β Dear, yesterday I received a letter from Google Amur. He recommends that I divorce you and marry another man. According to the analysis from my and your bracelet "Amorous", the history of visiting sites, correspondence in instant messengers, our compatibility dropped below thirty-one percent. This means that each of us receives positive emotions from our marriage less than the required minimum.
And who will be your new husband? - in the voice of a man, unexpectedly, even for him, one could catch notes of jealousy.
The woman silently handed him her phone.
- So β¦. Annual income 230 thousand dollars, lives in Oklahoma. Have you already seen him?
- No, dear. I decided to call him after talking with you. What are you going to say?
- It's up to you.
- Well, you know. Google is never wrong. Plus a 15% annual tax rebate for you and me. Ten positive points in our social statuses. It's a good deal, a good deal. Our marriage is already 12 years old and no one else will offer us a better price for it.
βOf course, dear. This is a good optionβ¦
Of course, this is not yet reality. It is fantastic. But a very likely fantasy. The trend of ever-increasing influence of the Internet on a person is already visible even to the blind and deaf.
Manipulation of public consciousness in order to increase sales of certain goods and even elect the right president of the country (!) Has already become a REALITY! Electronic document management, online shopping, dating through the virtual world, this is no longer even a reality, but everyday life, no less familiar than Friday prayers for Muslims and Sunday going to church for Christians. Literally another step or two, five to ten years, and we ourselves, without noticing it, will be completely subordinate to the Network, shrouded in it to the very top.
Do you want such a future? I agree, at first it will be very comfortable. But this is the comfort of a frog in a vat of water on a fire. At first, it's cool, but then there is no strength to jump out - and not boil.
If the trend towards the total filling of our lives with the Internet continues, then with good reason it will be possible to say: "Who owns the Internet, he owns the world." Who really owns the Internet? Or do you think that the virtual world is ownerless, that is, it belongs to everyone? I'm sure you're not that naive.
The Internet also belongs to everyone, just as Antarctica belongs to everyone. Although a Papuan from Guinea, Bissau can absolutely freely come there. But in fact, the sixth continent belongs to several countries that can afford to spend round sums to maintain their stations there.
So who owns the Internet, how much does it cost to own it, and is it possible to break the trend of subordinating people to the Web? To answer this question, let's first understand what the Internet actually is.
βThese are billions of computers connected by wired or wireless links with routers, modems and special software,β you say. Particularly advanced can remember about HTTP, IPv4 and IP addresses. It is, but not quite. The devil, as you know, is in the details.
The Internet is not a network, but a network of networks. That is, there are thousands, hundreds of thousands of local networks, each of which unites a certain group of computers that exchange information using one or more routers. Each such local network has a host - provider - Internet Service Provider (ISP). Next, the routers are interconnected using telephone cables, special Internet cables or wireless communication. The result is the Internet.
A provider is an official legal entity, a company, which means that it is subject to the authorities of the country in which it operates. Therefore, by decision of the authorities, you can easily be disconnected from the Internet or denied access to a certain part of the information that is on the Web. It can be both specific sites and a global shutdown. For example, during various social upheavals in Iraq, Iran, Libya, etc. the authorities ordered either to completely turn off the Internet, or block access to social networks.
The centralization of the modern Internet makes it easy to block the channel for obtaining information not only by the decision of the authorities. There is also a physical cable break, DDoS attacks or some kind of failure. We all remember how Facebook, other social networks, and other Internet resources periodically freeze.
The second disadvantage is that the provider can collect information about your activities on the Internet. After all, it controls the router, which knows exactly which IP you accessed and from which IP the data packet came to you. And no VPN or Tor will help. They can disguise you from an outside observer, but not the provider. He will know exactly where the information came from and what exactly came from.
There are other equally significant shortcomings. By and large, the modern Internet is a reflection of modern society, with its centers of power, powerful monopolies and, in general, a disenfranchised people, in which the illusion of its significance is maintained with the help of the media. So it is on the Internet. There are providers who obey the authorities. There are giant Internet companies that have huge intellectual and financial resources, thanks to which they have practically monopolized all content and successfully manipulate public opinion, imposing their interests on us. And there are ordinary users, in essence, who do not have any rights.
Therefore, now the Internet is increasingly turning from a communication tool and a convenient repository of information into a commercial tool for making a profit and into a tool for managing society.
Evolution or revolution?
The shortcomings of the modern Internet are so obvious that, of course, many people have a strong desire to somehow change this situation. For example, none other than the father of the Internet, Tim Berners-Lee, who perfectly understands the flaws of his brainchild, with a group of like-minded people are developing the Solid project - the creation of a decentralized network in order to destroy the monopoly of large Internet companies such as Google or Facebook. By decentralization, the scientist understands giving the user full control over all his data in any services. If the project is successfully implemented, the Internet giants will not be able to collect a huge amount of information, analyze it using special algorithms, and then influence both the society as a whole and each of us individually.
This is the path, so to speak, evolutionary. And he, in our opinion, has a serious flaw. For information, we will still have to turn to the same Internet giants. And if so, it's hard to imagine how you can not give them some of the information about yourself.
In addition, Solid does not completely solve the problem of blocking the receipt of information by the decision of the authorities, DDoS attacks, etc.
So it can go not in an evolutionary, but in a revolutionary way? What?
Create a special operating system (OS) in which all users have equal rights. That is, each of us will decide what information about himself he will transfer to the Network and to whom, and each of us can receive or give this or that information. That is, to be both a consumer and a provider. In other words, the content is not stored centrally, but is scattered among users. The search for the necessary information is carried out using a hash table, in fact, a directory that records what information is stored on which computer. Use blockchain technology to store and distribute critical information.
To identify each user in order to exclude any fraud, it is proposed to create a digital profile of a person. But this is not just an analogue of a digital signature. This is the foundation on which the user will build his architecture of interaction with the Internet. Based on this digital profile, the OS will select the content you need - entertainment, information, commercial. That is, not Google, spying on you and analyzing information about you, will impose films, news, goods on you, but you yourself indicate what you want to see on your computer. This will exclude modern realities, which can be described by the phrase "I got married without me."
Peer-to-peer networks or P2P networks can serve as a prototype of the future Internet. In particular, the famous BitTorrent. In this case, the principle of searching and obtaining the necessary information changes radically. Now everything is based on the position that a certain file (content) is located on a certain server. In the proposed future of the Internet, a hash sum of such and such a file that exists somewhere on the network. The hash sum is that unique file identifier calculated using a certain algorithm.
In this case, if the file is stored on several computers, the lack of communication with one of them will not prevent you from getting information. At the same time, to search for it, you do not turn to Google or another search engine. So, do not give him any information about yourself.
The security of transmitted information increases many times over. In the new OS, the same e-mail can be sent directly to the recipient's computer, bypassing the servers of mail services that like to spy on the content. According to this scheme, the popular messengers Viber and Telegram are currently working.
The proposed principle of building the Internet easily solves the problem of its scaling. Now, doubling users results in the same increase in load on the various servers that store the content. Hence the failures and slow data transfer. With the new system for building the Internet, the load on a single computer will increase slightly, and may even fall, because all computers will also be servers.
New principle of data storage
Above, we wrote about the unreliability of the Internet due to the fact that content is stored on a very limited number of computers (compared to their total number). They are subject to DDoS attacks, become the target of hackers, and simply drop out of the Web due to technical problems.
The new OS, which implies a decentralized Internet, will significantly increase the reliability of data receipt. The following data storage concept is proposed:
- user computers;
- independent data stores.
Data transfer will be carried out using protocols based on blockchain technology. Such a concept:
- will allow you to securely protect and transfer information;
- provide high speed data transfer;
- will enable a quick launch of any project that requires a large amount of computing (distributed computing);
- establish a simple organization of its own database.
How to win?
It is naive to believe that the Internet giants will just give away their multibillion-dollar profits. Then what to do?
First, you need to create an OS. You can follow the path of Tim Berners-Lee, who created a startup for his Solid project, which employs volunteer programmers. In our opinion, at first, the future OS should be focused on mobile devices, that is, Internet connections should be made using wireless networks, which will minimize the number of providers. And then the main Internet protocol will be BGP (border gateway protocol) - a dynamic routing protocol.
The new OS should be installed on top of the existing ones (Android or iOS), that is, it will be an add-on over the Internet (overlay network).
Of course, this OS, as well as the content that will be exchanged by network members, must be free.
Yes, Internet monopolies are strong, both financially and intellectually. But they will not be able to resist the joint actions of billions of people. The logic of the development of human society, including the Internet, as part of it, which dictates the increase in the freedom of individuals, the increase in confidentiality and security, cannot be interrupted even by powerful corporations. The same logic dictates the creation of a new, interstellar operating system. The stars in the universe are independent of each other. They emit light and absorb matter. And, at the same time, they are interconnected by a single gravitational field. You give interstellar OS!
- Honey, I just got some funny letter from Google. They offer us a divorce. Like, they counted and decided that we were not suitable for each other. Even the candidacy of a new husband was chosen for me.
- They can't calm down. Throw this piece of paper into spam.
I'd rather block Google. Tired of his advertising and all sorts of intrusive offers.
- Could be so. I already forgot the last time I opened it.
Source: habr.com