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The Internet Technology

DNS Inventor Predicts Future of the Internet 281

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i-bet-its-faster-and-has-more-nekkid dept.
afra242 writes "BBC News has an interesting article which discusses what Dr Paul Mockapetris, the creator of DNS, thinks about what the Internet will be in the near future. He states that currently, we are in the Bronze Age of the Internet and phones will be phased out completely, to be replaced by web addresses."
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DNS Inventor Predicts Future of the Internet More

DNS Inventor Predicts Future of the Internet

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  • Bronze Age? (Score:5, Funny)

    by mfh ( 56 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @12:42PM (#9519528) Homepage Journal
    If this is the bronze age of the Intarweb, Slashdotters represent the Beaker People [wikipedia.org].

  • He's predicting what already exists! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Thursday June 24, 2004 @12:43PM (#9519538)
    Now, as head scientist and chairman of Nominum, a DNS management company, he has been reflecting on how the net has grown up.

    The father of DNS and a scientist working at a DNS management company believes that everything will be controlled by a DNS-like system, absolutely unbelievable!

    We have these things called bookmarks... People rarely remember web-addresses as it is. I know that entirely too many people believe their entire "Internet" is their homepage (while working for ATTBI during the @Home changeover I *personally* received several calls from concerned people that their Internet was gone and replaced by this "ATT BY" thing as their homepage had changed from home.excite.com to www.attbi.com). I would venture to say that most people get their information from a handful of sites and don't bother to remember much other than google.com or yahoo.com. I know that I get most of my information from a handful of remembered sites and I consider myself a bit more Internet savvy than the average user.

    "It is quite possible that phone numbers will have disappeared and people will just use menus off their phone. I don't think there is particular value in having them."

    He theorizes something that already exists! So instead of bookmarks for phone numbers we have these things called address books. You look up someone's name in there and you click on it. It dials. Absolutely brilliant. Thanks for showing us the way!

    He's no longer a visionary. He's just pretending to be one. What he did for us changed the Internet from the start. This article on the other hand means nothing as it already exists in popular form.

    • Re:He's predicting what already exists! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Elecore ( 784561 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @12:51PM (#9519658) Homepage
      Sorry, but I don't think you're right. Just because technology exists, doesn't mean it's mainstream. Sure, the ideas are there, but I still look phone numbers up in the phonebook when I have to make calls by dialing the number into my phone. His prediction is that this will change. THAT IS A CHANGE! Sure, VoIP exists now, that doesn't mean somebody who predicts it will completely replace all current phone systems is pretending. I could predict VoIP falls through due to network costs (I doubt it, but it's possible). Just because the technology exists, doesn't mean it's used by everybody.
      • I still enter URL's into the address bar. Doesn't mean that I have to or that it is the easiest. I am just set in my ways and don't use bookmarks for everything.

        No matter what happens there will always be the "first to adopt" and those that hang on to their set ways forever.

        Addressbooks, bookmarks, speed-dial whatever you want to call it are already replacing the standard way of dialing phones. It's nothing "visionary" by putting numbers to names like DNS (something like adding lines to your hosts file
        • No matter what happens there will always be the "first to adopt" and those that hang on to their set ways forever.

          While this may seem true, the evidence just isn't there to support your claim. If that statement were true, we'd have people using hand-crank powered cars right along side the new hybrid ones. Simple preferences can be and are replaced by innovation. Though it doesn't happen overnight. I still know of businesses that don't use computers. Eventually those who are set in their ways die (I'
          • Though it doesn't happen overnight. I still know of businesses that don't use computers. Eventually those who are set in their ways die (I'm simply stating fact, not trying to offend anyone) and are replaced by people that don't remember the things that are now outdated.

            Yeah and your point is what? Eventually people will stop entering in the phone numbers by hand manually and will all use address books. The people that didn't adopt used them forever and died thus ending their ability to use them.
            • We already have a lot of younger people who (from what I have read anyway) can't read an analog clock or write cursive easily. Digital clocks and representations are the norm, along with only reading text and typing more than writing. I also think-can't prove it but think-that calculators are making the ability to do simple math with pencil and paper a lost art as well in the general population.

              I can remember when the teachers made us turn in our slide rules before tests.

              Man, I wish I still had mine, alon
              • Win some. Lose some.

                Overall, methinks progress is actually made, even though it's about 5 visible steps forward and 4 invisible steps backwards.

                I'm old enough to remember when college physics was strictly a sophomore course with calculus as a co-requisite. Reason being that a year of college level math was required prior to attempting calculus. Nowadays, high schools are offering pre-calc and even calculus, so there is at least some improvement, at least in some areas.

                How did the ancient Egyptians build
      • I agree that more convergence will occur. That said, first impression was definitely, "I have a hammer, this must be a nail!" Now if he had stepped up and said, "this convergence needs something much better that the hack that DNS is . . ." I think I might have taken notice.

        (Not to say that DNS is a crap hack, but just that perhaps it is, and perhaps if the creator thought so, then perhaps something would change. I'll stop covering my ass now. :P)

    • He described ideals. You described current attempts at meeting those ideals. You may have menus on your phone for commonly-dialed friends, family, and businesses, but you still had to put in the numbers at least once.
      • And you are going to have to put them in anyway. What the device you are using to dial is just going to magically know the DNS name for the person you want to dial? Sure, remembering whore@teenhotties.com is probably easier to remember than 1-900-HOT-TEENS but still don't see how it's just going to magically appear in your dialing device.

        • Re:He's predicting what already exists! (Score:4, Interesting)

          by mattkinabrewmindspri ( 538862 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @01:03PM (#9519806)
          Do you really think that you'll always have to type in numbers to call someone?

          Eventually, I bet you'll be able to pick up a "phone", say "New York City, Michael Joseph Smith and Mary Ellen Smith", and have it connect you.

          It's not that the device you use will have a database itself. It will probably use something similar to DNS Servers to resolve your words to an address.

          • Re:He's predicting what already exists! (Score:4, Insightful)

            by garcia ( 6573 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @01:04PM (#9519823)
            No, I doubt that will work. Especially when you use that particular example... Working in a field where I deal w/common names on an everyday basis I realize just how awful that would be.

            Sorry but that's not going to work, ever.
            • Not even if it comes back with a list of streets that each possible answer would be on, like when you call directory assistance?
              • IOW, turn a simple 10 second dialing process into an, expensive, time consuming process that would take 60-120 seconds.

                That is just stupid.

              • Not even if it comes back with a list of streets that each possible answer would be on, like when you call directory assistance?

                Quick, think of your best friend's name. Now, quickly, think of the name of the street your best friend lives on.. Couldn't do it? I didn't think so. I don't even know what steet my DAD lives on, and I visit him regularly. I know how to navigate to it but I've never paid attention to the name.

                The only way this would work is if it comes back and says "John Smith, about 6 f

                • Re:He's predicting what already exists! (Score:2, Funny)

                  by Anonymous Coward
                  Quick, think of your best friend's name. Now, quickly, think of the name of the street your best friend lives on.. Couldn't do it? I didn't think so. I don't even know what steet my DAD lives on, and I visit him regularly. I know how to navigate to it but I've never paid attention to the name.

                  I'm guessing that you're not in charge of the Christmas card list then?
          • Nah, I don't see it like that. I see it like a domain name or an email address. You, sir, are now somename@somenetwork.tld. The rest is just implementation details that can be worked out in the protocol.

            Calling from a phone? It'll detect "voice communication requested" and connect you to the person's phone or to their currently-running instance of Netmeeting.

            Sending a text message? It'll detect it as such and send it to wherever that person has indicated they want text messages to go.

            Device independence
        • Whether it's an email address, FQDN, URL, or phone number, IN THE FUTURE (dun dun dun) you will either transfer these from phone to phone or PDA to PDA, or PDA to phone or yada yada yada I'm done enumerating now, and never have to know the number. You will be able to load them into your address book from a web page, too.

          Personally, I would like to see us continue to use phone numbers, but I'd like to see a standard for phones and other devices to load them from a web page. That way you could provide someo

      • They weren't his ideas! He is going off already produced technology and saying "that sounds good, I think that will happen!" What kind of visionary is that?
      • He described ideals. You described current attempts at meeting those ideals. You may have menus on your phone for commonly-dialed friends, family, and businesses, but you still had to put in the numbers at least once.

        Not if they call you first!

        Soon phones will be able to distribute their numbers through IR or wifi or some such crap. Personally, I'm looking forward to this.

    • Re:He's predicting what already exists! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Randolpho ( 628485 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @12:56PM (#9519717) Homepage Journal
      The difference is that telephones are currently on a separate (although admittedly often concurrent) network from the internet. What he's predicting is that, rather than having area codes and phone numbers, people will have telephones that are simply computers connected to the internet with an IP (and perhaps DNS ;)) address. No long distance charges. No local telephone companies charging outrageous prices for using their network.

      Just internet.

      That is a *big* difference from what exists today. Sure, to the average consumer, it will work roughly the same way, but in actual fact, it will be an entirely different puppy.
      • Can't you already do this? There are many websites out there devoted to telephony through the web. They also don't charge any long distance. There really isn;t any big change from that to where we are today. Sure, it may not look like a phone, but a microphone and a pair of speakers is all we have right now. I'm sure someone already has or will develop what looks like a phone that can connect righ tto your USB to have conversations over the web. This is already here!
        • Frankly, I'm not sure. If you mean VoIP, the big thing with that is that it's compatible with the current existing telephone network. Meaning that it will ring a telephone with a telephone number.

          What I'm talking about (and Dr Mockapetris from the way I'm reading the article) is a telephone that is not on the existing telephone network and is instead a node on the Internet.

          If there are companies out there making telephones that are connected to the internet, and not the telephone network, I would *really*
          • Vonage provides you with a glorified router which translates the incoming packets containing voice information to an RJ-11 style plug you can plug your existing phone into. While not the ultimate "IP phone address", the phones in my house are now officially 100% disconnected from the local SBC loop, and all my calls get routed over the Internet, and if you're still on the old phone network, eventually through your provider and then to your phone.

            So the grandparent poster was correct, all this tech already

    • Re:He's predicting what already exists! (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I know that entirely too many people believe their entire "Internet" is their homepage... I would venture to say that most people get their information from a handful of sites and don't bother to remember much other than google.com or yahoo.com.

      You mean there is more to the internet than Slashdot?

    • Re:He's predicting what already exists! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by GPLDAN ( 732269 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @02:14PM (#9520636)
      I think you don't understand what he is saying. He is talking about the elimination of the E.164 standard. There will be directory systems that underly systems like Mobile IP. [computer.org]

      I think you fail to understand the kind of shift that will happen when international dialing codes and area codes simply go away. When you can rely on underlying systems like DynDNS married to a directory system that will allow you to plug a SIP phone anywhere, get a DHCP address - register to a directory server - and start taking calls immediately. Or what will happen when cellular providers go IP behind the scenes.

      His insight that Domain Naming services tie it all together is quite important. Despite what you think.

      • I think you fail to understand the kind of shift that will happen when international dialing codes and area codes simply go away. When you can rely on underlying systems like DynDNS married to a directory system that will allow you to plug a SIP phone anywhere, get a DHCP address - register to a directory server - and start taking calls immediately. Or what will happen when cellular providers go IP behind the scenes.

        His insight that Domain Naming services tie it all together is quite important. Despite w

  • ... catch you dialing up www.talkwithhotbabes.com - only $4.95 per minute!

  • And? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by KrisCowboy ( 776288 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @12:43PM (#9519552) Journal
    currently, we are in the Bronze Age of the Internet and phones will be phased out completely, to be replaced by web addresses
    And web addresses will be replaced by? What after IPv6?

  • Phones phased out? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by i_want_you_to_throw_ ( 559379 ) * on Thursday June 24, 2004 @12:43PM (#9519553) Journal
    phones will be phased out completely, to be replaced by web addresses
    That might seem a little overly ambitious, but phone service itself for sure will probably go to something all digital. I use Vonage right now and would never switch back. POTS is a last great holdout on the analog to digital conversion.
    Of course there are still a good many other poor countries who have such a dated infrastructure that will insure that POTS sticks around a while.
    • Ewww, Vonage... It just doesn't seem to work very well when downloading large files (even with traffic shaping). I returned mine because it seemed really half-baked.

  • So what? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mz6 ( 741941 ) * on Thursday June 24, 2004 @12:43PM (#9519554) Journal
    Sheesh, what makes him such an expert on predicting the future of the Internet? Further, i'm not so sure I would call anything of what he said a prediction.

    Prediction 1: He wants web addresses to replace phone numbers.

    "It is quite possible that phone numbers will have disappeared and people will just use menus off their phone. I don't think there is particular value in having them."

    Isn't this pretty much already happening now? With the advent of cell phones and even home phones that allow phone book storage, this already happens. There are people that don't even remember their HOME phone number because they always pull it from the menu on their cell phone, or use voice-activated dialing.

    "Searching and finding people are certainly the two areas that still need to develop further, according to Dr Mockapetris, and replacing numbers with web addresses will help that, he says"

    I'm not so sure I follow. Google has become so successful because of their search technology. With billions of webpages and websites, and probably even more billions of phone numbers, how is that going to help? It's still tough to find web addresses with easy to remember names these days. Atleast with Google it makes it much easier.

    Prediction 2: Access for all, Security

    "Although advanced countries are at the point where most people have net access in one form or another, much still needs to be done so that every man, woman and child on the planet has it all of the time, he says. Permanent net connection through broadband has meant the physical infrastructure is almost there, taking us a step towards the Iron Age. "

    Wasn't this already introduced a couple years ago? Since the advent of broadband, it has been the goal of changinging everything over to that and giving access to all. However, I think it's something that is going to happen a lot sooner than we think, thanks in part to wi-fi. Wi-fi is becoming increasingly popular with everyone these days from hotels, cafes, even in parks. Thankfully, he did point out that security needs to be tightened up before a lot of this goes mainstream.

    "Part of the challenge for the net's next 21 years is to make sure people can be certain they are using the net safely. At the moment, many net users are unable to recognise if the e-mail they have been sent from their "bank" is dodgy or not. "Creating a model of when things are safe and not, will have to happen in cyberspace."

    Correct... This is more than likely going to be the next big explosion on the net (behind searching of course). But I just wish it would actually happen in the right order. Get the security practices down, then introduce access for all, but make sure they can understand it first.

    • "There are people that don't even remember their HOME phone number because they always pull it from the menu on their cell phone, or use voice-activated dialing."

      I can more see this sort of technology becomming more prevalent than web addresses or numbers to remember. Online directories that get downloaded to your device or to a quasi-future DNS server. You state the name of the person/place you want to reach and you're there in a heartbeat. It's really similar to DNS if you think about it -- matching

  • Yeah! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jawtheshark ( 198669 ) * <{moc.krahsehtwaj} {ta} {todhsals}> on Thursday June 24, 2004 @12:44PM (#9519560) Homepage Journal
    Next time people ask my phonenumber I'll tell them "phone@jawtheshark.com" or if they want my cell it'll be "gsm@jawtheshak.com". Now, I'll just have to wait until the telcos comply with that scheme ;-)

    But seriously, isn't it already that way? I only know two phone numbers: my cellphone and my normal phone. If I want to call someone I just look up their name in my "phonebook" on my cell or phone and I click "call". So in some way we already have the thing he talks about. You could consider the phonebook function in modern phones as an equivalent to a local "hosts" file.

  • Dumping phone numbers (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Zugot ( 17501 ) * <{bryan} {at} {osesm.com}> on Thursday June 24, 2004 @12:44PM (#9519572)
    I understand the thought of dumping phone number and mapping them names in the future. I just don't think DNS or DNS like directory is what is needed.

    As of right now, I just share my contact list between my phone and my pda. I think the future is convergence. I'm waiting for the ideas to make my life simpler now.

  • Already the Future (Score:5, Interesting)

    by artlu ( 265391 ) <artlu@art[ ]net ['lu.' in gap]> on Thursday June 24, 2004 @12:44PM (#9519573) Homepage Journal
    I think Vint Cerf had a similar article to this a few months back, which dealt with the difference between computing now and in the future. His main point was similar in that all communication will be IP based and that IPv6 will accomodate for those spaces. Another interesting point was that he stated that computers would no longer rely on human to computer interaction, but more computer to computer reaction.
    Personally, I think companies are already doing similar things like Apple's XGRID.

    GroupShares Inc. [groupshares.com] - A Free and Interactive Stock Market Community

  • In the FUTURE... (Score:4, Funny)

    by k4_pacific ( 736911 ) <`moc.oohay' `ta' `cificap_4k'> on Thursday June 24, 2004 @12:45PM (#9519581) Homepage Journal
    The internet will replace your telephone, television, electricity, water, gas, and sewer. Rather, everything will come and go to and from your house through a single "big pipe". It will be a marvelous future...
    • Then when the pipe breaks, and everything crashes, what do you do? At least with everything split up into different services, you can cope if one or two go t**s up. If everything is provided through the same method, and something happens to it, you're kinda screwed. At least you would only have to complain to one company though...

    • Re:In the FUTURE... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by doshell ( 757915 )

      I believe we should all come out of the hype for a second and stop to think whether we are doing things the Right Way(TM). The Internet is not meant to replace everything else, including phones, TVs, light switches and fridges. It was designed with versatility in mind, sure, but the very philosophy behind it teaches us not to attempt to cover all conceivable tasks with a single tool. Talk about "monocultures"...

      "One use, one protocol", remember that thing? It think it does apply to this situation, even th

    • Re:In the FUTURE... (Score:5, Funny)

      by BabyDave ( 575083 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @12:59PM (#9519760)

      The internet will replace your telephone, television, electricity, water, gas, and sewer.

      Lets just hope they're not as stingy with "upload bandwidth" as they are now

    • Marvelous future? Sure, until that big pipe gets cloged with spam and you end up without any of the services you need in your daily life (Like electricity, the phone and porn) and I guess not having water and gas would be pretty inconvenient too.
    • Hmm, although I do enjoying having my power go out while my internet stays on (cable), my UPS powering my comp and my cable modem, and laughing at my neighbors.

      Of course the cable goes down in a storm before my frickin' satellite tv. Damnit.

  • How about... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Tribbin ( 565963 )
    "Searching and finding people are certainly the two areas that still need to develop further, according to Dr Mockapetris, and replacing numbers with web addresses will help that, he says."

    Everybody has a little key-holder with a fingerprint reader. Just let somebody push his finger to add him to your contacts. Furter information about the person is stored online.

  • If I invented DNS... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Sanity ( 1431 ) *
    ...I'm not so sure I would brag about it.

    Lets think about this. This is the guy that saw the Internet (or what became the Internet) and decided that the one thing this wonderful new decentralized network needed was a highly centralized system for mapping host names to IP addresses - thus eventually creating all the problems we are now experiencing with ICANN [icannwatch.org]?

    And we should respect his opinion why?

    • Re:If I invented DNS... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24, 2004 @01:13PM (#9519933)
      Time for a little history lesson. Before DNS, everyone had to submit a request to the ARPA NIC at SRI in order to get their host added to the HOSTS.TXT file. Sometimes it took weeks for the request to make it through the bureaucracy. After DNS, control of the namespace is distributed and each organization controls its own chunk without hardly ever having to deal with a central bureaucracy. Somehow you see this as a bad thing? True, there continues to be some bureaucracy (and therefore politics) surrounding the apex of the namespace (the root zone and TLDs), but DNS was still a revolutionary improvement over what preceded it, and Dr. Mockapetris has much to be proud of.

    • Re:If I invented DNS... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by American AC in Paris ( 230456 ) * on Thursday June 24, 2004 @01:16PM (#9519956) Homepage
      Lets think about this. This is the guy that saw the Internet (or what became the Internet) and decided that the one thing this wonderful new decentralized network needed was a highly centralized system for mapping host names to IP addresses - thus eventually creating all the problems we are now experiencing with ICANN?

      And we should respect his opinion why?

      ...so lemme get this straight--because the centralized system this guy designed is being abused by unscrupulous individuals (decades after the fact, I might add,) he should be ashamed of himself and derided by the public?

      I suppose you'd gouge your eyes out with a plastic fork and bathe in acid if you were Eric Allman--and I perish to think of what you'd do if you were Tim Berners-Lee. After all, these guys are ultimately responsible for creating the systems that are so horribly abused by spammers, scammers, and pornographers, right? What weight could their words possibly carry today?

      Heck, why respect Donald Knuth's opinion? After all, many of the topics covered in The Art of Computer Programming are essential to address harvesters, zombie DDoS applications, and every single worm and virus ever written. Or Alan Turing--that man has, like, zero credibility, seeing as if it wasn't for him, we probably wouldn't even have ICANN, k1dd13s, spam, hackers, et cetera!

      • The utility of the internet is providing a common namespace for communication, be it the IP address space, or the domain names. As such, there must exist some entity that controls access to this namespace, or the system wouldn't work. Even if there were no DNS, and people remembered IP addresses, there would be competition for 5.5.5.5 etc. at the IANA. A centralized DNS is thus not only logical, but necessary.

        (I can imagine some decentralized p2p-based DNS, but there would still need to be some sort of
    • You realize that without the people behind ICANN, IANA and IETF, you wouldn't have the protocols that make the internet possible and would still be dialing into BBS's, right?

      Allllll those problems. Like, what, that the system was able to scale from 250 hosts in 1982 to 1,000,000 in 1992 to 171,000,000 in 2002 -- and it WORKED? Oh man, these guys were IDIOTS!

      Right.

  • Strange.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by njan ( 606186 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @12:53PM (#9519686) Homepage
    ..how everyone who ever had a hand in making the coffee that was drunk by the person who thought about submitting the RFC for anything vaguely related to the internet's inception seems to be lauded as some sort of oracle, all-knowing of all-things internet.

    But this bloke does have some ideas. And did invent DNS. So I guess that makes it ok.

  • Sci-Fi written all over it (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CrypticSpawn ( 719164 ) * on Thursday June 24, 2004 @12:54PM (#9519694)
    Alot of the stuff you see on Sci-Fi usually end up influencing us in one way or another, when he said eliminating phones I think he meant more of regular phones you see today. either way, I wouldn't mind calling someone like this: votp://us.florida.1974.:12:12/crypticspawn

  • We are not where we think (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nebaz ( 453974 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @12:56PM (#9519722)
    From the article:
    Although advanced countries are at the point where most people have net access in one form or another, much still needs to be done so that every man, woman and child on the planet has it all of the time, he says.

    One of the things that struck me about the media coverage about the war on Afghanistan is just how poor and primitive the majority of the people on the planet have it. There are arguably about 1-2 billion people in the G8 countries. How many other countries have running water? Indoor plumbing? Electricity? Look at the goat farmers in the middle east. Do you really think that everyone is going to have web access anytime soon?

    The idea that the entire world has our standard of living is simply false.

    • Re:We are not where we think (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mjh ( 57755 ) <mark@ho[ ]lan.com ['rnc' in gap]> on Thursday June 24, 2004 @01:23PM (#9520029) Homepage Journal
      The idea that the entire world has our standard of living is simply false.

      You're right. But so what? Just because a large group of people in the world live at a standard of living well below our own does not mean we should stop envisioning, anticipating, and planning for the next advances in our standard of living.

    • There are arguably about 1-2 billion people in the G8 countries.

      Actually, barely a Billion.

      • United States - 290,342,554
      • Japan - 127,214,499
      • Germany - 82,544,000
      • United Kingdom - 60,094,648
      • France - 60,180,529
      • Italy - 57,715,625
      • Canada - 32,207,113
      • Russia - 145,537,200

      (source: wikipedia G8 [wikipedia.org] for the list of countries, and each country page for population)

      As for how you define wealth and poverty... I could trade indoor plumbing and running water as well as a grid connection fo

  • Phones and the Internet (Score:5, Interesting)

    by KimiDalamori ( 579444 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @12:56PM (#9519727)
    VoIP anybody? Seriously, I would LOVE it if my broadband ISP was more like my phone company. for starters, I wouldn't have to pay an extra $25 just so I can get a friggin static IP. I mean, dynamic IP addys would disappear. ("hey, Jim, what's your phone number today?" "143.225.33.205 ... as long as my phone doesn't reboot.")

  • Welcome to Planet Earth (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Mark_Uplanguage ( 444809 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @12:59PM (#9519766)
    Paper, snail mail, hiking boots and such will always exist as needed elements of human life. Thesse predictions are not only short sighted of how it deepens the gap between the have and have nots, but the driving forces in evolution of computer technology are Military and Gaming IMHO. The driving force in real world implementation is probably the online porn industry. And as always the prime force against most of what Dr. Mockapetris states is privacy concerns. Otherwise projects like this April Fools note [slashdot.org] would already be underway. Note that my information is just as scientific as his predictions :)

  • For your own safety... (Score:5, Funny)

    by El_Smack ( 267329 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @01:00PM (#9519773)
    If you have to call the goatse.cx guy, for goodness sake don't be looking at your cell phone screen when he answers.

  • Affirmation!!! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ColdCoffee ( 664886 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @01:00PM (#9519778)
    This is a step in the direction that I have been asserting (much to the chagrin of those who have to listen to my nerd-like ramblings) to all my friends and co-workers: "Soon, we will all be assigned IP addresses at birth". Now that, my friends, IS the future!

  • Not surprising (Score:4, Interesting)

    by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @01:03PM (#9519801) Homepage Journal
    " and phones will be phased out completely, to be replaced by web addresses."

    Kinda funny that this article came up when it did. Just a couple of days ago I was looking for a cheap PocketPC/Palm that had built in wireless so I could use it for messaging at home and at work. I have fond hopes that it'll do voice chat one day.

    To date, I haven't exactly phased out my phone. On the other hand, I rarely use it instead of ICQ or email to chat with my friends.

  • Oblig. Simpsons Quote (Score:5, Funny)

    by Paulrothrock ( 685079 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @01:09PM (#9519882) Homepage Journal
    "In the future, the Internet will be twice as fast, ten thousand times larger, and so expensive only the five richest kings in Europe will own it!"

  • Phone numbers won't dissappear because.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by menem ( 533901 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @01:09PM (#9519883)
    The problem is the form factor of the cell phone. Cell phones typically have a numeric keypad to keep the size reasonable. The easiest way to input a phone number is to enter numbers.

    The biggest current trend is that everyone is switching to wireless phones. Most people don't want to carry around a phone large enough to contain a keyboard. Voice recognition works well only for words that are commonly used. For weird IP addresses, you would have to say each letter one at a time.

    Imagine you meet somebody. You want to store his/her phone number your phone book on your cell phone. Which is easier? Typing 820-833-5214 or typing a 16 letter word into your 10 button keypad?

    • Have you ever thought about speaking a 16-letter word? or maybe there will be a button that automatically sends a contact card over from phone to phone.
    • Going to the cell phone menu and hitting "Send Number" and point it at their phone, or send it to their phone with all your details. I'm sure they will be using bluetooth. Of course there still may be some kind of security code to enter, or a 4 digit one time thing so that no one sniffs your addy, nor has to deal with it on their phone. No one wants a keyboard, but entering numbers into a cell phone these days is becoming more and more outdated(definately necessary as it is today).

    • Re:Phone numbers won't dissappear because.. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by i-Chaos ( 179440 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @01:56PM (#9520393)
      There are already people in different parts of the world who use "texting" (SMS) so much that they can touch-type on a cellphone relatively quickly. I would say that the only drawback to the single-button keypad system is that it either requires up to three strokes to enter a character, or uses a menu to select words in a predictive-text input system, which requires more user intervention. If, however, someone creates a chorded keypad system for cellphone input, speeds can improve dramatically. I would estimate that, with about a week or two of training, one would possibly type 30-40wpm on a cellphone, which is not at all bad.

      On this chorded keypad system, I already have some preliminary ideas. The face of the phone will probably have the same 9-key keypad, or have a 8 directional rocker (kind of like a digital version of the analog controller on game systems, but shorter). The back would have three shift buttons that will change the current character selection within the current key. So, using the current T9 mapping, Index Finger (on the back) + the 2 key will give you A, Middle + 2 will give you B, and your third finger (sorry, forgot the name) + 2 will give you C. This system (thumb + three finger chords) seemed to work well for Abacus users of an older age, so it's already proven that users can input this stuff pretty fast. The only problem is to make this mainstream enough for all cellphone makers to incorporate it into the phones.

      And, hey, if you don't like it, you can just turn the option off. Or, you can even remove the back keypad via removing the keypad and using a different faceplate! Should NOT be a problem. Nokia should really start thinking outside the box and making useful things, instead of making stupid LED "messages in the air" type gadgets. I can imagine that this system would use no more resources than T9 predictive text.

    • The problem is the form factor of the cell phone. Cell phones typically have a numeric keypad to keep the size reasonable. The easiest way to input a phone number is to enter numbers.

      Back in primitive times, I would agree with you.

      I notice a lot of people using cell phones nowdays have different habits. They pick up their phone, and simply speak "Call my jerk off buddy", or perhaps "Call my mistress". Then after a few seconds, they are connected. Do dialing. No fumbling with small keypads.

      There

  • Great. Any the next time I lose power at my house, how will I call the power company? Or 911?

  • Experienced Failures (Score:4, Interesting)

    by The_Real_Nire ( 786847 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @01:09PM (#9519891)
    So, we'll replace all this with web addresses so that if a big DNS host goes down like it did last week, then nothing will work.

    GREAT!!

    Maybe he is just predicting the future he wants, so that people will remember his name without having to say " - the inventor of DNS"

  • TRansylvania 6-5000 (et. al.) (Score:3, Interesting)

    by turrican ( 55223 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @01:10PM (#9519899)
    Anyone remember when they used words for the first couple letters of a given phone number?

    So going to web addresses from digit-based phone numbers would actually have a retro flair to it, after a fashion...

  • Goes without saying... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SkyWalk423 ( 661752 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @01:13PM (#9519938) Homepage Journal
    Celebrating DNS's 21st birthday he says: "Ten years from now, we will look back at the net and think how could we have been so primitive."

    I only R part of TFA, but I noticed this quote immediately. This doesn't seem like much of an insight to me. Of course we'll look back on it and laugh, isn't that how it always goes? We used to drive covered wagons pulled by horses on dirt roads. It's quaint now, but back then they were at the edge of technology. All (er... most) of us here know that the network infrastructure is weak and likely won't carry us much further in its existing state, but rest assured, we'll get there. One step at a time, that's the way it's always been.

  • I think I've become a technophobe... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RosebudLTD ( 618608 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @01:18PM (#9519977)
    You know, after reading this something is pretty clear to me. I hate technology, in its current state.

    When I'm in a face to face conversation, and one of my buddies 'Jim' says "just drop me an email", I cringe. Let's see... I've got only one email address listed under 'Jim' in my handheld's address book. Was that his home email, or his work email, or his personal-but-I-can-read-this-at-work email? Damn, I don't remember, and my handheld's software didn't provide space to make such a note.

    Okay, I'll give him a call and ask... no, that's his home number.. where is his cell phone number? Crap, doesn't matter... no cell phone signal. Fine, I'll just wait until I get home...

    Okay, my home address book has what I need... I send off that email. Now I wait two days for him to reply. With three email addresses, you can't expect 'Jim' to check them all constantly, right?

    So two days later, 'Jim' replies... but I didn't see the message. I accidentally deleted it, instead of an advertisement for Cia.lis that was one line down.

    I'll call 'Jim', and see why he hasn't written me back. Hmm, his phone service tells me that 'all circuits are currently occupied'. I'm sorry, but what the hell is that supposed to mean?

    Oh, ok now his phone is ringing... hmm, poor connection, I can barely understand him. Jim says he replied to me... hmmm...

    Oh, there it is, in my deleted messages folder. Ahh, but my email server stripped off the attachment, fearing that zip file of fake Olsen twin porn he sent me was a virus.

    I give up.
    ...

    As self-serving as it might seem (the creator of DNS, who works for a DNS company, is pitching DNS as a cure-all solution), maybe he has the right idea. Let's face it, the DNS system works. And it works well enough that there is just one of them in use. You don't hear "oh, you can't get to my website, because you are using the wrong DNS system."

    A single, elegant system for uniquely identifying a human being, and then routing all communications to them (phone calls, emails, instant messages), independant of the devices being used to communicate, would be great. I, for one, would welcome that.

    Obviously, though, the physical and socal infrastructure is not there yet (spotty cell phone coverage, unsolicited calls and emails, unproductive business competition). We've got a long way to go.

  • is it me or... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Garion Maki ( 791172 )
    isn't part of the people that use technology already on route to working without phones, but using the internet instead to stay in contact?

    this might be becouse all my fellow students are IT students to, but when we arent face to face, we use instant messengers allot, where other people would use phones.
    and most of us have only 1 or 2 e-mail adresses that they regulary check (and a few extra for the spam), but when we send a message, we know that we will either have a repply within minutes (when using IM)

    • Re:is it me or... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by RosebudLTD ( 618608 )
      It's because you are a student.

      When I was a student, I don't think I picked up a phone more than a handful of times.

      But consider the environment... Most of my friends lived in the same dorm floor. If not, I'd see them in class or at whatever extracurricular activity we had in common. My girlfriend lived less than five minutes away, in another dorm. All of our classes and activities were five minutes away, at most. Thee was at least a small computer lab in almost every building. I had an ethernet conne

  • Not the future. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ryen ( 684684 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @01:42PM (#9520249)
    While Dr. Mockapetris believes that de-numberizing the way we remember/contact people is the way of the future, I believe this does nothing to further help the much needed cause of finding people, places, things. THAT, I believe, is the way of the future, and "doing away with phone numbers" simply does not help that.

    "It is quite possible that phone numbers will have disappeared and people will just use menus off their phone. I don't think there is particular value in having them."
    Did he forget what his DNS is even based on? no matter how many layers of indirection he places on top of the current system, you can't replace the fact that people need to be identified uniquely in one way or another. If he believes a person can be remembered more easily by myphone@whatever.com (or whatever other convention he uses other than phone numbers) he still misses the point on how we obtain these names/numbers in the first place.

    When reading this article, i've tried to forget the fact that he has his own DNS management company now, yet his inisistence on building an "alternative" phone-numbering infrastructure and using his clout of being "the father of DNS" only hints that he really has no new "vision" of the future and is trying to profit on whatever soon-to-be-outdated technology he happened to invent.

    DNS certainly helped the internet grow enourmously.. but if you think about it now, its really not needed as much any more other than advertising.
    Alternative forms of gathering your bookmarks/phone contacts/unknowns is the future.

  • That reminds me...remember RealNames?! (Score:3, Informative)

    by callipygian-showsyst ( 631222 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @01:42PM (#9520252) Homepage
    Remember an Internet-Scam era company called RealNames [searchenginewatch.com]?

    They claimed that they would be MORE IMPORTANT than DNS, and that getting the right "RealName" was key to having a successful website. They kept coming around to my employer at the time (a Big Media company) trying to convince them to pay top $$$ for RealName keywords before "someone else" did.

    Thankfully, they went out of business, and DNS is still here!

  • To Quote many of my close personal friends when using my telephone, "HI, I would have called sooner but he's got a rotary phone."
  • I buy a new phone. I power it up and it asks for some kind of personal ID info. This might be SSN in the US, driver license number, or a domain name (phone3.bigmeat.com). With all your phones set to that domain name, your home server (or ISP) will forward to whichever phone detects your on-body bluetooth emitter (or RFID tad). All a person has to do, to add someone to their address book is enter an email name and then press the talk button to call them, as opposed to the text button, to email them. The phon

  • We are? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Chris Mattern ( 191822 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @02:02PM (#9520470)
    > He states that currently, we are in the Bronze Age of the Internet

    We are? Well, *somebody* needs to pony up 1000 food and 800 gold to get us into the Iron Age. I wanna build a Wonder, here!

    Chris Mattern
    • Ph33r my photon men.

      (I really should quit cheating, but it's just so darned fun! Single-player mode only, so don't get your dander up about online cheaters...)
  • I don't like the idea of my ISP fucking up a router, or DNS, and I can't make/recieve any phone calls.

    Better yet, how about Al Q toasting a couple key locations and taking out all internet service/phone service for the whole country? We wouldn't be able to call 911, *OR* get any pr0n.

  • What prediction? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dfj225 ( 587560 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @03:10PM (#9521279) Homepage Journal
    When I read the title of the submission, I thought that there might be some unique incite into the future of the internet, but this article was exremely lacking. The only real prediction that he makes is that all voice calls will be routed over the internet. I guess that is an easy prediction with all of the working in VOIP. However, I was hoping he would have something more interesting to say, not simply just saying that there is a lot more room for innovation.

  • issue web-address at birth? (Score:3, Funny)

    by peter303 ( 12292 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @04:18PM (#9522055)
    Sort of like national identity or tax numbers; get a URL at birth to last you your life. If only the system would change every few years ...

  • He taught me networking... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Chief Typist ( 110285 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @05:21PM (#9522706) Homepage
    I was lucky to have Paul Mockapetris as a professor in the early 80's before the widespread use of networks (UUCP was hot stuff at that point in time.)

    One of the things I remember most, was his acronym for the OSI model: "All Professors Should Teach Networking Like Paul" so your could remember this [rhyshaden.com]. Of course, a lot has changed since then, but I was lucky to get a head start on it all -- thanks Paul!

    Another cool thing about this class was that Marshall Rose was a fellow student. He's written a few RFCs [networksorcery.com] since then.

    -ch

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