The future of the Internet?

Not on a film topic, bit since film and the internet ("Internet") seem to be intertwined, it seems pertinent.

I believe that we are passing through a period that amounts to the settling of the "wild west." Very little if anything is secure. Very little if anything is private. Very little can be anonymous. Every few months we hear about millions of credit cards and related info being swiped from this or that big corporation. Add to that all the thefts that are not reported. And what about all the automated calls to our cell phones that masquerade as being local calls?

Yet we shop and comment and read and react as if this were all working just fine. Luckily, it does work fine most of the time, but only because we are lucky.

There is another stage in the development of all of this. There must be. When we reach that stage, things will actually be secure and possibly even private. Of course, there are many commercial forces that mitigate against both of those goals.

Privacy and, in particular, anonymity may be at the heart of the future internet.

I imagine that there will be two internets in the future. In one internet, there will be no anonymity. Users will be strictly identified and responsible for everything they do, say, purchase. True security becomes possible (assuming all the backend systems grow up and fly right). In the second internet, anonymity is the rule and the sort of gossip and false witness we see everyday can flourish there.

Perhaps the identified users of the public internet will be able to see the anonymous internet and the anonymous users will not be able to see into the public internet. Maybe.

In any event, security is not here today but it is eventually coming, Its coming may be a crushing blow to freedom or a liberation from fear. Stay tuned.