Today we can almost find anything from as simple as how to take a decent sleep to as complex as how to build a satelites. These remarkable progress of information is in debt of the magnificent benefit of the Internet. Internet have developed from just a couple of connected university mainframes into a modern day fast information path. I viewed internet like a huge UNIX cluster machine connected to each other with services each provide. The growth of the internet is not just felt “better be” but its more like “needed to have” regarding of the benefit it resulted for various importance.
Lets look forward to the future and imagine what internet would like in say… 5 years. Referring to the growth rate for the last 25 years since its first developed by ARPA, whats like likely that the internet can be an operating system ? or a Desktop computer? Well.. regardless of the answer, its gonna be really2 nice to imagine.
magine in 5 years, you still own your current 1.7Ghz CPU ( which will already be standardly slow at the time in question ), with 512 MB, Standard graphic card, 40GB HDD, and cable ( or maybe FO ) internet connection. You turn the computer and run your OS ( open source or propietary ) which took like 3 minutes or so. As soon as your computer is idle, you open your Mozilla v7 browser ( hopefully this browser still exists ) or Opera 20 or IE 14, and browse a 2.0 ( maybe 3.0 or 4.0 ) website that provides online mp3 players which was uploaded from your iTunes playlist. While the music plays, you open another website ( probably ajax based ) for online word processor / office suite ( like ms word, powerpoint, excel, etc ), which today is already exists with startling similarity with the common word processor we use ( search for “ajaxWrite” ).
How about image editing, like Adobe Photoshop?? Well.. in case you havent notice that such thing is already exists. Try to Google “picasa” and you’ll see. Well.. what do you know?? Its already started right in front of your eyes. Sorry, i say that like its some kind of conspiracy =)
Actually why do these things could or would happen? If you think about it, by using online applications end users only need their browser to run the apps. They dont need to install anything ( well.. maybe some plugins or something ), they dont need to read the minimun requirements. And the most important thing is, that these methods will dramatically and significantly reduce software piracy since software crackers these days always quote “No Webwares” on their cracked distributed software package. So its a positive side for the end users and the software vendors.
Okay, there’s gotta a down side of this right? On the top of my head, i can think about the security side which always been an issue in the double sided world of the internet. Online security company will work extra hard to provide robust and sophisticated security and intrusion detection systems. And of course the antiVirus company will have to view their work from a whole new direction because ( probably ) similar with a common desktop apps, online apps can be infected by malwares, virus, worms, etc. But of course, the antiVirus guys are very dedicated to their job and we owe them a lot for doing a very nice job.
Here’s one other threat that would most likely be haunting online users ( now and then ), Fraud and Phishing! A simple failure of filtering queries can lead to a fatal result. It needs only on click from a deceived user, and .. well you know what would happen next . So, at the end of all this, internet is still a double sided sword which can provide vast field of benefits, yet still a lot sense of insecurity. As the Jigsaw said in Saw4, ‘you cannot save everyone, they must save themselves’.
Then again 5 years is not that long, dont you think??!
Leave me a comment, and Cheers.
