The Internet's Top 5 Challenges In The Next 5 Years: IADAS

Vinton Cerf, Biz Stone, John Battelle, and Martha Stewart number among the 750 members of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS), which judges the annual Webby Awards.

These Academy members have drawn up a list that highlights the major challenges facing the Internet and encourages policymakers, businesses, and advocates to embrace these challenges as a call to action.

As the Internet enters its fourth decade, the IADAS believes the next five years must see improvements in privacy protection, copyright law, net neutrality, the open web and Internet security.

Take a look through our slideshow (below) explaining each of these challenges, their implications, and directions that some have already taken on the road to constructive solutions that promote a vibrant Web. Vote for the issue you find the most pressing, and share your thoughts for creative solutions in the comments.

1 of 5

Protecting Privacy

1 of 6

First Slide

Previous Slide

@

The Challenge: Now more than ever, we share much of our private lives through online networks like Facebook and Twitter. We also choose to store more and more of our digital data in the cloud or on our cellphones. While information collected about our digital preferences can personalize the Internet for each of us, there is the concern that our data could be harvested and sold like crops or even used against us. What Must Be Done: The IADAS believes that "the industry must take steps to demystify the privacy debate by establishing global standards, providing transparent policies, and educating consumers on its practices." For example, Business Insider argues that "a company like Facebook, with its unprecedented grasp of our social data, should be accountable to the public." Rising To The Challenge: The Electronic Frontier Foundation, for one, works "to extend your privacy rights into the digital world" by promoting "the development of privacy-protecting technologies."

Tips To Help Your Cellphone Battery Live Longer

7 Things We Want To See Invented In 2013

Craziest Google Map Sightings

7 Things Microsoft Surface Has That iPad Doesn't

Google Doodle Slideshow

7 Things We Forget We Do Online

The Challenge: Now more than ever, we share much of our private lives through online networks like Facebook and Twitter. We also choose to store more and more of our digital data in the cloud or on our cellphones. While information collected about our digital preferences can personalize the Internet for each of us, there is the concern that our data could be harvested and sold like crops or even used against us.

What Must Be Done: The IADAS believes that "the industry must take steps to demystify the privacy debate by establishing global standards, providing transparent policies, and educating consumers on its practices." For example, Business Insider argues that "a company like Facebook, with its unprecedented grasp of our social data, should be accountable to the public."

Rising To The Challenge: The Electronic Frontier Foundation, for one, works "to extend your privacy rights into the digital world" by promoting "the development of privacy-protecting technologies."

comments(18)

Total comments: 18 | Post a Comment

1 of 6

This Challenge

Rank #2  |  Average: 4

Important Crucial

• 
  1
• 
  2
• 
  3
• 
  4
• 
  5
• 
  6
• 
  7
• 
  8
• 
  9
• 
  10

Challenges

loading...

Challenges

UserName

 | Become a fan

Picked These as the Top 5 Slides in the Slideshow

loading...

Top User Slides

← Prev|Next →

 | Become a fan

Picked These as the Top 5 Slides in the Slideshow

loading...

Users who voted on this slide

← Prev|Next →

loading...

Comments

[spytheweb]

02:52 PM on 01/22/2011

In America, making it run faster than 3MBPS while Korea and Japan are working on running at 1GBPS.

[Craig 212]

01:29 AM on 01/23/2011

Wow.

Windstream charges me $50/mo for 3mpbs, and if it's raining I'm lucky to get half that.

[esquilax]

07:58 AM on 01/21/2011

I'd add one to that list; there's next-to-no reason why viruses should be able to travel over the internet. ISPs and router manufacturers should be filtering them out as well.

[Yicheng Li]

10:44 AM on 01/21/2011

See #5. And BTW, it's not that easy to filter out malware. Most of them encrypt themselves or are able to embed themselves into other kinds of traffic. Filtering all network traffic is a tremendously resource intensive thing to do, and too much filtering and you get lots of false positives. Most ISP's do it at the application level, i.e. virus scanners at mail servers.

[LoraineAntrim]

07:07 AM on 01/21/2011

Communication drives human interactions on and off the Internet. In off-line conversations, we don't need to store any of our interactions, but on the Internet the amount of information we must keep is staggering. Internet challenges for the future, whether with the current web model or with cloud computing, will revolve around storage. Loraine Antrim

[jabailo]

06:38 AM on 01/21/2011

So much of this is based on a continuation of the current "web" model; however, with Cloud computing, we revert back to server hosted user sessions.

Completely different set of issues.

[Prateek Panchal]

04:44 AM on 01/21/2011

Neutrality was a great point made...... It does really is very important and stiff challenge.

Thanks for sharing.

http://www.thetechmagnet.net/sony-bdp-n460.html

[Moder8tion]

11:43 PM on 01/20/2011

I'd hate to say it but I think internet business should be taxed. This is the only time you will hear me ask for a tax. They are competing with brick and mortar businesses that are taxed to death. I love to buy things online without tax but it doesn't seem fair. Perhaps we should reduce the taxes of the brick and mortar stores... I really don't know.

[rmaenza]

09:39 PM on 01/20/2011

The biggest problem will be the networks, there are so many people that use mobile web apps that it is getting bogged down and it will only get worse the more people are buying smart phones.
mainstreethost

[Thom Binding]

04:31 PM on 01/20/2011

This post assumes we will use the internet mostly on laptops and desktops. That simply is not the case. Mobile has already begun to take over in terms of web use. So with all that web use on our mobile networks, and content becoming richer and in turn heavier, the biggest challenge will be bandwidth. Mobile networks already cap data on smart phones and have strict fair usage policies, however the average mobile user will soon demand full HD video on their mobiles. Mobile networks will struggle to keep their infrastructures capable of delivering what the latest handsets and apps demand.

[esquilax]

07:50 AM on 01/21/2011

HD video on mobile? What is the point of that?

[RedDogBear]

01:08 PM on 01/20/2011

I think the biggest threat to the Internet as most of us love it is corporate and Astro-Turf influence (by that I mean groups such as those funded by the Koch brothers that pretend to be grass roots but are really fronts for corporate interests). A great example of what is happening can be seen if you try to google gun control issues. The results are flooded by NRA and other pro-gun propaganda. You have to really dig to find articles that actually reflect reality.

[sammyspade]

12:31 PM on 01/20/2011

Protecting Privacy: Absolutely not going to happen. This battle is over.
Modernizing Copyright Laws: One would hope, but media conglomerates have been pretty successful here with travesties like DMCA.
Ensuring Net Neutrality: I don’t think this is a big a deal as people make it out to be, but it seems to be moving in the right direction. If Net Neutrality is a solution to a non-existent problem, so be it.
Maintaining the Open Web: I don’t even know what this means, and I’m a tech guy.
Strengthening Internet Security: It’s a cat and mouse game. Security will improve, and hackers, phishers, and spammers will get more sophisticated.
FWIW, I think the biggest challenge for the internet is for mobile operators to build out capacity quickly enough.

[RedDogBear]

01:15 PM on 01/20/2011

I hate most of the stuff written about Net Neutrality. The fact is I think from a purely technical standpoint the ability to assign various priorities to packets based on where they come from or what they are doing would be very beneficial. For example I download a lot of podcasts to watch later. But I also watch a lot of video on demand. I've got a fairly good connection but right now I never download and watch VOD at the same time. The download just interferes with the VOD too much and makes it uneven and pause too much. If I could set the priority of the download so that it was strictly in the background when the VOD didn't need the bandwidth it would be more convenient.

Having said all that though I disagree with you that Net Neutrality is just a "solution to a non-existe­nt problem". Strictly speaking you are right there is no problem yet, but its one of those things that once the genie gets out of the bottle it will be impossible to put back. As much as I think non-neutrality makes sense from a tech perspective I do completely agree with the net activists who don't trust the Comcasts of the world to not abuse the capability so that their favored content gets through at a much faster rate.

[jsarets]

05:39 PM on 01/20/2011

You make a reasonable point about streaming media, but there is also a powerful counterargument.

Streaming video is the most commercially lucrative data service, with various opportunities from network operators to align their business models with media producers and advertising vehicles. Network operators have a clear profit motive to prioritize streaming media, which due to its substantial bandwidth demands can easily crowd out other applications.

Even if the prioritizing were somehow reserved for users to configure, there is still a resource starvation problem for any data links that aren't set to the highest possible priority level.

No, I think we need to make sure that all data links have equal access to bandwidth and/or spectrum regardless of user, protocol, format, or application, and the streaming media problems have to be addressed from the opposite direction.

Instead of pausing, rebuffering, or dropping numerous frames when insufficient bandwidth is available, streaming media protocols should be designed to automatically fall back to the maximum streaming resolution on a frame-by-frame basis (or multiples thereof).

The protocol should transmit the data required to display one or more frames at minimum resolution as its own packet and then send a series of additional packets that incrementally enhance it to full resolution.

Instead of dropping frames, the player drops the higher-resolution packets and sends small packets back to the server to adjust the transmitted level of resolution for network performance as it may change over time.

The proper approach is for streaming media to adapt to the resource constraints of a neutral network shared by many different types of traffic rather than to sacrifice the over quality of service on the network to address a lack of flexibility in streaming media protocols.

[esquilax]

07:52 AM on 01/21/2011

QoS technology already exists for this. You describe a local system problem, not a problem with the internet per se.

[5mith]

03:39 PM on 01/20/2011

1. Privacy - its an illusion. If the government wants to know, they will find out. FCC regulations on all telecommunication hardware and all that.
2. Copyright Laws - RIAA... enough said. They wont change cause they want the money.
3. Net Neutrality - Its dead. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/al-franken/the-most-important-free-s_b_798984.html
4. Open web Standards - Great as long as the net is equal for everyone.
5. Internet Security - They say its unhackable... several months later its hacked. As you said, cat and mouse.

The Internet was originally invented to share information, so its a strange idea to try and stop it from doing what it was originally intended to do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steal_This_Film