Much like a wide eyed child looking at the world through an innocence adults have long lost we look upon the Internet that, while it has its dark and dangerous areas it is something that is so ingrained in our society we believe we will never be without it. More and more of our lives are intertwined with it in one way or another and businesses are slowly counting it as an integral part of their existence.

Even though the Internet is very much like that wide eyed child, it is being forced into adulthood by events and people without first learning how to protect itself. Like that fragile crystal wine glass in a china shop it is always in danger of being destroyed by the raging bull of corporate greed. The Internet as we know it today is a lot more fragile than we realize and in ways that seem to have so easily been glossed over by those that want more and more of us living the connected life.

As much as those of us from the rest of the world may not like to agree the Internet is U.S. centric and as such anything done in the U.S. that touches on the Internet will trickle down through the web to the rest of us. Two areas where this interference would have the most impact is Net Neutrality and Taxation.

For those countries that still have to deal with monopolistic telcos that still enforce caps on their users the issue of Network Neutrality may not seem that important. The rest of us however who have enjoyed a relative unencumbered use of the Internet the idea that Network Neutrality would ever be a thing of the past is just unthinkable. Well unless you put those rose colored glasses down you will be in for a rude shock within the next 4 years.

With the on-going re-conglomeration of U.S. telcos and cable providers this issue is being raised over and over by their lobbyists in the halls of Congress. Even though the current status of Network Neutrality appears to have been sanctified for the time being you can be assured that it is a subject that the telcos and cable companies will be whispering in the ears of politicians again soon. The companies involved don’t want it because it hurts their profits; which to them is more important than our right not to be gouged.

Being gouged is something we have come to expect when dealing with corporations and governments and up until now the governments have taken a back seat to their partner in crime on the web. This will change should the move to increase large scale taxation of money made via the web happen. Sure we have more and more state level governments trying to implement this but until now it has been spotty; but Second Life real estate and World of Warcraft gold mining may change this.

These two forces however, pale in comparison to a much more basic force that could have a worldwide effect on not just the Internet; but because of our ever entangled net-lives it could throw our daily lives into a disruption we might not be able to cope with. This effect and its repercussions was highlighted over the holidays by the earthquake that left much of Asia in the dark.

Of the seven pipes that connected it to North America six were severed; of which three were backup pipes. People and businesses were without the Internet, email access and in some cases without phone access. Business scrambled to work around the problem but in most cases because the Internet has become such an integral part of how they work they too were in the dark.

Mother Nature doesn’t care about the Internet; nor does she care whether we can get our newest emails, but her actions do show us just how precarious our grasp on the infrastructure really is. It shows that any number of environmental; or human, events could break our tenuous hold over an ever increasing traffic of human business and knowledge. While the effects of such a break are generally unknowable in any detail what is known is that in general is that our day to day lives during that time would be a jumbled confusion with some feeling the effects more than others.

While individuals would fare better if such things were to happen business is another matter altogether different and will grow exponentially more dangerous as time goes by. The reason for this is the increasing push to have businesses use the web and web applications for their core business operations. After all this is the whole premise behind Web 2.0 and what its success is predicated on.

Any business that believes that by webifying their operations throughout is a solution that is good for all; not to mention increasing profit margins, is living in a make believe world and could be a decision that could have disastrous repercussions. These repercussions and potential failings at a root level aren’t talked about by proponents of Web 2.0 as it would hurry the demise of their modelless businesses.

This irresponsibility harms only the users in the long run as we build up expectations that the Internet is infrastructurely  safe. In reality the Internet is still a baby and while we may wrap a security blanket around ourselves when we talk so much about server security we are ignoring that babe in the woods that all this connectivity springs from. As with the baby our global web infrastructure lives a fragile life at the beck an call of Mother Nature.

Sure we can deal with the man made threats to our Internet but we are reliant on those at the nexus to ensure that our cyber life blood flows safely. Until that time when we can be shown than this is being done without regard to greed and profit businesses and people would do well to remember this new fragility that our cyber world exists in.

Conversation Tags: Internet, Web 2.0, network neutrality, infrastructure, safety, taxation