This one is going to be a highly speculative post. For this reason, it’s going to be highly opinionated as well.
I believe the internet as it stands today is going to be restricted in the middle-long term future (15-50 years). And this is going to be a good thing.
In its original form, the global nature of the World Wide Web gave us almost limitless freedom to share, to communicate (especially anonymously) and to organise. In a way, it can be seen as an indispensable tool in a globalised world. Politics can change, as it is changing now, but the global internet remains rock solid in its freedom.
Yet, with globality comes the issue of responsibility. If somebody/an entity in a given country does something on the global internet, who is going to make that person/entity responsible for their actions? There is no “internet police”. There is no “internet secret agency”. And just because we consider something illegal in our country, it does not imply we can enforce our laws on another country. That’s not how the global order works.
It is easy for states to oversee “classical media” (print or television for example). You follow up the line where the stuff is coming from and you identify those responsible, thereby enforcing our expected social standards. In an opaque hierarchical structure, this task is already more difficult. Add to the mix protected anonymity and jumbled up communication lines and it becomes even almost impossible. “Somebody, somewhere did something, which hurt us” is a tough trace to investigate. It sounds bad enough, if a society was organised like that — and yet, we allow these things to happen in cyber space.
Allow me a small intermezzo: cyber space; call rooms; online conference; electronic mail. The list of “internetised” equivalents goes on. On a linguistic level we already treat the internet as a “social space”.
Now, our “everyday” “social space” is heavily regulated. The electricity I have in my apartment is standardised; there are rules for the traffic on the street; there are restrictions on what I can express and how I can do that; etc. We did that because it gave us two things: order and stability. Provided, if executed properly — it is a common assumption European societies are sometimes over-regulated in some aspects.
My pointe is: the time will come when the global internet will be governed by national entities, hence ceasing to become “truly” global. That will have a great benefit: people behind services and simple websites will become more accountable for their actions. I believe free societies will still have access to more content than those living in autocratic or totalitarian regimes. Yet, there will be (strict) limitations on what can be done and accessed.
There are some political tendencies which (r)enforce my suspicion. Take social media regulations restricting access of adolescent users. There was also GDPR in Europe telling entities how to deal with its citizen’s data. Totalitarian countries (like China, Russia and Iran for example) have already taken extreme measures of what can be accessed from the inside. Several states in the US have passed bills enforcing a built-in age verification system on closed source systems. Hate speech on social media is illegal in Germany. The way online stores are allowed to operate in the EU and what services they can offer and where is also regulated.
The above examples seem pretty obvious to some. Let me speculate about the future now.
I believe most countries will find a way to block access to some websites entirely easily, especially for political reasons. Other reasons can be multiple ranging from adult content, distribution of illegal content, hate speech or even fake news. I also believe “free countries” will also make use of this power. In case of a well-working democracy, the people will also hold their government accountable for their actions.
My second speculation: the days of globalised IT (especially American) firms are numbered. Today in technology, the issue of monopolies is huge. We cannot simply decouple ourselves from the way some big firms dictate how we should do our everyday business. I believe this will change, once countries will develop a firmer grasp on the internet. There is no a priori reason why some software components of these companies’ products should not be open-sourced after some time. At least the technology our digital infrastructure is based on should be accessible and auditable by independent parties. Trust can only be achieved via transparency; open societies can only trust tech, if they can study it, understand it and publish where it fails freely.
My third speculation: public services will be more and more digitalised. Overall, this will also result in a less anynomised internet, enforcing accountability where needed. I envision a system, where service providers query some data from a public server to allow, restrict or deny access on services. To make this more concrete, here is a hypothetical situation. Let’s say I wish to order alcohol online. For this, I might need to create an account and enter my highly personal credentials (something akin to a credit card number with a password) provided by my local government during check-out. Before accepting my order, the online shop will ask a secure public server, whether I am old enough to buy alcohol. The public server can return “yes” or “no” — there is no need to let the online shop know my exact age. The verification phase will be executed on a secure platform, akin to our credit card purchases online. Now comes the twist: what you have just read, is the 1:1 digitalised version of how we buy our groceries today. I can only buy alcohol if I have my ID with me.
Regulation enforces accountability, gives us security and can give advantage to the disadvanteged. The cost is our individual freedom and our conform. I do believe this is a price worth to pay in balanced societies.
So why treat the internet otherwise? Historical reasons will not cut it.