Predictions From 2014: "The Death of the Internet."

Predictions.  Everybody's Got Em.

By Greg Walters

I recently released my "Greg's Ai Predictions & Visions of the New World" on Grwalters dot com. Predictions are easy and fun. I've done it before and I'll do it again.

In the past, it was an exercise in entertainment. My current(2024) list sways from the death of the C-Suite to suburbs as workplaces - live in the city, work in the suburbs without driving, of course. I will continue to add detail to each over the next few months or so; indeed, the list has grown by two, bringing the total up from a dozen.

So, without much fanfare, I released the vision to the world, the Universe.  All normal stuff.

I went to the mother-of-all-blogs, TheDeathOfTheCopier and searched "the death of the internet".

​The result was jaw dropping, at least for me. The search pulled up a post dated September 21, 2014, "The Death of the Internet, Paper...and Single Payer Healthcare".

Innocuous, until I dug deeper into the past revealing the present AND FUTURE.

One passage,

"When texting from my iPhone, I'll be able to attach voice and video to the IM and regulate how long that message exists - it will self-destruct in three minutes or exist forever... all our information, passwords, credit card numbers, bank account information would be held on our personal devices behind security hardware and fingerprint scanners."

And then this:

"The Shape of Things to Come (respect to TR7), a list of the next hierarchies to transform - enjoy:

1. The Death of the Search Engine - We search the mesh directly, not up and down
2. The Death of the Internet - who needs the internet when all devices connect through a web of personal servers.
3. The Death of Apps - We will write our own, ad-hoc
4. The Death of the Internet of Things - Connected people, not things
5. The Death of Spreadsheets - BI is an app that connects to billions of other apps/sensors
6. The Death of Cell Services - The Mesh will carry voice and video
7. The Death of Cable Companies - We are the Cable Company
8. The Death of ISP - No need for an internet service provider
9. The Death of VoiP - Just as homes are getting rid of the phone-on-the-wall, so to shall B2B
10. The Death of MSPs - Self-healing systems, simpler and easily affordable(free) technology
11. The Death of Paper - Information moves faster than print
12. The Death of Hierarchies - everything will flatten
13. The BIG Transformation - The Death of Hardware."

All from 2014. To be honest, I don't know how to react. Spooky. I mean, will the list still be the same in 2034?