Global WorldNet By 2035

I am wondering why these prediction threads never talk about near future technologies. They only talk about imminent doom that is going to happen next week

So for your enjoyment, I am writing a political science fiction story and this is the beginning of one of the chapters there. This is only a prediction and some of my predictions are based on facts or trends that are happening in the technology industry right now For instance right now the UN and the US government are trying to come up with ways to protect civilians and governments online. Global Internet is becoming a very real option to put on the table.

Conspiracy theorists and tech lovers can love this beginning!

Albert Einstein was right about one thing. He didn’t know how WWIII would have been fought. Was it because Computers were room sized during his era? Was it because he focused most of his time on the outer universe rather than keeping his job at the patent office to witness the amazing technological advancements that would happen in the next 100 years? Or was it completely blind ignorance on his part to fully understand and grasp how far the human race could possibly go? The science fiction writers got it better than anybody studying or developing the technologies that could impact the planet much more than their projections of wealth and power insisted. Author Arthur C. Clarke quoted his third law of prediction in his essay collection, “Profiles of the Future.” The third law states, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Meaning that once a small group of terrorists got their hands on a couple of electronic devices that the world was not prepared to confront, it could launch worldwide virtual weapons of mass destruction to central wireless hubs, electronic grids, and power stations worldwide and create various religious cults. This is what cyber terrorists groups tried to accomplish in the 2020s.

However, what the new generation Z soon found out as they entered politics and took control of the country was that, viruses could be created, developed, and initiated remotely inside any computer in any country. If the financial industry, seemed like the Wild West cyberspace was a black hole! On June 5, 2016 the United States of America launched a decisive cyber war against Iran and its nuclear program. Using multiple strands of the complex computer virus code-named stuxnet the US eventually and silently shut down computer terminals of nuclear reactors in Iran’s top secret facilities. There were no boots on the ground, there were no explosions at night, there were no secret covert operations, and there weren't even stealthy AI Drones. The battle against Iran was won with diplomacy and computers all in less than a year. WWIII was declared the world’s first cyberwar when China soon began to inject various American computers with viruses before they even got into the country! This sparked more debate about China’s business practices, once the tiny but powerful virus known as Spi’ed was discovered by a group of tech savvy high school kids who were later recruited by Google. China and the US drew up a peace treaty about the use of computers around 2021 that stated that the internet is no longer fair game for country warfare. The internet is available for all! This raised alarm at some Chinese internet companies where they enjoyed government protection, including a few Japanese and a number of stealthy startups coming out of Singapore. The 2025 UN resolution to create a new separate internet for official government use seemed to be the only logical solution. Worldnet was a better, faster, and a more protected internet which was available to all members that were employed by any US or worldwide government agency! If you were part of any such agency you allowed yourself to be tracked at all times, anyway. So the UN decided to make the Worldnet precisely so that they can track their employees online easier.

Not many people adapted to WorldNet at first by 2035, ten years later, it was the world’s fastest growing government agency. Three Ws abbreviate the beginning of the World Wide Web. So the UN decided that only two letters GW be the gateway to the Global World Net.

Global WorldNet was actually very tightly connected with Facebook which used its close ties to the government to its advantage once again. You had to have a Facebook profile to log into WorldNet as a civilian. And while many people were unhappy with that move at first, the government used Facebook to figure out who you were on theirinternet. Once again, if you didn’t like it, you could always use the free internet, which was slowly becoming obsolete. Not to mention getting over run with conspiracy theorists and cyber terrorists. Since the rollout of WorldNet, Anti-virus and spyware software companies stopped supporting the free internet or dubbed, “freedom net,” by the conspirators. This of course fueled more conspiracy theories that the government was secretly buying all software so that they would be forced to use the global WorldNet or even worse, sign up for Facebook!

The reality of it, of course was rather simpler. The technology was evolving as more startup companies worked to improve this new internet. Larger companies gave up support of the old internet right away. Google’s holographic beaming technology was never implemented into freedom net. Neither was the best paid options for Game Room role players. Crappy Open Source software littered with viruses now dominated freedom net and many of its most paranoid users navigated to the still standing Linux Operating System to power their computers, but recent surveys indicate that most of these folks were also members of the anti-technology religious cult known as "the pure".

*Game Room is the name I gave to the company in my novel which creates Holodeck Technology. Think Star Trek

*The Book takes place in 2052