I know I haven't written in a very long time. I have a lot of excuses for that: my mother died (more on that later), I've been concentrating on fiction writing, depression, and maybe at other times just plain laziness. More than anything else, though, I'm not sure what direction I want to take this blog. I decided that I won't discuss family- - too many privacy issues over the net. That's about 40 percent of life I can't discuss right there.
Without knowing the exact direction, it's hard to get attached to it. I have to somehow fit it into an hour a day at most.
As a horror/fantasy writer, I guess one thing subject I can write about are real-life horrors. There are so many bad trends today. Like the political process, the economy, and "everything else," that is to say, the environment. I'm not an optimist. Because I'm an atheist, I don't think a God is going to save us from any of them.
Today is a minor horror: I'm foreseeing the end of the Internet, the only thing that has made last ten years tolerable.
A story by Gerry Smith in the Huffington Post tells us of a massive, apparently coordinated global spying operation reported by McAffee, most of it targeted in the US. The attacks were leveled against both companies and governments. “The data stolen included closely-guarded national secrets, source code, email archives, negotiation plans and exploration details for new oil and gas field auctions, the report said.”
“Last month, the Defense Department said foreign hackers infiltrated the network of a defense contractor in March, stealing 24,000 military files in one of the most devastating data breaches suffered by the Pentagon to date.”
The economic consequences alone are staggering. Dmitri Alperovitch, McAfee's vice president of threat research said that there has never been a transfer of wealth like it in the history of the world.
By now, it's apparent that the Internet, and computers in general, cannot be secured, that companies can't trust putting their data on them. The general public also is probably realizing the same thing. Privacy is going to come back into vogue.
The obvious, if unpalatable solution: don't put things on the web. I could see a backlash now where people and companies begin to withdraw from the Net: a great exodus. This will throw marvelous future we have come to expect since the 1980s into reverse. Markets will grow for “web-free” products and processes. Calls to do away with web anonymity and privacy will accelerate the process. People will come to see the web as predatory. Expect a surge in orders for “brick 'n' mortar” which might or might not help the company depending on the wealth lost by Internet based services. Expect also a surge in the use of plain old paper.
This has come in the wake of a few other problems that will also stymie the Internet. The upcoming lack of net neutrality will make it a less rewarding experience. Fewer people are going to want to sign on.
Innovation on the web is not going to be as bright and shiny now, either. Our stupid patent system, that allows anyone to patent the “picking your nose” process, is bringing innovation to a standstill.
Companies can patent anything with broad strokes and then sue over any product that rhymes with their patent is killing innovation. It's going to be difficult to reform the system, now that patent suits and their defense are a multi billion dollar industry. The lobbying against leaving it broke is going to be fierce.
It's adding up to the end of the Internet. The death of the dreams of the 80s & 90s. The Internet will have a niche. Just don't expect it to be the economic and innovation driver that it has been.
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