Hannu H. Kari Gives The Internet 2 More Years 465
erick99 writes "Dr. Hannu Kari says the Internet will will collapse in 2006 as reported in an article on ARS Technica. Yes, this is the same Dr. Kari who has predicted doom before, but it is still an entertaining read and there is more than a grain of truth in his reasoning." Reader Titney writes adds a couple of excerpts from an article on NewsRoom Finland: "The entire system will crumble to bits as the sheer bulk of rubbish circling around in the net exceeds the public pain threshold. ... When the internet is no longer operational for business purposes, one has to time warp back 10 to 20 years and make do without information networks"
If Hannu H. Kari dosn't work for... (Score:5, Funny)
-- a 2006 web odyssey
Re:If Hannu H. Kari dosn't work for... (Score:5, Funny)
the public pain threshhold? WTF is this guy talking about? The internet allows you to sift through the crud pretty quickly to get to what you need. Maybe he meant Orkut will collapse in 2 years?
Re:If Hannu H. Kari dosn't work for... (Score:5, Insightful)
The public doesn't really care about advertising, in whatever form it comes. Certainly not enough, anyway, to give up their lazy lifestyles of channel surfing and station tuning.
Spam, Spyware etc.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Thing is spyware can be avoided by ditching Windows and Spam is starting to being tackled with email system changes such as the one proposed by Yahoo.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:If Hannu H. Kari dosn't work for... (Score:5, Insightful)
Email is slowly going the way of Usenet -- there's discussion going on, but there's a lot more junk than discussion. Eventually Email will be that crazy thing those old time geeks use, while everyone else uses, well, something else.
So if you can't communicate because of spam, and you can't find anything because of spam, then it becomes a pain in the ass to use the Internet, and that's what he means by Public Pain Threshold. When the general public decides that it's too big of a pain in the ass to do anything on the Internet, the Internet will start to shrink.
Re:If Hannu H. Kari dosn't work for... (Score:5, Interesting)
p.s. Don't tell anyone about this though! I don't want the bastards coming back!
Re:If Hannu H. Kari dosn't work for... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, if that were all it took, television would be as extinct as travel by zeppelin.
Re:If Hannu H. Kari dosn't work for... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:If Hannu H. Kari dosn't work for... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not everyone has the luxury of "hiding" their email address. For many of us, our work *requires* making our email address public--even to the point of posting it on a website. In my case, it also appears in a magazine each month.
So, get off your high horse and take a peek at the real world. You will see things that utterly amaze.
Re:If Hannu H. Kari dosn't work for... (Score:5, Informative)
They wanted to do that at work. I simply refused to publicly display any of our email addresses. The last account/address they had was a spam fest because of this.
So, I coded a simple web form for placing comments. The webform message allows someone to supply a reply to address and then its sent off to everyone who needs to respond to it.
What's really funny... one day.. someone actually cut and pasted their spam into the webform. (I went to the persons website... they were not remotely technically inclined)
It's very easy to get in touch with us via email and this technique really impairs harvesting.
Re:If Hannu H. Kari dosn't work for... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:If Hannu H. Kari dosn't work for... (Score:5, Insightful)
I've never had any problems giving out my email address. Junk goes in the spam filter, which I clean out once a month (when I admined for a company we had someone check every 2-3 days but never had any FPs to my knowledge).
I get maybe 1 spam gets through the filters in a week. Easy to handle.
Re:If Hannu H. Kari dosn't work for... (Score:3, Funny)
Of course you're never going to get a First Post if you only check every 2-3 days! You need to be checking every 2-3 minutes, at least.
Cassandra Syndrome folks have been wrong before (Score:5, Insightful)
Just as a broken clock is right twice a day, eventually some doomsayer is going to be right, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say it won't be Dr. Kari, and it will not be in 2006.
Re:If Hannu H. Kari dosn't work for... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:If Hannu H. Kari dosn't work for... (Score:5, Funny)
And for anyone who believes this... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:And for anyone who believes this... (Score:5, Interesting)
Well it may not die as in coffin dead but it may certainly morph into something completely different.
With the onset of so many worms, trojans, and other miscellaneous exploits people are finally going to get fed up. They aren't going to switch away from Microsoft products to eliviate their problems though. Nope... What they're going to do is they're going to switch to Bill's latest and greatest achievement...
Trusted Computing. This will be a BIOS, OS, and network interface that will be 100% secure. It will be running only "trusted" applications because Bill has certified them all. Remember those cute Windows on the corner of all pieces of hardware and software? Designed for MS Windows98? Well, this is going to be the same thing only not even the worms can run!
See, safe, right? Well, you won't be able to be on the same Internet we have now because that's not trusted. Soon you'll be connecting to port 3128 of the trusted.proxy.microsoft.com to get your Internet.
The "other Internet" (the one that the rest of us will be using) won't be protected, won't be trusted, and won't be supported by the Windows people.
You draw your own conclusions as to what that will mean.
Re:And for anyone who believes this... (Score:5, Funny)
That September will finally end?
Re:And for anyone who believes this... (Score:2)
Re:And for anyone who believes this... (Score:5, Informative)
Wow, for just a moment that gave me hope. You cruel, cruel bastard.
(For those saying, "WTF?", see this [catb.org].)
Re:And for anyone who believes this... (Score:3, Insightful)
It means the internet, our internet, can go back to what it was before the companies started fucking it up; a medium for free information exchange.
Re:And for anyone who believes this... (Score:5, Insightful)
Back when it was "our internet" (as you put it), there was nowhere near the amount of free information exchange as there is today, in large part DUE to contributions by companies across the world.
Companies haven't fucked up the internet, they've given us more things we can do over the internet. The things that actually trash the internet are: script kiddies, virus writers, spammers, and evil countries.
Re:And for anyone who believes this... (Score:5, Insightful)
If Canter and Siegel had been punished properly for their crime (been barred for ever from a connection) we wouldn't be in the position we are now. If upstream and backbone sites actually enforced non-spam, non-open-relay, etc rules, we'd be closer to a fully functioning network.
My good friend and colleague Dr Jennings was wont to say "the network is too important to be left to the networkers" -- and I still say he was wrong, dead wrong. The network is too important to be taken out of the hands of the networkers.
And what's all this crap about back 10 to 20 years "before we had an information network"? Excuse me, but 20 years ago I was happily using BITNET, the X.25 networks, and the IP networks (hell, UUCP too if it comes to that). Slow, primitive, but it sure looked like an information network to me.
Maybe the good doctor is confusing the Internet with the Web?
Re:And for anyone who believes this... (Score:3, Informative)
Well, I didn't say that letting them on the internet was the problem. I really like that part, because the web is how I like to get information, and the web is how the companies on the internet choose to present themselves to us. I'm in favor of any kind of pull technology for information, where I get to make the choices, as opposed to eating from the trough, or perhaps drinking from the fire hose. My bank, my auto insurance provider, most of my utilities, and god damned near everything else I need is on t
Re:And for anyone who believes this... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And for anyone who believes this... (Score:3, Informative)
Its been demonstrated that although people are willing to put up with microsoft products, they are unwilling to "trust" microsoft. Remember Microsoft Passport? Good idea, not too popular.
Some relevant urls:
http://yahoo.pcworld.com/yahoo/article/0,aid,6324 4
http://www.winnetmag.com/Article/ArticleID/22777/2 2777.html [winnetmag.com]
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/18366.html [ecommercetimes.com]
http://www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/tech/software/1503 776.html [thestreet.com]
The first 2 times I looked at the article ... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:The first 2 times I looked at the article ... (Score:2)
Ummm ... so if the Internet crumbles in 2006, I may only have one year left for my halloween webcam [komar.org] to be on display - maybe a good thing since it got abused by both FARK and Slashdot [komar.org] ... but if Hulk doesn't win for president in 2004, I was hoping to do again in 2008.
Lets do that timewarp! (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, but when that happens we'll more likely timewarp back fifty or one hundred years. Spammers, virus copiers and script kiddies will simply be hunted down for sport and tortured on live TV. The penalty for being an idiot on the internet will be public beheading.
I'm begining to look forward to 2006 now.
Re:Lets do that timewarp! (Score:3, Funny)
Right up until Ah-nold shows up and ruins everything by surviving!
Re:Lets do that timewarp! (Score:2)
Some network moron is going to see this and make it into next year's reality tv show. Hopefully, it'll be a replacement for "Everybody Loves Raymond".
Recursive Linking (Score:5, Funny)
Well, it's worth a try anyway
All together now... (Score:4, Funny)
I predict that within one year, someone smart enough to know better will predict the demise of the Net within 2 years. Can I have my "Professional Futurologist" badge now?
Re:All together now... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:All together now... (Score:3, Funny)
two? (Score:2)
He's not too terribly inconsistent though... (Score:5, Informative)
Not that he's, yanno, sane or anything, but at least he's consistent.
Re:He's not too terribly inconsistent though... (Score:4, Insightful)
there is such a huge boatload of crap out here that I hope that it get's to a point that the average human runs away from it.
Because the Average Human is the cause of the problems of the Internet.
Does the average human take care of their pc? NO.
Does the Average human have the ability to not do something stupid like continue to foreward chain letters and hoaxes? NO.
I can go on for days, but in the end it's the "average" users that cause all that is wrong with the internet. If they go away, things will settle back down to normal.
I for one can not wait.
Re:He's not too terribly inconsistent though... (Score:3, Interesting)
How does this affect you at all? Presumably, you know where to find the stuff you like, so why does it matter that there are tons of highly commercial, fluff-filled sites out there?
Re:He's not too terribly inconsistent though... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:He's not too terribly inconsistent though... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:He's not too terribly inconsistent though... (Score:4, Interesting)
The way I look at it, if the rest of us were really so superior, we would have build in advance technologies that an average human could use well.
But after the internet rapture... (Score:5, Funny)
Just me? (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah and... (Score:2, Funny)
Already happened on a limited scale. (Score:5, Insightful)
Another example is Yahoo message boards. Here we see what the lack of pretty much any moderation entails. Spam infested, crapflood infested, it's pretty difficult to get any meaningful discussion there.
I think what will happen is that there will be heavier moderation and more stringent entrance requirements for various online forums. The Internet will still function, it just won't be as open as it once was.
Re:Already happened on a limited scale. (Score:5, Insightful)
But the Internet is a lot of different things. The use of the Internet as, effectively, a billboard, with controlled content (moderation, web editing, etc), is not really at risk. BBC News is not at risk, nor are most generally non-interactive websites.
So much for the electronic frontier. Anarchy is always good until you have actual people involved.
Re:Already happened on a limited scale. (Score:3, Interesting)
That's just crap. Very few of the groups I read are full of spam (the few that are are gatewayed mailing lists). And the technical ones are full of knowledgeable people: ask an F95 question on comp.lang.fortran if you don't believe me. They were really bad in the mid-90s, but now they're much, much better. I'd bet
Re:Already happened on a limited scale. (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree. There are a lot more wackos on the lose, but most of them are happily trolling on millions of web-forums, chats, and whatnot. The average net user is less likely to find the Usenet nowadays and
Re:Already happened on a limited scale. (Score:4, Insightful)
See, but that is the problem. With heavy moderation comes groupthink and censor of ideas that the group might not like. This is what was great about newsgroups 10 years ago when I first discovered them. There was no censorship, but the level of rubbish was fairly low. Today, like you mentioned it's mostly trash.
Re:Already happened on a limited scale. (Score:2)
Maybe not. If moderation was distributed randomly, rather than as an reward for "good behavior", with no person allowed to moderate for longer than a certain time interval, things might not be so bad. Pests could be banned by black-balling --- say everyone has 1 black-ball to spend per every 2 months (non-cumulative). Then, if some troll gets 10 blackballs within that time frame, they're outta there!
Just a thought.
Re:Already happened on a limited scale. (Score:4, Insightful)
I hope that things go back to the BBS days. Back when people ran BBS's, you had to login, give the admin very personal information (including a working telephone number), and eventually the admin would call you. You'd TALK to the owner LIVE and he'd decide if you got on or not. If there was a problem, you might have spoken to him again, live.
If I ever start a forum anywhere, I'm definitely doing things this way. It's more personal than shooting off emails.
Re:Already happened on a limited scale. (Score:5, Interesting)
That's not just due to the the flamers there are also technological reasons. Usenet is a store-and-forward system; it's replicated all over the place (usually at your ISP). That was crucial when even the high-speed lines between service providers were 56kbps, but today you can go to a single site from anywhere and get decent response time. The distributed system made it slow and unreliable.
Web sites also have the advantage over Usenet in that you can use a single tool that you already have to access it. You don't need to install special software. It's true that most Windows users already have Outlook, but wouldn't know how to configure it.
I do lament the death of Usenet. There are many things it does better than the web sites do. Back in the day I could go to comp.lang.apl and confer with reliable experts on APL. And actually that's still true for some newsgroups, the obscurer the better. But at this point the death of Usenet is recursive: I don't go there because nobody else goes there. I'll sometimes use Google Groups to search it for answers to a question, but since I'm not posting to it nobody else gets to converse with me, and so they too gradually drop out.
And it's too bad that I have to learn hundreds of different web-based message systems (with the corresponding array of logins to maintain) rather than the single point of entry to Usenet.
Slashdot, and most other bulletin-board type systems, doesn't do the sort of long-term conversations that Usenet was good for. But people now go to other places for entertainment; conversation is out. It's much more passive and that's too bad. So it makes me sad that I don't even have a newsreader any more.
has this guy never heard of adapting? (Score:5, Insightful)
War on Spam (Spam is equatable to Terrorism) (Score:2)
There are plenty of nerds able to create spam filters but nobody has been able to stop the root problem, which is the *desire* for someone to create spam. That is motivated by economics. H
No need to worry (Score:2)
Wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
No, one has to create VPNs and block all access that doesn't come from the inside.
Or you could use dedicated lines that have no connection to the Internet.
Predictions (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a funny thing, networks. You see, since humans control them, they make changes and adjustments in response to the needs of the network. Thus the network grows, adapts, and becomes a more powerful entity.
That being said, there are two things I wish I could exorcise from the net: Spam and viruses. These two creatures are responsible for more useless traffic than just about anything else. It would also be nice if protocols like GNUTella died or were fixed. The number of useless packets generated by such protocols is amazing.
Re:Predictions (Score:2)
At 11 a.m. SKYNET becomes self-aware...
Re:Predictions (Score:2)
Personally, I found NAT to be a fairly elegant solution. Definitely not perfect, but completely in line with network structuring. In comparison, proxies (even SOCKS) were the devil's spawn.
But it dosen't solve the problem.
It solved the problem at hand, which was to stop handing out valuable IPs to machines that didn't need it. As a new problem arises (large numbers of devices that DO need public IPs), those using the network will come up with proper solutions (e.g. IPv6
I'm sorry... (Score:3, Insightful)
Today the good professor warned that the fun bus could all come to a crashing halt in less than two years because of steady increases in everything that makes the Internet such a pain in the rear. Viruses, trojans, spam, and security flaws
I suffer from none of those things. Never have. And I use both Linux and WinXP. A good portion of my friends, family and coworkers don't suffer either.
Re:I'm sorry... (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't matter until it affects the common man (Score:3, Insightful)
I have a saying: "It doesn't matter until it affects the common man - then it will get fixed." It does not matter what "it" is - as long as "it" only affects a small number of folks "it" won't get fixed.
Look back at the old DOS days - when the 640K memory limit only affected high-end users, it didn't matter. When Joe Average started to bump his head, the problem was fixed (largely by the introduction of Windows enhanced mode). Look at spam - now that it affects just about everyone, moves are being made to fix it.
Yes, in five years we the Internet as we know it today won't exist - open SMTP proxies won't be allowed to exist, users will have up-to-date virus protection and firewalls, etc.
Guess what - the Internet as it existed five years ago doesn't exist, either!
Re:It doesn't matter until it affects the common m (Score:2)
really??
IRC,ftp, usenet,telnet [dmine.com], email, hell even gopher [quux.org]
is still around and being used.
I'd say the internet from over 10 years ago is still there alive and kicking just fine.
just because you dont use anytihng other than a web browser to access the "internet" does not mean it's not ther eand still being used.
Re:It doesn't matter until it affects the common m (Score:4, Informative)
Basically what I'm getting at is that it doesn't matter until someone in a position that has the power to force change is affected directly or indirectly.
As with your example with DOS, more than high-end users were being affected. The competition work out alternatives to use extra memory (EMS memory anyone ?), and it wasn't until MS realized that they were going to loose to the competition that they came out with XMS and High Memory, etc. scheme from DOS 5 onwards.
Windows Enhanced mode did not take effect for a long time. Lots of applications were still written and being written for DOS, even when Windows 3.1 was around. It wasn't until the release of Windows 95 that things began to change and people started to look towards Windows as a "real" application platform.
I agree with the article... (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree absolutely. If I saw a glimpse today of the net in five years I probably wouldn't recognize it. It is a cosstantly evolving organism. In 1999 I wouldn't recognize the net today.
Will it die? No, of course not. Games, porn, mail, chat, music, p2p, that's not going anywhere.
Business? Will businesses need to re-address the way they do business? More security, VPNs maybe, perhaps even leaving the net for other Information Systems solutions? Perhaps. If I knew the answer I would be rich in 5 years.
What the next big thing? Who knows. I never thought in 1999 that music downloads for money could be successful.
Re:I agree with the article... (Score:2)
No more information networks? (Score:2)
He, sorry bub, but Fidonet [fidonet.org] was created 20 years ago, in 1984 [fidonet.org], and it quickly became a worldwide information network (1985).
I think Fidonet was (and still is) an information network, and not a bad one at that...
Re:No more information networks? (Score:2)
Will it be That Long? (Score:3, Insightful)
We are lucky in having an ISP [magma.ca] with superb and effective spam filtering, so only see a few dozen messages a day that fit that description.
Likwise we're very vigilant about virus protection and use a firewall, so have thus far avoided any virus infection.
Still, most casual users aren't at this level, and they are finding that the Internet is less useful than it used to be.
I don't hink that the Internet will collapse, but I can see a time when we start seeing casual users abandon it as more trouble than it's worth.
And just to throw in a very frigtening idea, what happens when one or more spammers successfully sue ISPs for blocking their mail? Even if it can't be done domestically, various international trade agreements may support such and action.
Signal/Noise Ratio (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, the public telephone network suffered from the problem of unsolicited bulk marketers calling people during dinner.
It still survives. But it did have a few adjustments made to it.
I hate to say goodbye to anonymity in email that is abused by spammers because it has a special place for whistleblowers. But perhaps blog postings can still serve that purpose.
Sealab 2021 (Score:4, Interesting)
Coming of age (Score:5, Insightful)
makes you go what TF? (Score:2)
Stick our heads in the bush? (Score:2)
In every case where I've stuck my head in the bush things have turned out just fine (slurp).
Infected his thought process (Score:3, Funny)
Lighten up already. If the Internet takes as long to die as either Apple or BSD, we're safe well into the next generation or two.
-Charles
Bob Metcalfe also predicted this in 1997 or 1998 (Score:2, Informative)
internet survived major san francisco earthquake (Score:5, Interesting)
Son Harry? (Score:2)
Flaming idiot (Score:2)
Crap on the net? (Score:2)
no longer for business purposes... (Score:2, Insightful)
Perhaps the author remembers when the telephone and the postal mail services, both got so flooded with junk that all business quit using them, entirely, several years ago.
I also remember them becoming flooded with junk, but I don't remember when business quit using them.
And if the author does remember business quitting to use these services, what does
What a crock (Score:2)
Sealab 2021 was right! (Score:2, Interesting)
Die? no. Shake out some more? of course. (Score:2)
leaves quite a bit of room for a way out (Score:2)
So if everything stays static, except the bad stuff, the bad will outweigh the good and it will become unusable. Wow. That is a revelation.
Yes, there is a grain of truth... (Score:2)
I routinely see -- on a daily basis -- broken emails that crash mail readers, systems crippled by spyware, viruses like you wouldn't believe.
I realize the danger here of becoming the cop who sees all people as potential criminals, but I think the key difference in predictions of doom-and-gloom several years ago and those of to
Internet nirvana was never a given (Score:4, Insightful)
Doom 4? (Score:2, Funny)
Throw enough shit (Score:2)
I just don't get what is up with these 5 times yearly announcements that the internet is coming to an end.
Give it up already and find another way to get PR for yourself and/or your company.
Could be done... (Score:2)
don't read the article (Score:2, Insightful)
For once, we all at
Not gonna happen (Score:3, Interesting)
If you talk about pain, consider the withdrawal pain all of us will have to go through if the internet just wasn't available for all of our daily things anymore.
An example of adaptability of things relating to human-ness influence - languages have generally changed over the ages, and has withstood the assault of abuse and misuse more or less intact. People are always worried that new coinage and usage of the language will corrupt the language to the point where it is no longer useful - this is far from the truth, and so it will be for the internet.
Bollocks (Score:4, Interesting)
Ok, so maybe email is suffering from a spam overdose. This can be countered by fixing the protocols. It won't be RFC 821, but it will still be there in some form.
As for www, as long as I don't go to crap sites, I don't see crap. Simple as such. Just because there are lots of crap sites doesn't mean there won't be any good ones. And frankly, I don't think the percentage of crap sites is that high (unless you're talking code quality).
Argh, I'm not going to think up any more examples. It's a ridiculous claim, why am I even responding.
The Internet is a Playground Without Supervision (Score:5, Insightful)
heard things like this before (Score:2)
Kari's prediction on Television in the 60's (Score:5, Funny)
The good doctor is wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
The doctor is wrong for several reasons.
First off, his premise is based off of nothing changing. The Internet behaves like an evolutionary biological system. Spammers send out spam, people build spam filters to lock out spam, and then the spammers improve spam to beat the filters. It mirrors a biological eveloutionary race. Unless one group eliminates the other entirely by an new improvement in strategy, this will go back and forth for a long time.
Furhtermore, there is also a predator-prey model at work. As the predators(spam,viruses,spyware) become more prevalent, the 'weak' users will be weeded out. Actually, they will get fed up and abandon the meidum. The 'stronger' prey are more impervious to such nusances, and will just ignore them. As the easy prey decreeses, so does the profitiability of spammers, spyware, and vectors for virri. This will cause their numbers to drop, and allow a new batch of weak prey to enter the model.
The netw will never 'crash' due to issues such as this, but it may experience rises and falls in popularity among the masses. The sky is not falling.