I fear the future of our technologies, but not for the usual reasons. For me, the future would bring forth solutions to our needs and wants, design that provides value in a sustainable and responsible manner. Technology that is relevant and appropriate. But what I see developing seems driven by greed and profit, resulting in restrictive business plans and attempts to enforce proprietary constraints on activity by corporate empires. 

The power of my electronic computing and communication equipment is more dictated by my service provider than by the technology itself. Imagine traveling in the future and entering a new country:

I wrote the first draft of this column from Madeira where I was attending a conference. I couldn't get on to the Internet because, irony of ironies, this was a technology conference: the 300 attendees had so overwhelmed the hotel's meager Internet that it became useless. Three hundred attendees probably meant 500 -800 IP devices, counting laptop computers, phones and all the demonstration machines, often requiring multiple IP addresses. 

My intelligence is in the cloud. My life is in the cloud. My friends, photographs, ideas and mail. My life. My mind. Take away my cloud and I am left mindless.

I fear the Internet is doomed to fail, to be replaced by tightly controlled gardens of exclusivity. The Internet has extended beyond the capabilities of its origins: the trusting, open interactions among a few research universities. Today it is too easy for unknown entities to penetrate into private homes and businesses, stealing identities and corporate secrets. Fear of damaging programs and the ever-increasing amount of spam (some just annoying but more and more deadly and malicious), threatens the infrastructure. And so, just as previous corporate warlords used the existence of real inefficiencies and deficiencies in other media to gain control, equipment, service and content providers, large corporations will try to use the deficiencies of the Internet to exert control and exclusivity. All the better, they will claim, to provide safe, secure and harmonious operation, while incidentally enhancing profits and reducing competition. Similar arguments will apply to governments as well, invoking the fears of the existing Internet in order to exert control for the benefit of the existing ruling parties. 

I have seen the future, and if it turns out the way it is headed, I am opposed. I fear our free and continual access to information and services is doomed to be replaced by tightly controlled gardens of exclusivity. It is time to rethink the present, for it determines the future.