The web of tomorrow

The web is arguably the fastest growing invention of all time, connecting people in a way once thought to be science-fiction or even magic. The last decade has seen the web transform from a technical curiosity to a vital channel for information.

In the early 1990s, few people even knew what a web page was. That was only 15 years ago. What will be the state of the web in another 15years? Will there still be hyperlinks? Will the browsers of today be replaced and refined by touchpads, voice recognition and AI bots? Will it collapse under it’s own weight of adverts, spam and auto-generated nonsense? Or perhaps further divide itself into proprietary walled gardens? The future equivalent of the Iron Curtain could be a “silicon curtain”, maintained by digital empires.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
— Arthur C. Clarke

Will the web even be used by humans at all in the future? Or will it be a hive of AI programs that exchange machine-to-machine information as a friendly edition of Skynet? Is it even possible to “pull the plug” if we would want to do so? I guess nothing short of an EMP generated by a “planet killer” asteroid could do the work.

Only one thing is certain. The internet, in one form or another, is here to stay.