What tells us about the future online

Be aware of free updates

Just subscribe to Technology Myft Digest – delivered directly to the mailbox.

The underground railway is an undervalued miracle of the world. Invented by private entrepreneurs in London in 1863, who sought to make money carried by suburban passengers to work, it was rapidly spreading around the world. One of the reasons to visit the New York Museum to visit, it not only reminds you of how impressive what the subway was sought (open 1904), but also what achievement all underground railways. Unfortunately, it also gives a sober reminder that progress is not always inevitable. For those who consider the future of another great miracle of the modern world – the open, public Internet – an example of the subway suggests that it may be closer to its peak than we think.

The traveler from New York in 1946 – in the year when his subway reached a peak riding, a figure he never equated – he would find a modern version extremely similar. (I would say that “easy to move”, but of course, the New York subway has never been easily moved.) Since then, the network has not changed significantly: it is simply more gloomy and suffered from decades with insufficient investment in the infrastructure.

In contrast, one-year peers, when he mocked the advertising at the peak, which took place about the lack of 24-hour service in Paris-stretching to beat the records for riding in the 21st century (albeit with the blows to their number of pandemic). As a result, their services continue to grow. At the same time, the traveler in Tokyo, Milan, Paris or London will find many more services and lines than when they started their way, while the one who is in New York will still fight to get from Quee to Brooklyn. Do not understand me wrong, the subway is still a miracle of the world: but it is ultimately a net that has not yet justified its potential.

Why did it happen and what can it be on the Internet? The three things that held back the New York subway also threaten the promises of our Internet network. First, it is innovation elsewhere. Since the heyday of the subway, the cost of owning the car has decreased, and as a result, the competition facing the underground railway became stronger. (Similar story lies in buses throughout England.)

An innovation that threatens the Internet is not a competitor: it is the emergence of new dangerous predators that make it rich. It is much easier to deceive deep features either misinformation, or lose financially with -foring or detecting thefts. The bad news for the Internet is that these innovations are also more difficult to see and avoid. The fraud of all types discharges social trust and makes use of the Internet less and less useful.

This is closely linked to the second thing that held back the subway: a crime. The scale of the problem is often exaggerated but nevertheless, last year there were 10 people Killed in the New York subway. Here, some politicians have worsened the problem: parts of the left has long naive the crime problems, how widely exposed public transport and public cohesion.

Unlike this, the problem of crime on the Internet is not that the administrators do not know this: just ask those who participate in moderation, or in law enforcement, how much it concerns them. But they lack tools to continue fighting an increasingly powerful and difficult threat.

This leads to the third problem for both the subway and the Internet: dysfunctional and inconsistent leadership. Transport to New Yar was damned with one network with several governors: the city and the state did not work together, aggravating the system’s problems.

Similarly, the ability to truly fight a digital crime provides for some international cooperation, which now seems very far from plausible. A frequent complaint I hear from both public and private cybersecurity professionals is that they have successfully found criminals on their address, but the address is in another country. .

This does not mean that we will dwell on the Internet. After all, we still use the New York subway, despite the fact that it is not as big as it should, neither clean nor safe. But those 1946 dream of what will be the subway in the 80 -year -old time. It seems more than likely that there will be the same problem on the Internet in 2105.

Stephen.bush@ft.com