technology

The internet is an evolving technology. The technology we effortlessly use today is the result of decades of work and investigation by thousands of people from all over the world. But the project is far from finished. People are still thinking of ways to improve and perfect the ultimate communication medium we call the internet.

Most of us believe the blockchain was a major milestone. It will have long lasting consequences we still cannot envision. Yet, we will make an effort to try and imagine how the internet of the future will be.

The first and most notable change is taking place right now, and we call it “the internet of things”. We used to access the internet from our computers exclusively, but not anymore. In a very near future, internet will be completely ubiquitous. Smart cars, smart houses, smart public lighting will be an everyday thing (even more so).

Also, blockchain will provide a decentralized internet, where users can interact with each other without the need for a third party. Any person, standing anywhere in the world, will be able to communicate, buy, sell and trade assets with someone across the ocean, without knowing each other, in a trustless environment, since all information is being verified by independent nodes of the network and stored safely in a decentralized ledger.

So far, the internet we know and love is a network of information. Information has been reproduced and distributed freely since the creation of the web. And to pay the bills, the internet has relied mostly on an advertising-based model. Therefore, the few large corporations that run the most effective ad-networks are the ones that control most of the value of the internet (and not the people creating the content).

This raises many issues, not the least of them being the concentrated power that few people have, their ability to act as censors on the internet, and the fact that content creators depend on middle-men to distribute their creations (while not getting properly compensated).

NFTs were born from the internet to solve precisely these problems. They are going to redefine ownership online, and the internet will no longer be a network of information, but also of valuable digital assets. When a content creator uploads an NFT, he will be able to connect with other users directly, without the need of a middle man, and getting paid in cryptocurrency, without any third parties taking a share of his profits.

Imagine all these elements combined and you can start picturing how the internet of the future will look like.