Ahh good old Marty McFly.
Who would have thought that going back and forth between the past present and future would create so many funny and interesting problems?
Sadly, life does not mimic Hollywood; who does not want a DeLorean time machine the runs on banana peels? But Marty McFly’s antics prove a point. Progress requires us to learn from our past mistakes in order to prevent problems in the future.
Take today’s Internet for example, Web 2.0, the Social Internet, has proved a boon to adoption of the Internet taking it from the fringes to the mainstream of society. The Internet has become so ubiquitous as a method of communication and data sharing that access is muted as a basic human right in places like the United Nations.
All this progress comes at a cost as the Social Internet has become a tool for dis-information and exploitation to such a scale that it threatens democracy and the very fabric of the connected society it helped create.
Social media and the Cloud have taken a big bite out of the hands that feed them, their users, and created a backlash that threatens to restrict the principles upon which the Internet was based. The freedom to communicate and share information freely and securely without influence from anyone.
I am sure if Marty McFly had his way, he would jump in the DeLorean and go back to the past to change a few things in the present to make a better future for all of us on the Internet. Over the next few posts I will attempt to plot a course from the present to the future using technology from the past.