(Music)
I will tell you a story.
The story began some 40 years ago
beyond the ocean.
It begann in a computer lab,
where a scientists team tried to build a new type of computer network
that had never existed before.
The name of this network, this project, was ARPANET.
And it started small,
by interconnecting three computers.
The project was successful
and ten years later it looked like this:
200 interconnected computers.
Ten more years and there were 300 000 computers
This is the network that we know nowadays as Internet.
The network began to be a commercial success at that time,
It started to be used by a large number of users
and some 10 years ago the network looked like this
There are amazing
200 million nodes in this picture.
It cannot even be distinguished
what is a node and what is not.
This is the real map of the Internet from that time.
There is something interesting in all these pictures, from the engineering,
but also from a general viewpoint.
It is the thing that is not there.
The network has no center.
There is no place that intermediates all the communication,
There is no telephone exchange
where all the wires would end.
This feature of the Internet is partially determined by its original design.
ARPANET was an army project.
The goal of ARPANET was to create a computer network
that can endure failures,
that can survive bombing,
that can work even if its significant parts are out of service.
But this design
has also other interesting features.
For instance, as this network has no center,
it is very difficult to eavesdrop.
It is very difficult to subvert the communication.
And it is very difficult to censor it.
Let's see how the Internet really works.
Let's assume that Alice wants to send an e-mail to Bob
As the first thing Alice passes the message
to her mail server,
the message then passes through the network
following the shortest, the most efficient path.
If there is a failure,
the message routes around it.
If Bob's server is not available at the moment,
the message will wait for him.
Then, Bob the connects to his server,
downloads and reads the message.
The interesting part is that
this communication is not controlled
by any specific organization.
In principle, one can say that every one of us owns a bit of the Internet,
directly or indirectly.
Every one of us controls a little piece of this network.
That means that there is no specific organization that owns it,
yet each of us is actually a kind of owner.
When many people communicate, the paths form a structure like this,
There is a large number of possible communication paths,
and every one of them under the control of a different entity.
It is – so to speak – a kind of organized chaos.
However, the situation has lately started to change somehow.
People do not use their own mail servers to communicate,
their communication goes roughly like this:
When Alice communicates with Bob,
she passes the message to her favorite Internet giant
and Bob receives the message from the same Internet giant.
Thus the majority of the communication passes through a single node,
It is not distributed, it is not spread across the Internet.
Everything is centralized into few big and powerful nodes.
When too many people communicate, the picture is quite different from the previous one.
Most of the communication passes through a single node.
It is very easy for that node to follow the communication,
analyze it, eavesdrop, manipulate, censor, filter it.
In short, to do almost anything that the controller of the central node wants to do.
For the electronic mail, the situation is not that bad.
the e-mail is an open system.
It means that if anyone decides to
build his own server in his living room,
he is free to do it, connect it to the system
and he goes on with the communication.
So, if a few of fools want to communicate outside of the Internet giant's control
they can always do it.
They are not excluded from the communication system, everything will in principle work.
But, this is all different when it comes to social networks.
Social networks are not built like that.
Social network are closed systems
and it is very difficult to connect to them by other means.
Thus, regarding social networks, there are only two options for the fools:
either they become outside of the communication,
or they accept the rules dictated by a favorite Internet giant.
What can be done if you don't like this situation?
In fact, our options are quite limited at the moment.
Though, one general advice I can give you is
Work on preserving your autonomy
Do not sell it cheap. Do not give it up easily.
When it comes let's say to e-mail
it may be better to use smaller, local providers where you have some influence,
rather than to use Internet giants over which you have almost no influence.
So, what is the future of the Internet?
Will the Internet remain the public, distributed network that is very difficult to control,
as it was the case over the last 40 years?
Or will the Internet centralize and get under influence of several giant corporations?
Obviously, nobody can predict the future now.
But one thing is clear: The future of the Internet
depends largely also on us.
Thank you.
(Applause)