The Road to Hell is Paved With Good Inventions
A Parallel Internet
It’s being reported that a new method of transmitting web data has been developed.
Times Online: “The internet could soon be made obsolete. The scientists who pioneered it have now built a lightning-fast replacement capable of downloading entire feature films within seconds.
“At speeds about 10,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection, “the grid” will be able to send the entire Rolling Stones back catalogue from Britain to Japan in less than two seconds.”
Sounds great! But this part worries me.
“That network, in effect a parallel internet, is now built, using fibre optic cables that run from CERN to 11 centres in the United States, Canada, the Far East, Europe and around the world.”
Why isn’t it compatible with the existing ‘net? To hear that CERN of all orgs has violated net neutrality, what is the world coming to!? And with a creepy name like “The Grid”… I smell a rat!
The Network is the Computer
Like RFID, this technology may not be as benign as promised.
Wikipedia: [Grid computing] also provide[s] a means for offering information technology as a utility for commercial and non-commercial clients, with those clients paying only for what they use, as with electricity or water.
They are talking about your actual processor; your hard drive; your data and applications. Your computer would become a client terminal with a “grid” connection that would be able to perform only those functions you have paid to access.
With the government openly spying on political dissidents in America while busily building camps in which to incarcerate them, how long before centralized computing drives another nail in the coffin of freedom? Before we have to scan our RFID chip each time we log in?
Time to Surf
On the bright side, the Grid will also put people out of work. This will give them lots of extra time to spend on the super-fast internet.
Grid Computing Planet: Fundamentally, Carr argued, the rise of computing utilities similar to electric companies would allow businesses to concentrate resources on the reason they’re in business in the first place.
He said small armies of troubleshooters are conducting the same tests on the same equipment to produce the same results all across the country, everyday.
Whereas the electrification of industry led to a boom in industry that created a huge and prosperous middle class, utility computing threatens to reverse that demographic transformation by hollowing out the mid-section of the technology economy, creating a “digital elite.”
As a technology freak it’s hard for me not to be excited about the possibilities of this news, but as a conspiracy freak it’s even harder not to be suspicious. It doesn’t seem like this is universal good news for true internet fans.
Stay tuned, loyal readers, for further developments…
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