2020 Internet
By Barry Ritholtz - July 18th, 2010, 12:00PM
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Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data, ability to repeat discredited memes, and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Also, be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor even implied. Any irrelevancies you can mention will also be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.
July 18th, 2010 at 12:37 pm
Did you hear about the prophet who saw the future?
He had a 2020 vision
July 18th, 2010 at 3:29 pm
And the females in my family will still be typing url’s into their search bars :(
July 18th, 2010 at 7:29 pm
I think it is a big mistake to put critical infrastructure “on line” as it were. Having one massively interconnected network in asking for big trouble. For example I can see no reason for air traffic control towers to be connected using the same internet structure as everyone else. They should have there own network, system of cell towers, satalite services or whatever. In addition controllers should be able to a practice doing without whatever assistance the network provides in order that they can still land planes in the event of an outage. All critical services should have this ability. We need to remember that there was once no such thing as an internet.
July 19th, 2010 at 12:42 am
Simon: Years before any of us heard of the internet it was developed by DARPA for DOD for rapid, secure missile defense communications during the Cold War. Is it now ‘massively interconnected’ with web fluff? And other critical systems? Doubt it, but it’s probably not impenetrable. Check for yourself: http://www.darpa.mil/internetbibliography.html http://www.darpa.mil/Docs/Internet_Development_200807180909255.pdf
July 19th, 2010 at 10:18 am
I think the void of economic means and lack of intellectual leadership since around 2000 will leave a drain on the products of the future. Expect a void somewhere, soon, of development and ideas, as the effects of this recession will be felt long after the supposed recovery, and it will be very apparent in the areas of technology and development. Everything revolves around the dollar it produces. Many of todays greatest products and technologies were the result of past government spending on defense, not corporate America looking out of our “best interests”.
July 20th, 2010 at 12:59 pm
“We need to remember that there was once no such thing as an internet.”
Or computers, or motor-vehicles, or guns, or metal tools. Come to think of it, we could always go back to beating each other with wooden clubs… ;)
July 22nd, 2010 at 1:57 pm
Nice chart… But the electricity consumption statistics are wrong. From
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States
“Visible or embedded (i. e. hidden) computers are found everywhere: in all sectors listed in the above chapter, as well as in all subsectors listed in the column entitled Major uses in the above tables. In 1999, a study by Mark. P. Mills [25] of the Green Earth Society reported that computers consumed 13% of the entire US supply. Numerous researchers questioned Mills’ methodology and it was later demonstrated that he was off by an order of magnitude; for example, Lawrence Berkeley Labs concluded that the figure was nearer three percent of US electricity use. Although the Mills study was inaccurate[26][27][28], it helped drive the debate to the national level, and in 2006 the US Senate started a study of the energy consumption of Server farms.”
July 22nd, 2010 at 2:00 pm
See also http://www.eia.doe.gov/ask/electricity_faqs.asp#electricity_lighting for some residential statistics. PCs are small users of power compared to lighting and AC. AC is the number 1 user of household power by a small margin. 4.6 times PCs.