26 October 2019 | New Scientist | 5IN HALF a century, the internet has
transformed society. Billions of us can
connect at the touch of a button. Access
to information, banks, shops and memes
has never been easier. The world has
changed dramatically and continues to
do so in ways we couldn’t have imagined.
As we celebrate the 50th anniversary
of the first message sent across the
precursor of the internet (see page 34),
we salute the ingenuity of the people
who built it, built it to last and built it to
be freely available for all – not least Vint
Cerf, co-author of the rules that run the
internet, who we interview on page 42.
The internet isn’t without downsides.
It has unleashed forces that undermine
things we hold dear. By design, it has
no central authority, and this makes
protecting people online or tackling
misinformation, cyberterrorism orbullying a near-impossible task.
Efforts to wrestle back some sort of
control will determine what the internet
will become. The European Union, for
example, wants its citizens to have more
digital rights. But when it introduced
legislation last year to do this, people
in the EU suddenly found their internet
a little smaller. Rather than changing
their websites to avoid illegally tracking
Europeans, many companies simply
blocked visits from people in the EU.Russia is protecting its portion
of the internet by attempting to
control it: its telecoms companies are
required to monitor and filter internet
traffic. It is also experimenting with
an off-switch to sever its internet
from the rest of the world in the
event of a cyberattack.
China has had extensive internet
censoring infrastructure in place for
years, and its technology firms are
increasingly challenging US tech firms
for market dominance. Many who enter
that market end up self-censoring.
How these developments play
out will shape our future. If the past
50 years have been dominated by
free and open exchanges, the next
50 will be about whether rules and
restrictions actually make the internet,
and the world, a better place. ❚The power to transform
As the internet reaches its half century, we look to what it might become
More than half
of the world's
population is
now connected
to the internetIMAGINIMA/GETTYThe leader
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