The future of WWW

There's an article by the BBC today that reported the concerns of the future of the internet expressed by the brain behind the world-wide-web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

As usual, the ungovernable 'www' brings about both pros and cons to the world at large. Unlike TV or radio broadcasting stations, the internet is made up of millions of nodes or computers that act as servers to the virtual community. Simply, any computer connected to the internet is potentially a broadcasting station. Unless governments are ready to ban the use of computers, or restrict the use of internet, there's no way to stop the exponential growth of information that floods the public domain of the virtual world. Truth or fiction? There are just not enough or no watchdogs to control the authenticity of what's being 'published' on the internet pages every second...

Based on statistics given by http://www.domaintools.com/internet-statistics, in the last 24-hour period, 707,358 domains are registered; 1,223,620 deleted and 228,630 transfered. Domains refer to web addresses that ends with your usual '.com', '.net', '.org', '.info', '.biz', '.us', etc. This doesn't include individuals who borrow the domain names of businesses they subscribed to, say, for example accountname.blogspot.com or accountname.myspace.com.

Governments are getting more and more concerned (for obvious reasons), because the growth of the virtual world is getting out of their control. Scientists and politicians always have this love-hate relationship. When scientists make new discoveries, politicians will try to take over and 'mis'use the new technology. In this case, it looks like scientists have the upperhand, or not. Civilians seem to have the remote control.

Another recent article from BBC reported that google's advertisement revenue is about to surpass that of US TV networks. What does this mean? It means that the future of TV stations is bleak, if they don't change their strategy. They are losing grip. It's not difficult to see that they are making changes to survive - providing free broadcasts of episodes online with limited advertisements. But no matter how they change, they will never return to their 'former glory' of having 'veto control' they once have over a country anymore, even when they implore internet to their list of medium - just because anyone in the world can do what they do - with a computer. Governments, who are notoriously known to exploit the media is becoming more 'vulnerable' due to this very fact. They can no longer control certain information from its citizens anymore.

This is bad news to governments of many countries in Asia. Banning of books, movies, news, music are getting less effective.

So what is really the power of the Internet?

In 1897 Gramophone Company (HMV) began selling records in UK. In 1960, Tower Records started selling its first records in San Francisco. In 1971, Virgin Megastore began its business in Oxford St, London. In 1985 internet became commercialized (though the technology was used as early as in the 1950s by US government intelligence). In 1991, mp3 was invented. What happened after that is a series of what the music business people called 'disaster'. Given more time, musicians began to realize that it's is to their benefit.

Recording companies once rule the world of music. Many musicians' dream was to secure a recording contract with a major record label. Who knew that in just a short period of 15 years after the invention of mp3, big music distributors with long history background like Tower Records, Virgin, HMV would collapse - losing its popularity to cheap virtual names like myspace and youtube?

Everything is becoming more and more abstract, virtualistic. The major changes in the music industry is just the appetizer of the power of internet. I say we should keep the internet free. Speaking of true capitalism. Internet is presently the truest form of capitalism.