Internet : our future

Most of us are on the internet everyday, checking e-mail, doing research, keeping in contact with friends, taking care of finances, ect. But most of us would have a hard time going at least a week without using the Internet. It has become a staple in most of our lives, much like TV and radio. With the fast paced rate of moving technology, it is only going to become more and more of a necessity rather than luxury. With companies like Qwest and Comcast bundling services in what our text book calls “triple play” there are fewer homes choosing not to have internet in their homes. Companies like Comcast are now able to pull one line of either Coax or Fiber that can give you both a 10Mb internet pipe, a full cable TV package and VOIP phone service as well. This is now all down one line where as before this could take up to 3 cable lines. The internet is becoming more and more integrated into our lives everyday though fast passed technology and now with the availability of WEB 2.0 and devices like the iPhone; there are endless possibilities waiting to happen. Since you are already getting the internet everywhere via a cell phone signal soon you will be able to stream radio from the internet to your iPhone into your car stereo or while waiting at the airport you can catch up on your favorite TV series just by connecting to the show’s website. It won’t take long until all TV programming is no longer distributed by over the air, satellite, or cable and instead you will plug in a cat 5e cable into your TV and watch shows on demand whenever you want without devices such as Tivo but by just using the internet. Cable TV, Satellite TV, phone service, radio, could all be a thing of the past with Web 2.0 technology. And with how fast technology is changing and how more and more we rely on the Internet and are demanding more and more integrated packages, devices, and transfer speeds, it won’t be long until many services all combine into one.
We also talked in class about the 3 big internet companies: Yahoo, Google and Microsoft. Microsoft, however, sees a greater opportunity in the internet; they see it as a central main frame that people connect to from their homes rather than actually having a computer. Much like many companies are doing via Networks. They are just give you a monitor, keyboard and mouse and no matter what computer you are at, you can just sign in to a computer and access everything exactly as you would when working at your desk without having to move files onto a network. Now these companies are not quite there but pretty close to it. With having a central main frame computer you could access your computer anywhere in the world without having to have a laptop or run a special configuration on your computer. Weather this actually becomes a reality is dependant on us as the consumer to see it as a good idea, and with more and more people having their main computer as a laptop, I don’t know if it is going to be logical, but Network based systems in workplaces and schools are definitely something we will all see in the future.
As you can see we are just beginning to tap the possibilities of the internet with web 2.0 and networking in major companies are using central mainframes type things right now. Radio and TV stations are streaming content 24 hours a day on the web already but at a low resolution bit rate. Now we just wait for them all to converge together and that will give the Internet a whole new meaning.