Hi -
At a content forum and NANOG in June 2006 I led some discussions
involving predictions for what the Internet might look like in 2010.
What makes this so interesting is that so many perspectives
highlighted so many potential futures that others had not considered.
When you then discuss the implications of such varying futures, again
with a diverse crowd, you end up with a lively discussion and, well,
some potential futures you may not have considered. I've tried to list
some of these predictions from the Content Provider crowd and the ISP
NANOG crowd here.
Content Provider Predictions for 2010
Wow - so many private messages surrounding this. I'll summarize and
group the comments across the predictions below, but first answer some
of the questions I received.
One suggestion was to bury these in a timevault to be opened at NANOG
in 2010. Another suggestion was to bury these where I want the crops
to grow. Thanks for that suggestion.
Of course, predictions are not certain as this person put it: "Unlike
market focus groups which pick the color of the product, the error
rate of groups of humans predicting the future is multiplicative"
Several of you asked who provided the data. These were engineers,
peering coordinators, some Director and VP level folks, network
planners and architects from Content and ISP Companies that you
probably all have heard about of and a handful of those you have not.
There was no glue sniffing involved.
Keep in mind too that to answer the initial question, the events had
to be both *plausible *and* remarkable* to the group assembled around
the table in 2010. I personally think many of these in the list fit
the criteria, but a few of the usual suspects said that they believe
almost none of these things are plausible (Stating this politely).
Below are a couple data points from the field surrounding the
predictions for 2010.
Content Provider Predictions for 2010