed every aspect of life, including communication, access to information, business practices, and social interactions. It provides unprecedented global connectivity, enabling people to connect with others across borders, share information instantly, and access vast amounts of knowledge.
However, its impact is complex, with both positive and negative consequences, including concerns about privacy, online harassment, and the spread of misinformation.
It is difficult to quantify how the internet has changed the world. It has transformed business, education, government, healthcare, and even the way we interact with our loved ones—it has become a key driver of social evolution. Changes in social communication are particularly significant. The internet has eliminated all barriers to communication.
The internet has also transformed our perceptions of time, space, and distance. It has created new communities, connecting people from all over the world. Of course, the internet also means that anonymous trolls can spread hate speech on social media, and that overseas bots can post negative and false tweets against politicians and celebrities, inciting anger, resentment, and even violence.
While businesses of all sizes are leveraging the internet to streamline supply chain management and connect customers more closely to their brands, they also have to contend with hackers stealing customer financial information, or competitors and nation-states spreading negative online reviews or using the internet to spy on their product plans or finances. Privacy, or the increasing vulnerability of privacy, has also become an issue because of the internet—or, more accurately, how we use it.
The key internet's impacts:
- Communication: The internet has revolutionized communication by allowing for near-instantaneous communication through email, social media, and video calls, facilitating global connection and breaking down geographical barriers.
- Information Access: The internet has democratized access to information, providing individuals with access to vast libraries of knowledge, news, and resources that were previously limited.
- Business: The internet has transformed business operations, enabling online shopping, e-commerce, and global marketing. It has also created new industries and business models.
- Education: The internet has expanded educational opportunities by enabling online learning and providing access to courses and materials from around the world.
- Healthcare: The internet has improved healthcare access by allowing patients to research health information, communicate with doctors virtually, and access medical records electronically.
- Social Impact: The internet has created new communities and fostered connections between people with shared interests. However, it has also contributed to the spread of misinformation, hate speech, and cyberbullying.
- Privacy Concerns: The increasing use of the internet has raised concerns about privacy, as personal data is collected and shared by companies and online platforms.
- Paths to Our Digital Future
In the digital world, people will be able to use robots and other technologies to perform jobs in the physical world, such as factory operations, construction, logistics, healthcare, and space operations.
Energy and resource consumption brought about by digitalization are increasing, and global production and consumption patterns are also placing a greater burden on the ecosystem. Waves of technological innovation will not automatically translate into sustainable development transformations, but must be closely integrated with sustainable development guidelines and policies.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution has the power to reduce inequality around the world. Doing so depends on empowering everyone – regardless of location, income, age or gender – and requires concerted action and increased cooperation from all players.
Every time we log in, log in or connect a person or device to the digital world, we exponentially drive the next great technological revolution.
More than a decade after the first-generation iPhone® was launched as a "breakthrough Internet communications tool," a new digital world driven by big data, artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), mobile and cloud is set to profoundly impact our future. Transforming the way we live, work and interact.
As the world sprints toward bringing almost everything online—captured, analyzed, and acted upon instantly—we must ensure we are working towards a digital future that benefits everyone.
- The COVID-19 Changed The Way We Internet
Stuck at home during the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19), with movie theaters closed and no restaurants to dine in, Americans have been spending more of their lives online. We are looking to connect and entertain ourselves, but are turning away from our phones.
With the rise of social distancing, we are seeking out new ways to connect, mostly through video chat. We have suddenly become reliant on services that allow us to work and learn from home.
The search for updates on the virus has pushed up readership for local and established newspapers, but not partisan sites. Video games have been gaining while sports have lost out.
The COVID-19 pandemic crisis has demonstrated the importance of internet resilience. Seamless, secure and privacy-preserving connectivity is critical to meeting unprecedented challenges.
- The Digital "Self" and Constant Connectivity
The internet is becoming increasingly personalized and interconnected, tracking our online activities and using this information to target us with advertising and marketing, essentially creating a digital "self" that is more entwined with our daily lives than ever before. This can raise concerns about privacy and potential addiction to online platforms.
The increasing personalization and interconnectedness of the internet, while offering benefits, raise serious concerns about online privacy, the potential for corporate manipulation, and the impact of constant connectivity on our mental well-being and the formation of our digital identities.
Understanding these dynamics and actively engaging in discussions about regulating data practices, promoting digital literacy, and prioritizing user control and agency is crucial for navigating this evolving digital landscape responsibly.
- The internet, through searches, purchases, and social media interactions, constantly monitors our online behaviors, building detailed profiles of our interests, preferences, and habits.
- Data collection methods include: cookies and tracking pixels, monitoring social media interactions, and analyzing online behavioral patterns.
- These practices can be considered part of a broader phenomenon known as "surveillance capitalism," where personal data is harvested and exploited for profit, often without users' full awareness or consent.
2. Targeted advertising:
- Companies utilize this collected data to deliver highly targeted advertisements directly to us based on our individual online profiles.
- This approach is touted for its ability to deliver personalized experiences and make ads more relevant to user preferences.
- However, some users find this targeted advertising intrusive and invasive, leading to privacy concerns and calls for greater transparency in data handling practices.
3. The digital self and constant connectivity:
- Our online activities contribute to building a digital profile of ourselves that companies can access and use to influence their interactions with us.
- Smartphones and tablets, with their constant internet connection, make it difficult to avoid leaving digital traces and disconnect from online surveillance.
- This constant connectivity and the pressure to be always "on" can blur the lines between our work and personal lives, contributing to a digital form of burnout and impacting overall well-being.
4. Potential concerns
- Privacy: The extensive data collection raises concerns about the potential for misuse, unauthorized access, and lack of control over our personal information.
- Corporate Manipulation: The ability to gather and analyze vast amounts of behavioral data enables companies to predict and potentially influence user behavior, raising questions about manipulation and consumer autonomy.
- Mental Health: Constant connectivity, the pressure to maintain an online persona, and social comparison fueled by curated social media feeds can negatively impact mental health, leading to increased anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem.
- Addiction: The design of online platforms, particularly social media, with features like infinite scrolling and personalized notifications, can trigger dopamine-driven reward systems in the brain, contributing to addictive behaviors and difficulties in regulating usage.
- [The Château de Saumur, France]
- The Internet of the Future
What does the digital future mean? In a narrow sense, the term "digital future" refers to all aspects of the emergence and proliferation of digital technologies and the developments they cause. In this sense, the term “digital future” is used to limit the vision of the future to digital aspects.
We are at the beginning of a new era which will be characterized by digitalization and the constant interconnection of everything.
The Internet of the future will be bigger, faster, more secure, and more private. As digital events merge with the virtual and physical worlds, it will also become more immersive. For example, people will be able to:
- Work, shop or meet friends in a three-dimensional version of the internet called the Metaverse
- Using eye implants to view social media messages
- Using a virtual cloud instead of hardware data storage
- Using 3D printing instead of traditional shopping
The Internet will also become omnipresent, omniscient, and almost omnipotent. Everyone in the world will have access to the Internet, and it will benefit everyone and almost everything.
The goal of the next generation of the Internet is, through abstraction and automation, to enable any desired bandwidth spontaneously between any and all participants or data centers.
For this, consistent further development of the existing technologies is required, and additionally, new approaches to the integration of infrastructure, software, and services must be conceived. Efficient data processing is becoming increasingly important – in the future, it is conceivable that analysis will already occur during the transmission process in the network.
- Global Next Generation Internet Initiatives
Future Internet is a general term for research activities on new architectures for the Internet. Next Generation Internet Initiatives are the research activities going on around the world towards developing the current Internet in terms of service and speed and launching a entirely new range of applications which will make use of these new opportunities, bringing wealth and knowledge to the entire world.
The mission of the Next Generation Internet Initiative is to reimagine and redesign the Internet of tomorrow to reflect fundamental human values.
Today, the Internet is the key to almost every social or economic activity. It is a real value creator that reshapes economies and societies. This trend is irreversible, and the Internet's important role in global society and economy will continue to increase.
However, concerns about personal data and transparency remain. People also need better services from the Internet and greater user empowerment to shape their online experiences. It is vital that the next generation of the Internet puts people at the center so that it can realize its full potential for society and the economy.
- Future Internet Architecture
Future Internet Architecture (FIA) is a set of approaches to redesigning the Internet. These approaches can include small incremental steps or a complete redesign. The National Science Foundation (NSF) invites research teams to submit FIA project proposals.
Some examples of future Internet architecture include:
- NEBULA: Based on the assumption that cloud computing will account for a larger portion of Internet application workloads
- Integrated Services (IntServ) and Differentiated Services (DiffServ): Examples of Next-Generation Internet Architecture
Future Internet architecture can address the shortcomings of the current Internet architecture, such as:
- Lack of support for emerging networking paradigms
- Multi-dimensional scalability, including scale, performance, security, functions, and services
The Internet as we know it today is a critical infrastructure consisting of communication services and end-user applications that has transformed every aspect of our lives.
- Internet Fragmentation
Internet fragmentation, also known as splintering, is the fragmentation of the open, globally connected Internet into a collection of isolated networks controlled by governments or corporations. This can happen due to content filtering and censorship.
If the Internet becomes fragmented, access to resources, websites, platforms, and services will depend on who we are and where we are.
But the free flow of information online is now threatened by increasing fragmentation across borders. This fragmentation of the Internet is both a driver and a reflection of the increasing fragmentation of the world order.
The U.S. government’s effort to ban the viral Chinese video app TikTok reflects the reality that the U.S. government’s response to China’s growing influence online has fragmented the global internet. Internet policy and international affairs go hand in hand.
