The Internet, 2013

The internet in the year 2013 will be vastly different than the internet we know and love today. For one thing, it will probably be much more regulated. Long gone will be the days of tax free shopping, and that “Wild West” feeling. Instead we find the internet replaced with a heavily secured, and monitored version that, thanks to the failure of net neutrality, has been molded into a cable tv like model where users pay depending on the content they want.

Semantic web technologies play a larger role in the web in 2013. Users have tired of entering the same profile information on every new website they decide to join. This fact allowed foaf and other similar formats to amass great popularity throughout the internet. Once a user has created a profile that contains semantic data, it’s a matter of simply accessing the data from other websites.

In order to usher in this new internet age users could be made more knowledge-able so that they would be able to format their semantic data. Web sites could also provide scripts that would format their existing profiles into ways that would work with the semantic web of the future. A few modern day blogs already produce a foaf output that users can utilize.

The internet will be a better place for the typical user. For instance, people will no longer have to worry about the numerous scams they can be subjected to via the web. Spammers will be held more accountable because they can easily be tracked down and dealt with accordingly. Parents wont have to worry about what kind of content their children could be getting into because they can control what control what kind of websites they subscribe to via their monthly bill. However the users that new and loved the old internet will have to be coaxed into embracing these new restrictions.