The Internet, Good Or Bad?

What is the future of the Internet, that question has been asked quite frequently over the last couple of years. The chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt was asked that question and his answer seems at first glance to say it is going to disappear and there have been headlines to that affect, but is that really what he meant? I think, after reading his comments, he was saying it was going to get so pervasive in every aspect of our daily lives we would not notice it anymore and just take everything it did for granted. This is not the same as disappearing and as a matter of fact it is almost the opposite. The Internet would be taking over our lives. Every device we have and those which are not yet invented might someday be connected to the Internet and if it ever went down, we might be lost. It is amazing how far the Internet has come since it was invented. I remember the days when you had a phone modem and it took an entire night to download a software program and sometime the connection would be broken and you would have to try all over again the next day. People didn’t use the Internet for streaming video, it couldn’t handle it.

Someday our life may be in the hands of medical devices controlled by programs streaming over the Internet. The machine may have all the medical knowledge amassed by mankind particular to what its function is. If it is a self-controlled surgical device it may be able to tap into the data put online by the greatest surgeons of our time and use this data to improve its own functions. One of the greatest uses for medical devices is inevitable, a medical computer which will be able to diagnose whatever the symptoms of the person indicate in a far more accurate way than a human doctor because it will have access to every symptom known to man. It might even print out a list of diseases with the list in order of the most probable making it much easier to cure a person. On top of all this once we learn exactly how cancer works it may be able to cure us right on the spot with some sort of injection of nanobots or medicine designed for our individual bodies.

The Internet could also have a dark side. There has been a lot of talk about implanting chips into humans. Some of these chips control drugs which are administered at certain times. Other chips perform all sorts of different medical functions, then there are the chips of the future which are being discussed which would give people access to all sorts of data without them have to go to a university to learn. These are the chips which seem to possess the most potential for harm. If the chips are capable of being updated over the Internet, or are in constant contact with the Internet and the information is on a sort of cloud device, it might be possible someday to take over a person’s mind and get them to do things they would not normally do. Think about this, you control a person and get them to commit a crime and then release them. It may be possible someday to have them not even remember what they did.

The Internet could be used in such a way in the future that it would not be able to be shared equally by everyone. Today it is said about 40% of the world’s population have Internet access, but this is growing and someday more people will have it than not. The question is will it ever get so controlled that not all of us will be able to avail ourselves of what is on it? Remember the people with power are always looking for way to continue to gain more power. Knowledge is power and controlling this knowledge is something some people would like to do. We see this already every time the NASA site turns off its space cameras because something goes in front of them they don’t want us to know about. Yes this is government interference, but collecting data and keeping it from us but not from some of the rich and powerful people and companies is not beyond happening. Let me give you an example of what I am talking about. Science is working on some kind of anti-ageing formula. Let’s imagine they discover it, do you think the rich and powerful would want all of us to get it? Of course not. They would keep this information from us if they could and make sure it wasn’t available on the Internet. Many of these people have said publically they believe there are too many of us on the planet.

There is a lot of work going on with frequencies. There is a belief in science that frequency controls everything and that is what keeps atoms together allowing them to form into matter and if we change their particular frequency matter would fly apart. Other frequencies can cause us pain and cause all sorts of other problems for us. What if some power wanted to control us and could broadcast certain frequencies customized to a particular person to control them or used to control all of us so we might work for low wages without complaining and not care about our health and such. Could our brains be controlled by frequencies sent out over the internet if we all had chips in our bodies?

There seems to be almost no limit to what the future Internet might be able to do and this bring me to a question often thought about but not in the context I am about to mention. Could the Internet become aware? I am asking if someday could the Internet with it access to billions of computers actually develop an intelligence? Can you imagine that someday the Internet might be telling us what to do? It is a possibility. It could connect so many computers together that the sheer number would allow it to have the most powerful computer intelligence on the planet at its disposal. Technically it would be the computers controlling things, but each computer in the net would only act like one brain cell and the Internet would be the thing bringing them together much as a human body holds the brain together.

The Internet of the future might be a great thing, but it also might be a fearsome thing spying on us at every turn and taking action against us if it doesn’t like what we are doing. Now is the time to put in safeguards and get the treaties signed which will be needed for such a worldwide endeavor.