Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

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Darryl Parker
Entrepreneur, CEO
http://www.parkerweb.com
http://www.iMatthews.com

Website Maintenance

I suppose we could parse the question in two directions; one being the future of the Internet infrastructure, the other being the future usage of the system. The above is more about how the Internet will be used in daily life, rather than changes to the actual infrastructure.

I doubt that we`ll see voice interaction any time soon. Instead, I think we`ll see a gigantic move on the part of politicians (particularly in the US) toward finding a way to tax online transactions.

That will lead to unprecedented battles of the concept of privacy rights, and what constitutes private ownership. We`re already seeing examples of it in the music sharing and intellectual property issues.

Internet-2, with it`s higher bandwidth, seems to be designated for academic and research organizations. That`s how the current Internet originally started, and we now see that it`s become everyone`s tool. I strongly doubt that a highspeed system would stay limited to a specific type of population.

If we do actually get this type of system, designed for transfers of very large files, along with multimedia information, then we`ll likely see changes in education, conferencing, and the end of "road warriors." Business conferences and sales will be more like what we see on TV, in futuristic shows.

To that end, it`ll depend on how the US decides to interact internationally. I`m not sure, but I believe the US is currently the sort of de-facto leader (boss?) of the Internet, which is leading to all sorts of interesting problems. If those problems continue, then instead of a unified, global information system, we`ll more likely see a splintered set of miniature Internets, where each cultural group or society has their own system of IP addresses, protocols, and so on.

With the ongoing exit of scientists and business owners due to increasingly hostile environments in the US, the next big issue will be who manages what sort of standards. We`ve already come up against a limit in domain names, and we have speculators in control of whole tracts of domain addresses.

So the Internet is similar to the US, circa the early 1800s, with wide open areas of land having been "claimed." The population is "expanding," just as we did from the East coast, during the pioneer days. That means setting up territories, which I think would be analogous to such things as "e-commerce."

Look at eBay, PayPal, Google, Amazon, WordPress, and you can see how each of these exemplifies a "type" of Internet usage and application. We`re only just now seeing the first structural organization of electronic information. There aren`t any political divisions, and nobody in particular "owns" this or that part of the Internet.

If the world continues in the direction we`re going, I`d expect to see some sort of political segmentation and borders. They could be along national lines, cultural, religious, philosophic, or ethnic lines---who knows? On the other hand, we might possibly continue to see the Internet as one of the few unrestricted, "free" aspects of a real global society.

I think in the next 5-10 years ecommerce is going to tank, as is everything dependent upon long-distance shipping, due to peak oil. the only exception to this will be the digitization of media such as books, movies, and TV for internet delivery. The internet will serve to support local communities and will be used for local commerce and local digital currencies, and for regional exchanges in private, asset-backed digital currencies. In other words, the economy and the monetary system are going to decentralize radically because the oil that fueled their centralization is becoming prohibitively expensive, and the internet will facilitate that decentralization.

(My business has been set up to transact in digital gold [and now silver] since the beginning, in the event that`s of interest to anyone... )

—p

I`ll disagree, based on emerging technologies to replace or supplement oil. We already see hybrid electric cars, to extend a quart of gasoline, and there are working hydrogen vehicles as well. Necessity is the mother of invention, but it also is the kick in the ass needed to adopt new ways. To that end, I suspect we`ll see the end or decline of the gasoline engine before the decline of long-distance shipping.

Right, but the problem is not vehicle fuels — it`s that petroleum is the feedstock for plastics and the energy to crack water into hydrogen and oxygen, it`s the asphalt with which roads are paved, the lubricant that keeps engines running, it`s the fuel that pulls more oil out of the ground and powers the refineries that turn it into more vehicle fuel, it keeps countless millions of homes warm during the winter, it powers the farm machinery that keeps the world fed, serves as feedstock for herbicides and pesticides that also keep the world fed, as a base for a huge variety of pharmaceuticals, it helps power the plants that produce alternative energy infrastructure, and a legion of other things too numerous to list... and hardly any of it belongs to the United States, which became a net oil importer in the early 1970s. There are lots of plans for alternative fuels and different kinds of vehicles and such, but now it`s looking like it`s already too late, as petroleum production hit a plateau in 2005 from which it has not recovered. The problem is where petroleum will end up getting allocated, and there are tons of things more critical than shipping doo-dads around the world. Supply chains will shorten by necessity and that means a hit on ecommerce.

—paula

Alright, so let`s keep in mind that the US hasn`t built a refinery in 35 years, and our government has prevented drilling for oil or building any nuclear power plants in decades. We have some of the largest oil fields in the world, and the proven technology to not only use nuclear power, but also the myriad of other alternate energy sources science has found.

There`s no way at all that the population of the US is going to casually walk away from technology, freedom to move, and entrepreneurial spirit. It`s only a matter of how much pain it`ll take to revoke the free reign of environmental extremism. Shut down the postal service, food delivery systems, power, chemistry, and heat, and we`ll see pretty quickly, people deciding that nuclear power isn`t the evil tool of Satan!

The Internet offers an unprecedented amount of personal freedom, in a country and society founded on that freedom. I`ll argue that people will much more quickly overturn foolish practices with no basis in reality, than they`ll just give up the Web and its collateral benefits.

We`ve allowed multi-national corporations and greedy politicians to pretty much do whatever they want, that`s true. And as long as it didn`t affect each of us every single day, we pretty much didn`t care. We`ve allowed for failed education, resulting in an utter lack of any sort of basic economic and analytic knowledge. Now we`ll experience the consequences.

At that point, I think we`ll see a fundamental shift in how the average person views the government and big corporations. Petroleum is plentiful and cheap, up to a point. And that`s the only reason we`ve done nothing about all the other ways to produce energy and materials.

Yes, it`ll take maybe 5-10 years to "fix" all this, depending on how urgent everyone feels the problem has become. Turn off the Internet, close down 50% of all businesses, and let the government hand out sticks of margarine for food, and things will feel pretty urgent.

So we`ll maybe see some sort of pause in the way things are, but it won`t be for very long. History is moving the entire human race towards a global integration, and that trend is far larger than the nationalistic upheavals in any particular location. The Internet---or its next iteration---are part of that historic movement. It isn`t going away, any more than the combustion engine could be stopped in its time.

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Darryl Parker
Entrepreneur, CEO
http://www.parkerweb.com
http://www.iMatthews.com

Website Maintenance

Craig -- we actually don`t have any of the world`s largest oil fields. We did at one time, but US domestic oil production peaked in 1972, right on schedule. The amount of oil locked up under ANWR is enough to fuel our economy for only 6 months. Even if they drilled there it wouldn`t solve anything. Peak oil is not an environmental issue, nor the result of environmental activism, it`s simply a matter of mathematics -- there`s a finite amount of oil in the ground, and once about half of it`s drilled, production starts declining.

I personally am dubious about nuclear, not because I think it`s the tool of Satan but because I don`t see how it can make economic sense. Building a nuclear infrastructure, and mining and refining uranium require oil... nuclear-generated electricity would be far more expensive than the coal- and hydro-electricity we`ve already got, and very nearly impossible to profit from. Plus, uranium is itself a finite resource and will peak and decline just like oil. If we could get a dozen or so nuclear power plants online immediately it would buy us a couple decades of time but that`s about it. It would not power life as we know it into the future indefinitely.

I agree that we will be forced to give up foolish practices with no basis in reality, but the fundamental foolishness I see is the notion that economic growth can continue forever on a finite planet with no thought to the economic implications of ecological consequences. The planet is our fundamental reality. "Economists are taught that natural resources come from markets rather than the `environment`. This suggests that man-made capital can substitute for natural capital. But if the First Law of thermodynamics tells us there is no `creation`, then there can be no such thing as `man-made capital`, only incrementally faster or slower usage of natural capital stocks depending on populations, technology and consumptive wants. The economy is ultimately 100% dependent on the environment." A very concise summation of the problem from this guy.

I also agree that people aren`t going to give up their freedoms or walk away from technology, but personally I don`t equate globalization and trucked-in technology with freedom. I think if anything these things limit our freedom because it makes us dependent upon foreign nations to make everything for us and on banks to loan us into debt servitude to buy those things. Schools can fail for decades on end because hardly anyone has to do anything that requires basic trig or communicating with multisyllabic words.  I think now, because of peak oil, the rush to globalization is going to slow to a crawl because hierarchical centralization requires more energy than exists. And I think in its place we`ll see networks, and networks of networks, just like the internet itself.

Darryl — very interesting post on disintermediation. I think that is close to what I mean when I talk about globalized hierarchy disintegrating into networks of networks... in the picture I have in my own head about this, inordinately long supply chains are the purview of middlemen, whom I see as being those that ship doo-dads around the world. But what I`m not tracking on is how you figure that buying locally (i.e., shortening supply chains) won`t be anymore cost effective for consumers than shipping cross-country, as fuel prices continue to rise. I know that here where I live, farmers market foods have not increased in price at anything like the rate they`re increasing in the grocery store.

I`m also not following how you figure technology has a bigger role to play in all this than the availability of raw materials or of capital. Care to elaborate?

On the whole though I am inclined to agree with you.... I think a severe depression is inevitable at this point, but I don`t see it as a catastrophe, I see it as a HUGE opportunity for all KINDS  of things for anyone who`s paying attention. My secret hope is that it will spawn "underground" economies that are truly free of intervention, which would be ultimately good for both people and planet, and I can imagine the internet playing a decisive role in this outcome for exactly the disintermediation reasons you describe.

On a relevant but tangential note, here`s a technology that could go a long way toward decentralization/disintermediation: personal fabrication.

—p

One thing we agree on is that infinite growth isn`t sustainable. In biology, uncontrolled, never-ending growth often is called cancer. We also agree (from previous posts) that a basic reason for this belief in forever-growth comes out of the concept of publicly held stock in corporations. When the annual growth becomes more important than actual product, service, and function, the disconnect is destructive.

The overall point, I think, is that we do have other oil resources, along with hydro-electric, nuclear, and solar power. We have the emerging benefits of so-called green technology (not extremism, but rational sustainable energy), and other new technologies starting to come into play.

It`s not a question of immediately turning off the oil supply, or immediately running out of oil. Rather, it`s about stretching the existing oil supply, and using petroleum in those products that have no substitute at all. So, for example, a car gets 30 miles to a gallon of gas.

That gas is the only thing running the car, at the moment. But if we could enhance or change or add to that gallon of gas, thereby getting the 30 miles out of, say, a quart of gas, we would effectively quadruple the "supply" of gasoline.

It`s much like Darryl says, where we`re going to have to change the way we think about debt, resources, consumption, and conservation. It`s happening on the family level, so it`ll probably take place similarly on a societal and governmental level.

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Darryl Parker
Entrepreneur, CEO
http://www.parkerweb.com
http://www.iMatthews.com

Website Maintenance