One Hundred Years of Internet

The Gilbert Center turns ten this year — that’s a hundred in Internet years. That’s something to be proud of — few things last a hundred years, especially in turbulent times.

Michael Gilbert and the Gilbert Center graciously host this blog. I think of Michael as my somewhat eccentric publisher — and true to publisher form — he occasionally tries to slip me a suggestion about something that I might write about. In recognition of this anniversary, Michael asked if I’d be willing to write some sort of “top ten” posting — a riff on the ten years.

Just between you and me, up till now, I’ve managed to pretty much ignore the suggestions — not purposely. [Really] Things just haven’t worked out that way.

But this one was different. It struck a chord. I got thinking about the number ten and the year 1997. I got to thinking about how things have changed in those ten years — the world has changed, politics has changed, much has changed. Looking back even further, many of the forces that have shaped today’s world barely existed twenty years ago. Ten years seems like a long time; twenty seems an eternity.

Back when I did a lot of speaking, I used to warn audiences “everything you know will be worthless in five years.” Damn if that hasn’t turned out to be true. In the last ten years, I’ve had to relearn things at least twice over, maybe more.

Then, at this year’s NTC, an old friend and colleague mentioned that he had heard Ellen Miller, of the Sunlight Foundation, claim me as her original “enabler.” This made be chuckle. I suppose I’m guilty.

In hindsight, that’s kind of fun to think about, since Ellen now runs one of the most innovative Web2.0 sites on the ‘net. Ellen’s now busy using these fancy new technologies to move ideas, people, issues, and thoughts. I can’t, won’t and shouldn’t take credit. But it does make me chuckle just a little bit.

I remember that “enabling” like it was yesterday. I bring this all up because it was ten, maybe twelve, years ago. And, I figured that I might just “re-use” my notes from that introduction as a core for this post. I admit it, I was looking to get off easy, as it were.

Back then, the deal was this: Ellen provided Chinese Thai (I stand corrected!) carry-out and I was to provide a couple of hours of introduction to this strange thing called the World Wide Web. The audience included our mutual friend, Larry Makinson. Then, both Larry and Ellen worked at the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP). They were busy bringing revolutionary transparency to campaign finance. Larry, by the way, is a brilliant fellow and the brains behind much of the campaign finance research done in the last 10 or 20 years. Today, the CRP web site, OpenSecrets.org, is pretty fine damn work. Larry’s now a senior fellow (and a nice fellow too) at the Sunlight Foundation.

I always figured I got the better deal. It was good Chinese Thai food. [This also proves I will work for food.]

Undaunted by the task — and perhaps I should have been — I had put together some notes that I thought not only described the so-called “information super highway” [more like a goat trail back then] but also postulated some of its future impact. In hindsight, I think the themes were spot on.

True to form, I had also come up with a couple of “big” ideas about what the Internet was, and what its impact was going to be. With chopsticks in hand, I laid out a set of concepts and threw in some idle speculation about how it might evolve over time.

The BIG idea was this: The internet was going to be a ubiquitous communications network — connecting everything from toasters to power sub-stations. It was going to smash hierarchies, re-write power relationships, and basically change the dynamics of the game.

But, I figured sagely, in the end, it was still going to be about one-to-one personal interactions, only instead of just one or two people, it was going to be about one-to-one personal interactions between hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of people. The emphasis there is on the personal.

Ever one to use a bad analogy, I likened the “web” itself to a Lava Lamp – something that was fascinating in a weird sort of way – but tended to blind us to the real revolution, the underlying communications network. I thought we’d see the real impact in things that rode on the back of that network; that the web stuff was neat, but the real fun would start when we started shoving other stuff across the network. What the other stuff was, I wasn’t sure. But I was sure that it was going to be something wonderful. The quote I had in my notes was from Arthur C. Clarke. It was from the ’60′s. “We cannot stop the world from being digitized.” I still think I’m right there. It’s not the web, it’s the other stuff.

For the web itself, I postulated three phases, each building on the previous. I called these phases Informational, Transactional, and Interactional. In hindsight, those aren’t bad constructs. “Informational” corresponds to the whole “public face” brochure-type web sites, “Transactional” gets us everything from online book sales to banking to music sites, and “Interactional” gets us into this whole community building stuff. To be honest, I missed the whole “social networking” stuff. As is so often the case, it’s the important things you end up missing. That’s one that kicked me in the ass. Still don’t quite understand what it means.

At the time, the seemingly opposite forces of “market disintermediation” and “market aggregation” seemed poised to change some major equations. I was right — and they’re still at work — If I’d been smart, I would have bought eBay and Amazon, each in its own right an example of disintermediation (Amazon) and market aggregation (eBay).

Mind you, in hindsight, all these concepts are not earth-shattering. Nevertheless, I think they still form the core of some of the changes being wrought in our world, and they still provide a useful framework within which to view the world.

Moreover, simply naming or recognizing these forces has not stopped them. Markets are still being torn asunder. Recently, for example, I was blown away to hear the publisher of the New York Times muse “I really don’t know whether we’ll be printing the Times in five years.” He then followed by saying: “And you know what? I don’t care either.” As I said, the scale and the pace are phenomenal. It’s sometimes hard to reconcile the fact that we seem to be going two directions at once, both disintermediating existing markets and structures, and aggregating new markets from what had previously been too scattered to matter — the so-called long-tail.

That’s what kicked me in the ass — the scale and pace of change. I was way too pessimistic. In this measly ten years, the world has changed more than I imagined. For example, who now can imagine a time without Google, without the ability to look up song lyrics on a whim, to order underwear online, to flirt and cavort with friends and colleagues scattered across the globe. The Lava Lamp is still there – only it’s a real-time, interactive, socially networked lava lamp. And that underlying ubiquitous network has spawned VoIP, revolutionized entertainment, and is turning politics on its head.

Finally to the future: Ten years out —

As I see it, there are five intertwined and interrelated themes that are shaping the future. These themes keep bonking me in the head with the subtlety of a two-by-four. They provide a framework within which I view and try to make some sense of the world. They are the big countervailing forces and contradictory energies that are at work, shaping what will be.

In my crystal ball, the next ten years is all about how these five themes will intersect with our lives, our work, our life, and our loves, and how they will intersect with that ubiquitous, universal communications network we call the Internet. In a nutshell, the five themes are:

• Ownership — Who owns what, and why, and how is it controlled, or not. Is it free, is it open, is it shared? Do I get paid for my ideas, and if so, how?
  
• Identity — How do I preserve that which is me: my name, my time, my eyeballs? How does identity interact with the issues of trust, of ownership, and of privacy?.
  
• Trust — How do I know you’re you? How can I trust you, trust my bank, trust Google? How do I establish trusted relationships for any sort of transactions?
  
• Privacy — How do I preserve my privacy when I want to? How do I keep my identity, and yet participate in a socially networked world?
  
• Community — What is community, what communities – physical and virtual – do I interact with? What binds us together and what doesn’t?
  

These themes blend into one another. There is no clear delineation and I won’t attempt to make one. Identity, trust and privacy, for example, are clearly three sides of a strangely shaped holographic coin. Our identities are under attack — we actually have a crime called “Identity Theft.” I still cringe when I hear people talk of owning “names” and “lists.” My name is mine, and I want it back.

Identity and trust are all about ownership. Ownership is all about ownership. Open source is all about ownership. Intellectual property is all about ownership. Digital Rights Management is all about ownership. We’re busy redefining what it means to own an idea, own a concept, or own your own name.

Simultaneously, our lives are increasingly public, increasingly defined in a public arena, and subject to public viewing. What Google knows about me is frightening. What I willing share with the world — through blogs, listservs, email, and Flickr — is also frightening. But for some reason, I do it willingly. For some reason I trust you. (Then again, my wife doesn’t. She won’t let me put up pictures of her.)

How do I know who you are, how can I trust you? Is my email mine, what about my signature? Who should I trust, and how will I know? Should I trust the Christian singles that want to meet me? How about that fellow in Nigeria with the $200,000,000?

The New York Times is one of my few “trusted sources” for information. I trust ‘em. [Especially since they canned Judith Miller and that other guy.]

What’s a world like without the Times? What news will I trust? Fox News? The Daily Show? [One is fake news. You pick which.] For that matter, where will anyone get their news, since it’s apparent that every other news source just reads the Times (and sometimes the Washington Post) and rehashes it.

For most of human history, our communities were shaped by geography. For most of human history, people were born, lived their lives, and died inside a 100-mile radius. Now I have breakfast in Brussels and dinner in Detroit. Not counting sleeping, I spend more time in airports than Ann Arbor. Now our lives are shaped not only by geography, but by a global set of issues. Polities are now shaped by our beliefs more than our locations.

In this messy melting pot, we are seeking and exploring new forms of community — some are even living “second lives” — in a virtual space inhabited by seven foot pink cats. I met one — or so she claimed — just the other day. It was kind of scary. I haven’t a clue what it means. But I can tell you this, whatever it is, it’s happening much faster than you think. Trust me..

Michael and the Gilbert Center have weathered these stormy times, although not without casualty. Undaunted and with cheerful alacrity, Michael continues to cast a critical eye, and lend his critical mind to the nonprofit sector. We are all the richer for it.

Congratulations on your first one hundred years. May the next one hundred be just as interesting. Oh… Watch out for the pink cats, I’m not sure who they are, and I don’t know if you can trust them.