Bold Predictions - 2011

Back in the year 2000, there were about 360 million human beings on Earth that used the internet regularly. That was about 5% of the population. In 2010, 1.9 billion people use the internet, which is approximately 25% of the people on Earth. That is a staggering increase in a mere decade, considering the infrastructure and technology required to reach certain inhospitable regions.
One must wonder, however, if we'll ever reach 100%. Certainly internet access will continue to proliferate. In the last ten years, the number of new internet users has increased every year. That is, the internet has accelerated. Will it ever slow down?

TAE thinks 2011 will be the first year that the number of new internet users will be less than the year before. I humbly suggest that many locations where internet access was easily gotten have reached saturation. As you read this...can you think of a single person you know who doesn't have any internet access?
As it becomes harder to find new users (though there are 5+ billion), infrastructure (both electrical and data) must spread ahead of the internet. Perhaps this is an argument for smartphones; you don't need the data lines anymore, eliminating one level of infrastructure. But the cost of a smart phone (which basically can only serve a single user) is so much higher than the cost for the internet (where a group could share a single internet connection quite easily).
In any case, looking farther ahead, this makes me wonder of ISPs could become change agents, forcing hostile governments to aid their people, or just marching in on their own with power lines and data cabling and cheap computers, desperate for new users to see their ads. Could it be that the proliferation of the internet will force, in some places, a better world?
Because what use does a starving man have for the internet? But give him food, and a warm bed, and suddenly he has time to watch youtube videos. As the internet spreads into remote regions (and it will), it can only do so if it can sell ads to the people in those places. And so the spread of the internet will become limited by the spread of industrialization.

And so TAE's Official Prediction is 2011 - The Year The Internet Slowed Down


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