Before you cash in your pension to invest in the semantic web, you might want to read this piece on the BBC about a survey which claims the internet needs £66bn spent on it to prevent it all slowing down to the extent that we’ll all be back on 56k dial-ups.
US analyst firm Nemertes Research predicted a drastic slowdown as the network struggles to cope with the amount of data being carried on it. Such gridlock would drastically affect how people use the web and could mean the next Google or YouTube simply doesn’t get off the ground, it said.
Just as I was starting to panic about my career choices I saw that the report was “part-funded by the Internet Innovation Alliance which campaigns for universal broadband in the US”. That would be a body whose interests are helped by the report then… I noted with interest The Internet Innovation Alliance’s members include telecoms companies. Surely it’s within their power to invest this money and sort out the problem now?
The ever wonderful Register (“Biting the hand that feeds IT”) has a nice take on the British dimensions of this.
