You know, I think I’m a terrible blogger. Seriously. If you ask a few other bloggers what their motives are for blogging, you’d probably get answers like “To learn something”, “To share stuff”, “to make money” or “to get famous”.
There’s very little I don’t know that I’d actually like to know. Everything I care about has already been explained to me, and the rest of it is just a distracting sideline. I’m also not the type that feels compelled to share anything. I already have a paying dayjob, and if Paris Hilton is any example, fame is seriously overrated.
The only reasons I really keep a blog is to provide a central platform to which I could aggregate all my other online activities (what little there are), to use as an entry on a signup form, resume or business card, to flex my incredibly atrophied writing muscles occasionally, and to use as an OpenID login.
But occasionally there’s a topic that catches my interest, and I end up thinking it would be a good idea to blog my feelings and opinions about it. This doesn’t happen very often (for reasons I mentioned above), but today, I learned that more and more Internet traffic is flowing around the US, and that the US is actually worried about it.
It was interesting to read that NY Times article, and discover that one of the main reasons it makes the US uneasy is because intelligence agencies no longer have access to the same volumes of information they once did. I wonder if anyone stopped to question why we’re just accepting this as fact? Who gave them the right (that’s what it’s coming across as) to peek into our internet activity?
It’s like one giant phonetap - a phonetap that records much more information about you and your habits, does not require a court order, and isn’t limited to US traffic alone. Big brother, anyone?
The article goes on to point out that the US is becoming weaker in many aspects, that China is a dominant force in terms of numbers of users, that Japan is on a massive growth spree, and that Internet growth in general has been slowed because it has been commoditized. IE, a price has been put on the ability to access and use the internet.
I suppose that’s very evident in South Africa, with Telkom’s monopoly over the industry stifling just about any form of growth. Happily, Neotel’s starting to make headway, even if the first phase involves digging up our pavements:
In the end, this spreading-around of Internet traffic should ultimately prove to be a good thing. Apart from making this one-world machine run a lot faster and more efficiently, it would open the doors for the next phase of Internet design - something I’ve tentatively termed Web 3.5, and which I might even blog about at some point :)
