Spécialement pour Autrans 2006, Alvin Toffler et Thomas Johnson ont réfléchi sur l'Internet dans dix ans

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LE MONDE DE L’INTERNET AUJOURD’HUI ET DANS DIX ANS

Discussion on the Future Enabled by the Next Internet

Between WhosWho/AlvinToffler and WhosWho/TomJohnson Toffler Associates

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Tom Johnson: Alvin, the longest running annual conference on the Internet in France is held in a charming village of Autrans in the Vercors mountains. This year Autrans 2006 will be discussing the “World of the Internet Today and in Ten Years.” Our discussion should build on that theme and look at the future internet in a larger context, what might the Internet do to civilization in the future?

Alvin Toffler: In ten years we can expect not only the widespread use of VOIP we are going to see the internet plus. Add all the audio, add all the video, and add all the systems for accessing information. That’s just the beginning of the internet.

In 10 years we will also see the division of the internet. We’ll see different systems, a shift in language dominance and political limits in part of the system, not to mention different limits on intellectual property use. So there is plenty to keep us busy, extending and transforming the internet into something much more powerful. Beyond that, if we look out twenty or thirty years, we’ll see layers and layers of networks, some overlapping, non-overlapping and eventually wired into our biologies, or individual human biologies and perhaps our human brains.

We haven’t begun to see the main impacts of the Internet. The Internet is still in its primitive phase. It will impact social, political, and cultural aspects of society. Think about political implications for society. We saw in the last US presidential election the use of the Internet to raise huge sums of money for campaigning. This shocked the political establishment. One can imagine the implications of Internet communication and the increasing flexibility and reach. It is happening already and will continue to affect additional countries. China is an example, a country that is not accustomed to having their citizens talk to each other. We are going to bombard people in other countries with our thoughts.

People of the world say that the election of the US president is really the election of the world president. Some people ask, “Why can’t the world vote?” and the world would most likely vote for a different person than US citizens.

I can imagine that the future US or French election thousands of emails bombarding citizens with propaganda. Much of this could come from other countries, China, Russia, and even other small countries.

The idea of people interfering into the elections of other nations is hardly new. Americans of Italian decent did this en mass as far back as the 1948 Italian election in an effort to beat back the communist party. Chinese Americans targeted and support the Tiananmen Square protest of 1989. But now the messages can come with audio and video and can be precisely nichified or targeted to the views of individual voters.

Alternatively, hidden behind the propaganda may be foreign companies that promise hidden money or “special prices” to the family that votes for the candidate they prefer – assuming the companies can tap voting machines and confirm each vote. Or, we may see fake emails pretending to be from family members in some Diaspora promising to increase or withhold remittance moneys in return for the correct vote.

When Chinese speak about the Internet, I can imagine the military becoming more powerful and effective. This is true for all countries, but one can imagine the Internet can be used also as a counterforce in purely domestic politics.

Tom Johnson: I would imagine a non-government organization (NGO) could be the first to set up a world vote. An NGO with reach that enables a semi-legitimate global vote on candidates or policies could swing elections. This would have a huge impact.

Alvin Toffler: This will affect global power relationships.

Tom Johnson: The enabling power of internet technology is growing exponentially, but so are other technologies. In Future Shock you talked about biology and cloning. Is there a cross pollinating impact between biology and the Internet?

Alvin Toffler: As we analyze the future we must analyze the convergences of technologies. We do not simply get linear extrapolations of single technologies. We need to take internet technologies and look at its intersection with bio tech, nano scale operations, genetics, and look at the big changes as a result. The big question is how ready are we as people to handle the change created.

Tom Johnson: Good point, for I believe that the Internet could provide solutions for the dependence on fossil fuels and the reoccurring oil crisis. Not just enable new energy sources, the supply side, but transform the demand side. The internet can change the demand for energy by enabling people to work from home, being able to communicate will let us move work to the people. But that has to be combined with sensible government and company policies encouraging internet enabled work at home.

Alvin Toffler: Commuting to work is the single most anti-productive thing a worker can do. It is not just wasteful, it is specifically wasteful of energy.

Tom Johnson: There is truly an opportunity to substitute the physical highway for the information highway and solve the energy problem in the next ten years.

Alvin Toffler: The attack on the energy problem will be on both sides. Pulling together both sides creates optimistic possibilities.

Tom Johnson: Regarding optimistic possibilities, what are your thoughts on the internet and poverty? Can bio-technology, information, and the Internet converge to make major changes?

Alvin Toffler: It is often said that computers do not help solve poverty, but this is not correct. These conclusions are reached because analysts are only looking at first effects not secondary consequences. For example millions of people are moving out of the very worst poverty because of the invention and use of computers, the internet and other technologies.

We refer to this in our book, Revolutionary Wealth. As technology began to advance and began to move the US toward a knowledge based economy the US began to produce computers and contracted component production to Japanese and then Japan moved up to higher levels and started contracting lower tech production to Korea, Taiwan, and others simulated the rise of the NICS - newly industrialized countries. This lead to massive increases in employment and the transfer of large peasant populations into manufacturing all of which raised standard of living to those affected.

Tom Johnson: What will happen in the future ?

Alvin Toffler: We are on the way to the $100 laptop and then the $50 laptop. Eventually they will be even cheaper. What we are going to see is the enormous spread of the PC or other versions of computing and the internet just as we have seen the spread of cell phones in Africa, an area containing many of the most poverty ridden countries in the world. The idea that technology is irrelevant to the economic development of the poorest regions is simplistic especially if we consider convergences and what might be called “side effect” technologies.

Technologies are being developed for purposes other than poverty eradication and agriculture. However many of them have secondary uses or are convertible to forms appropriate to agriculture.

Work is going on to create foods that are more nutritious and require fewer inputs. The main issue for “hyper agriculture” and the hunger problem is that of productivity. But poverty is often not an issue of low productivity, but an issue of inadequate infrastructure for transporting and storing agricultural products. We are going to see tremendous changes in this infrastructure. This will help us raise millions more people out of terrible conditions they now suffer.

Tom Johnson: The future internet world won’t be just people to people, but people to machine, machine to people, machine to machine, huma-bots to robo-human. Today there are 500 billions of chips in the world, that’s nearly one hundred per person. At the rate we’re infusing chips into the world, about 100 billion per year, this will grow thousands fold in the internet enabled future. Interconnected machines and changes in the fundamental sharing of information will transform industries.

Alvin Toffler: Yes. And add to this explosion in sensor technology. Our body consists of millions of sensors. As our body parts interact there are millions of sensors that keep interactions in sync. Our society will have a far higher degree of more diverse sensors, with even more minute sensors at the nano level, and we are going to have an enormous increase in how sensors are organized and how they interact. Not just in biology, but organizational interactions will be affected.

We know that one of the great causes of high costs of health services is the inadequacy of information services. We are going to have sensors attached that file our electronic information with a constantly running survey of the body, not just with 5 or 10 critical variables, but with hundreds of interactions. Sensors will transform the entire health system.

Packing shipments, products on store shelves, and other uses all are leading to a prominent industry for sensors in the future. We have a ton of work already going on. The US understands this, but other countries are not picking up that it is not just technology, but a whole new industry that needs to be financially and economically examined.

Tom Johnson: What are some of the issues related to policy, culture and religion?

Alvin Toffler: We might be heading towards religious wars. Not between Islam and the west, but a war between societies over the limitations on certain technological developments. Several decades in the future we will see rumblings of religious battles over stem cells and we see science being dangerously attacked on all sides.

We don’t need more science. We need better science.

There will be giant collisions regarding what you can and what you can’t do with neuro science. What can we do to the human brain? And potentially how can it be wired to the Internet? There are many profound issues.

Cloning is a major issue, particularly when defining what is permissible. I believe that humans will be cloned and it doesn’t matter which countries say no if one country says yes.

A political question is: will clones have the same rights as other humans? These will become divisive collisions in country after country. We are moving to the redefinition of the human species. It is legitimately frightening for many societies. Current human beings could be looked upon in the future as primitive creatures.

Tom Johnson: These engineers and scientists are our bright leaders.

Alvin Toffler: Let me talk frankly about Europe. Relatively speaking Europe is falling behind in research and development. This will continue as more countries – countries we don’t usually think of as strong in science – develop their own science base and devote more resources to research and development. Thousands of new scientists will be educated each year and most will not be either European or American.

Certain French intellectuals have had a negative role to play in Europe’s scientific standing because of being deeply anti-scientific. These movements are losing the power that they had, but are still significant and we have generations that have been raised to think science is evil.

Louis Pasteur was presented as a hero when I grew up. Hollywood made them heroes. Now in the movies and in university classrooms scientists are seen as villains, threats to humanity. There is a growing social, cultural, and religious attack on science.

(c) 2006, Toffler Associates

(Alvin Toffler and Thomas Johnson are co-founders of Toffler Associates, strategic advisors to governments, companies and nonprofit organizations. Their Web site is http://www.toffler.com/)

Toffler Associates 302 Harbor’s Point, 40 Beach Street Manchester, MA 01944 Phone: (978) 526-2444 Facsimile(978) 526-2445 tofflerassociates@toffler.com