Coming soon: superfast internet (The Grid)

The Grid would be a nice alternative to the net. Hopefully, it can clear up bandwith costs for many ISPs, which would mean cheaper services for us.

Still, a few questions come to mind. When the Grid goes live, what happens to all the information already in the internet? Will people have to save and upload the entire net to the Grid? What kind of safety measures will they add to the Grid? Will the developers, public, or goverments have control of the Grid?

Some here speak of 56Kbps? I remember 300 baud.

Actually, what this all means is that your machine will still crash, but it will crash much, much faster.

I have said it before, I perhaps say it too often - but William Gibson is a prophet (I say it about Philip K Dick too, both true). Neuromancer should be essential reading for conspiracists. Not only is it great literature but this man saw the future. asp

This is Gibson's biography, it is very subtle but there is a lot of insight into where his stories come from (it is also a beautiful piece of writing - I'm a big fan:roll.

www.williamgibsonbooks.com...

I don't mean to imply that Gibson has had religious visions or anything else untoward, simply that a great imagination can put their mind to visualising how the future may progress. Many aspects of Gibson's science fiction writing are strongly reminiscent of the lives we are living now and refer to technological developments that are now becoming a reality, like the Grid. (His vision of the Corporation is mindblowing in retrospect too)

www.williamgibsonbooks.com...

www.philipkdick.com...

I won't go on, but if you read Neuromancer and then Philip K Dick's Flow my Tears the Policeman said, you've pretty much covered the majority of topics regularly covered on this web-site. It is almost like they could see us now and then looked to see where we were going from here (and I mean that in the none-cheesiest way possible, if that is possible). I find that breadth of imagination amazing and the fact that in all possibility some of those ideas inspired the discoveries themselves, inspiring! Both good and bad of course, neither future should have us jumping for joy, but it is valuable information. I think it helps to be mentally prepared for all eventualities

Sounds great. I don't agree with that "more" mentality comment. Because even thou broadband is fast, it's not that fast. It is still limiting the evolution of the internet. The faster the speed the more freedom and new ideas we can get exited for.

[edit on 6-4-2008 by _Phoenix_]

As a fan of online gaming and hi def movies this sounds very tasty indeed but the horrible reality would most likely be that all the contents of your pc, personal details, anything that shouldn't be on your hard drive could be uploaded in the twinkling of an eye also, which could mean either party time for the online criminals (identity theft et al) or TPTB knowing alot more about you than they already do..

Muhahaha

When I can upload and download any file I want in one seconds time, then I will be content with my connection and I won't want "more"

Bascially I don't want to wait, ever, at all

OMG!OMG!OMG!

*gets excited*

reminds me of EPIC 2015

Very amazing, all should watch this

BUt, back to the article, this is frigging amazing

the grid could also provide the kind of power needed to transmit holographic images; allow instant online gaming with hundreds of thousands of players; and offer high-definition video telephony for the price of a local call.

*faints with excitement*

Originally posted by newworldorder
Sure is a jump from 56k

No more laggy games and days of torrents downloading I guess. Though seriously, who really needs it that fast? Maybe Governments, Universities, etc could use it... but the average person? They'll convince that you need it all the same!

If I had to guess, 10 years from now you will find that statement laughable. People will look back at 2008 and wonder how they got by with such a slow connection.

That is just how technology works. I remember when people thought you would NEVER use a 20gb HDD. In the 80's Bill Gates said you would NEVER need more than 640k of RAM.

It will be interesting to see where technology is when this comes online. I think it is a necessity with most TV's being HD now. Comcast is already feeling the pinch of how much bandwidth HD requires. They are compressing their signal to make room for more channels. So a system like this will be necessary eventually.

Originally posted by newworldorder
Sure is a jump from 56k

What's faster than 56k??

Seriously - there were a lot of fundamental mistakes made in the implementation of the internet.. Done right this 'grid' (first time i've herd that particular term) could be very good for all - so long as all protocols and knowledge is completely open from the start then developers won't always be playing catch up on the bad guys.

Oh yhea - also watch all the potential of any new advance be completely sapped by stupidly expensive and pointless software.. (and yes I'm looking in your direction Microsoft!! )

reply to post by Karlhungis


Well HD TV isn't a necessity, it's just entertainment,, something I personally wouldn't waste my time on And watching lower quality wouldn't bother me much if I were to watch something.
My connection (10mbps) does me well, it'd be nice for things to be near instant but I have patience

However, there will be this type of speed in the future; there's no stopping it. I understand that it will be a necessity for this technology to be embraced because people watch a lot of TV (way too much I say ) I'm just saying it isn't a necessity for them to. But as I said people will be convinced that they need it anyway

I'm all for this..It's not "More" it's new and improved. I don't object to anything being improved, as a long as it is not at the expense of others, including the environment. Oh, well we just wait and see. My guess is that this will not lower ISP cost's...There will just be several plans with varying speeds and quality of service available.

reply to post by newworldorder


I see what you are saying, but I disagree. I think that it really will be a necessity. It is not a necessity for an internet surfer to be able to surf 10,000x faster. It will be a necessity for the technology industry as a whole. More and more data is going to be pumped through the lines and there simply isn't enough room.

Philosophically though, you are right. It isn't necessary, just like a computer isn't necessary or a TV for that matter. You would simply have to remove yourself from society for that to be a reality though. HDTV will eventually be the standard as color TV took the place of black and white. It won't be a matter of choice, it will be standard.

I am not trying to scoff at what you are saying either. I agree with you and wish that I wasn't tied to technology to exist. Unfortunately though, as of right now I am. If I won the lottery though, getting off the grid would be my first priority.

unless this can be integrated into the existing technology , but more importantly run on the cables we already have i feel this would take up to 10-15 years to implement.

No doubt the government would abuse the new system and introduce new laws governing this so called grid.

reply to post by tombangelta

unless this can be integrated into the existing technology , but more importantly run on the cables we already have i feel this would take up to 10-15 years to implement.

That's not gonna happen. As stated in the article, dedicated fiber optic links are being used for this project.

This is more of an intranet than an internet. Sort of like wrapping the accelerator in a giant cocoon of parallel fiber links to capture the instant of data generated. The links to the universities, etc., will be like tiny taps on a giant keg. They most likely will not have the full technical benefits of "the grid". Trying to absorb those data rates would be like drinking from a fire hose unless you have the right eqp't.

I don't know what to tell you people other than this technology may not be available to the public.

It means Britain alone has 8,000 servers on the grid system – so that any student or academic will theoretically be able to hook up to the grid rather than the internet from this autumn.

This will be a tool used by universities and other academic/scholarly bodies. We will have access to some parts of the grid, possibly, but not the entire grid unless we are part of an educational institution. I highly doubt my college will partake in its use, so I guess grad school will have to be in London .

Although the grid itself is unlikely to be directly available to domestic internet users, many telecoms providers and businesses are already introducing its pioneering technologies. One of the most potent is so-called dynamic switching, which creates a dedicated channel for internet users trying to download large volumes of data such as films. In theory this would give a standard desktop computer the ability to download a movie in five seconds rather than the current three hours or so.

Additionally, the grid is being made available to dozens of other academic researchers including astronomers and molecular biologists.

I hope that clears up some misconceptions.

[edit on 4/6/2008 by biggie smalls]

reply to post by biggie smalls


The internet wasn't designed for the average user either. I think that the Grid is going to be the future.

I won't even try to predict the future on this one because it changes so fast my guess' would probably be implemented and obsolete before I could make this post.

Ten years ago I was amazed at the wonderful little computer I bought that had 16 whole megs of ram and a two gig hard drive. I figured I would never need that much space. Now I have half a terraflop and I'm looking to buy another half cause I'm running out of space.

The only thing you can count on is change and I'm looking forward to it. I can't wait to see what the next ten years brings.

I just wonder what kind of hardware you would have to hook to your PC in order to use this. Would consumer available hardware be able to even handle this much data at such a high rate? I can see the bottleneck not in the processor or ram areas, but the physical storage. I can't even conceive of a hard drive with a high enough level of RPM or cache that could store that data fast enough to avoid a full system lock. Even with 20+ GB of RAM storing a good bit of data before transfer to hard disk, i'm still unable to see how it would work.

I can see some very interesting uses for this, as long as they do it right from the get go. They've already had practice with the web, let's hope they do a better job with an eye toward future expansion.

reply to post by Hypntick


The computer will not be used as storage. The grid itself will be able to store all the information. Right now we are posting on ATS and in turn, the servers owned by ATS. The grid will work in a similar fashion.

Users will input their data directly into the grid and [the data] will be stored on the servers connecting the person to the grid itself.

reply to post by Karlhungis


Well that's true. The internet was built for military use. I am not saying we won't get a chance to use the grid, but it may be years in the future. The grid was initially built to house Cern's data as well as other university/scholarly areas. Research will be directly uploaded into the grid so everyone who has access to it can read it (hopefully).

Only time will tell and mr wupy said it best, there's no point in guessing what will happen because we're progressing at such fast speeds.

Then again, our technological based system could fail as soon as oil becomes too expensive to extract...

One can only hope

[edit on 4/6/2008 by biggie smalls]