This is a very self-aware piece, and worth taking in. But here's the buried TL;DR:
* It's going to superficially resemble 2014.
* However, every object in the real world is going to be providing a constant stream of metadata about its environment — and I mean every object.
* The frameworks used for channeling this firehose of environment data are going to be insecure and ramshackle, with foundations built on decades-old design errors.
* The commercial internet funding model of 1994 — advertising — is still influential, and its blind-spots underpin the attitude of the internet of things to our privacy and security.
* How physical products are manufactured and distributed may be quite different from 2014. In particular, expect more 3D printing at end-points and less long-range shipment of centrally manufactured products. But in many cases, how we use the products may be the same.
* The continuing trend towards fewer people being employed in manufacturing, and greater automation of service jobs, will continue.
What got me was advertising is still the monetisation of the internet / of things.
I would assume that because the next major product is going to be data (from pavement slabs !) that it is data that will be monetised - somehow. But I would assume that IP rights become DP - Data Property. And I charge people for use of my data (from my underpants) and they charge me for the analysis of the aggregated data - if we are sensible in a similar manner to internt exchanges now - mostly up balances down.
A "data property" system that gives the majority of people rights over their personal data is never going to be built. We're far more likely to see "data feudalism", in which the systems you require to get by in the world extract your data as a toll for living in the modern world. In return, you get a certain limited amount of security against other*, nastier, agents trying to get at your data. See https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/12/feudal_sec.ht...
(there's an excellent book called "Information Feudalism" on related IP issues)
I produce data, data is produced about me - data seems more like a crop - and crops tend to belong to the owner of the ground they grew in - in the modern case it will be the nation state not the feudal lord - it owns the roads that have the sensors that watch the cars and the underwear. We the taxpayer argue now that our tax money that goes to produce our maps should get our map data for free.
Why should the same open data ideal not apply to data produced from tax funded roads?
I am more optimistic that having achieved democracy we will not throw it away so easily.
"advertising is still the monetisation of the internet / of things"
That works pretty well after only a couple generations of concentration of wealth at the top.
In the long run, during the dark ages or during the Roman Empire era, how many highway billboards were there?
A glance at images.google.com doesn't show much advertising in Bangladesh, or at least it doesn't look like Vegas does today.
It would be wise to come up with an alternative funding model for the internet / internet of things if the former 1st world is moving as fast as possible to the 3rd world model of a couple rich guys having all the money and all the land and all the power, and everyone else gets $1/day for rice 'n beans and some bread 'n circuses.
I'm not trying to make a political point that this is wrong or should be changed (although I agree with that) merely making the point of take existing multi-generational graphs and extend the lines and if you think you're going to "finance the entire internet" by mortgage broker banner ads when the population has no money to spend, you're likely to be horribly disappointed.
Or rephrased another way the likely cause of death of cable TV is not likely to be a superior tech, but a lack of money to buy subscriptions.
I like the idea that advertising represents a healthy society in that there is enough wealth spread about to make ads effective (no point advertising to the destitute)
I was however arguing against using ads to find the internet of things - not sure what will be the business model but ads just do not cut it.
"The continuing trend towards fewer people being employed in manufacturing, and greater automation of service jobs, will continue: our current societal model, whereby we work to earn money with which to buy the goods and services we need may not be sustainable in the face of a continuing squeeze on employment. But since when has consistency or coherency or even humanity been a prerequisite of any human civilization in history? We'll muddle on, even when an objective observer might look at us and shake her head in despair."
He wrote very little about that subject, although there's decent likelihood that will be the issue(together with AI,VR and possibly medical innovation) that will make 2034 very different from out time.
I'd guess because Stross tends to be a very pragmatic / utilitarian sci-fi writer.
We suspect its going to be a thing, but nobody really knows what the death of human employment will mean, or if it will really happen. If it does, its probably much more of a black swan than "the internet of things", but as he noted with cars, sometimes things you discount end up revolutionizing the world, and stuff you thought was a killer, because of short range performance, ends up bland in the long run. Its kind of like stocks, everybody wants to buy FB or Google after they change the world, but its a whole nother story to figure that out beforehand.
You can guess that the death of employment for pay will be a huge event, but to say much more you have to start committing toward one of many possible paths beyond your event horizon. Maybe a revolution as robots steal our jobs, maybe boring and mostly like today, maybe endless freedom to create, or kind of pointless (cause we're all VR slaves or some other such thing)). The slope's there, but we can't see over the hill.
Aside: I dig that the later half reads like a love letter for one of my favourite, and one of the more durable languages out there. Almost 30 years and Perl's still quietly chuggin along.
"Half the shouting and social upheaval on the internet today comes from entrenched groups who are outraged to learn that their opinions and views are not universally agreed upon; the other half comes from those whose silence was previously mistaken for assent."
That seems to imply social media is going to quiet down a lot after things shake out.
I facebooked real hard in '09 or so. Was high traffic but it was an utter waste of time, like no positive effect on my life whatsoever despite a spectacular demand on my time, so I stopped and didn't miss it. Restarted this year because one of my kids is old enough to get an account and wanted to "friend" his dad, so how can I resist? I created a new account (had deleted the old one) and refriended a whole bunch of people and frankly FB is dying in terms of traffic compared to 5 yrs ago. I donno if its paranoia at being data mined or a lack of newness or its just had its time and is now done and over.
During Roman triumphs, a slave would whisper in the ear of the winner that he was only mortal. Someone needs to whisper in the ear of all the social media folks that in the late 70s, 10% of all cars on the road had a CB radio. The CB experience is coming to social media, eventually, like it or not... Or going back a few more decades at one time virtually 100% of home entertainment electronics was based on radio reception...
I must say that I'm almost enjoying more Charlie's blog than Charlie's books :) If you scroll back a bit, there is also a very interesting piece about Scottish independence, with extensive comments: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/06/the-scot...
Having been a child in the 70s and 18 in 1983, the year of Able Archer, I still have the same lurking existential horror (not helped, as Charlie also mentions, by having seen Threads more often than is wise from a peace of mind perspective).
Of course, we can look at North Korea, which has nukes and thumbs it's nose with impunity at the West. And we can look at Ukraine which gave up the nukes it inherited from the USSR in return for a treaty pledging that the West would secure its borders. How's that working out for them?
De Gaulle had it right, which is not something I often say...
He is very insightful. I read ideas of his that I've never seen explored elsewhere. For instance, last year he had one where he speculated on how many human occupational specialties currently exist, I believe he pegged it at 100,000.
That may seem like interesting trivia without contemplation.
"remain in production for decades because there is no prospect of a faster, cheaper better product coming along any time soon."
The future is already here, just unevenly distributed in tech.
My Dad did parallax "basic stamp" microcontroller dev work in the 90s, maybe 80s, that stuff is old... you can buy a pin compatible form today, admittedly for about twice the cost of a ras-pi. The arduino and pi will eventually wipe out the stamp, but people have been saying that for many years now, of course.
As an analog RF EE example, the ne602 chip has been around for decades (oh at least 2 or 3 now) and people today are still shipping new ham radio kits using it, despite its laughable IP3 large signal specs its still "good enough".
Hah. Well, Perl isn't a bad language, it's just past its prime and being outcompeted by other languages. It had a moment where it could have remained relevant but they missed it.
* It's going to superficially resemble 2014.
* However, every object in the real world is going to be providing a constant stream of metadata about its environment — and I mean every object.
* The frameworks used for channeling this firehose of environment data are going to be insecure and ramshackle, with foundations built on decades-old design errors.
* The commercial internet funding model of 1994 — advertising — is still influential, and its blind-spots underpin the attitude of the internet of things to our privacy and security.
* How physical products are manufactured and distributed may be quite different from 2014. In particular, expect more 3D printing at end-points and less long-range shipment of centrally manufactured products. But in many cases, how we use the products may be the same.
* The continuing trend towards fewer people being employed in manufacturing, and greater automation of service jobs, will continue.