Week 4: Kevin Kelly’s The future of the Internet – The next 5000 days

For our week 4 assignment we have been asked to blog about Kevin Kelly’s Video ‘The future of the Internet – The next 5000 days’ and asked to discuss two aspects of the talk that I found most Interesting.

Kelly explores many of the ideas around the internet – “One Global Machine”. He speaks about this machine being one of the most reliable ever made, with zero downtime, uninterrupted since its existance and with over 100 billion clicks per day (Picture 1). I have never thought about the internet in this manner it is so vast and the huge power it has today. “55 Trillion links between all the webpages in the world” He explains everything in a relative way comparing the internet to a human brain introducing the idea of “The machine today = one human brain” but the human brain is not doubling in power every two years, “In 30 years time the machine = 6 billion human brains” and will exceed humanity in processing power by 2040.
Picture 1

Facts in the video.

The Other aspect I found interesting was the three consequences of the internet
1. Embodiment – Everything being part of the web
2. Re – Structuring – Convergence – Humans are extended senses of the machine
3. Co-dependency – No need to remember any longer just ask the machine

This is all very exciting and Interesting, there is so much to come but also there is quite a lot here already he brings this all in to perspective with this discuss making you think about what is to come, and be aware of it. The internet will become like the alphabet and writing everyone will eventually become dependent on it. I don’t necessarily think this is a bad outcome but people will have to be more trusting with technology, many people still are not trusting of the internet, hopefully this will change with time.

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