A Look Into The Internet Of 2030
Greetings, humans of the past! If you are reading this, my time machine has worked, it’s 1998, and I am posting this on Geocities. If I can’t remember my password, I’m going to go to 2014 and post it on Medium.
I am talking to you with full knowledge of the year 2030, because of my time machine and all. Most of the internet is invisible, but is obviously in constant use. Internet-enabled Google glasses are everywhere, but the electronics are tiny. Back in 2014, I thought that Google Glass was just a dumb looking product for idiots, but here in 2030, it turns out that they made the glasses look like normal glasses, so everyone wears it. I got hooked because they added dual cameras, on on each side, so you can look around and get a really cool 3D effect while you’re wearing them.
Only a small amount of the population use actual computers anymore. The garbage dumps must be full of desktops, because they’re completely gone, although you still see laptops sometimes in office buildings. Most people have enough wearable computer power in their clothing to get most of their tasks done.
It’s no surprise to report that a lot of things have changed in the last 16 years. Cloud computing has taken over, in a way. It happened so fast, that nobody really uses the term anymore. Computing is just computing, and clouds are fluffy things in the sky again.
Technologically, a lot has changed, and I’d like to go over some of the amazing things that have come along, as well as highlight some of the changes from what is to you, the present day
Here in 2030, Facebook has been reduced to an instant messaging system that a few people in Indonesia use. Linkedin is completely gone — acquired by Microsoft in 2019 and then slowly left to languish. Yahoo! is just something people say when they are excited. Youtube is just something people say when they’re asking someone if they tube or not, like “You tube, dude?”
Twitter? The only Twitter now is the sound of birds in Bio-regions 9 and 10, where there are still birds. Tumblr is just something people say when they are asking another person whether they want their drink in a tumbler. Sina is just a common Indonesian nickname. Blogspot is long gone — these days a blog spot is just a spot where you stop and blog.
Bing? Ohhh yeah, I remember Bing, it used to be a search engine I guess. These days it’s just something you might say if you were discussing Bing Crosby, or the character Chandler Bing from F*R*I*E*N*D*S. Wordpress? How do you even press a word, I mean…..ohhhh wait, you mean the old blogging software called Wordpress, yeah that’s long gone.
eBay is just an electronic bay, not an American multinational Internet consumer-to-consumer corporation (source: Wikipedia 2014). What’s an electronic bay you say? Well basically what it sounds like, it’s an ocean, but instead of water, it’s all digital information. Yes, sort of like a digital ocean. Oh that reminds me, remember that old hosting company Digital Ocean? Well nowadays, a digital ocean is just an ocean full of digital information, often connected to an electronic bay.
Alibaba is just some guy from some old middle eastern stories, not a privately owned Hangzhou-based group of Internet-based e-commerce businesses including business-to-business online web portals, online retail and payment services, a shopping search engine and data-centric cloud computing services (source: Wikipedia 2014). Stack overflow is something that might happen if you put too much syrup on the stock of a very large stack of pancakes — it would overflow.
Instagram? Nowadays an instagram is just an extremely fast gram. And these days, a Paypal is just a pal that you pay for something. Maybe you bought an Apple from them. Oh yeah, Apple doesn’t exist anymore, went out of business in 2024. These days the closest thing you’ll get to using an Apple is if you eat the fruit named apple. And if someone talks to you about Craigslist, you can be sure that they’re just referring to a list that a guy named Craig made. Grindr is just a geosocial networked app that men use to arrange recreational gay sex encounters. Amazon is just a river.
Reddit is just a curt way of saying you read something. The Huffington Post is just whatever mail is received by anyone named Huffington. Bit Torrent just means that there’s a very slight amount of torrential rain that falls. About.com is just something you say if someone asks you about the .com top level domain, which is something that nobody cares about anymore. Dailymail.co.uk is just whatever mail people get from day to day, whose email addresses end in .co.uk I guess.
Dailymotion is just a type of motion that occurs on a daily basis. The Pirate Bay is a bay that’s filled with pirates — this probably just exists in kids books, maybe Somalia. Godaddy is just something that you’d say to your daddy, or maybe while watching a jazz musician play his e-saxophone. “Go daddy go, blow that thing!”, etc.
Blogger? Here in 2030, a Blogger is just someone who blogs. CNN might be something you said if you saw the letter N somewhere: “Oh look, I see an N!” Windows? Those are just things you look out of, if you’re inside a building. MSN? Just 3 letters of the alphabet that someone has arranged in non-alphabetical order. IMDB? Also just letters of the alphabet, in seemingly random order!
My time machine doesn’t let me stay here to write forever, so I’m going to cut it off here. I wish I could have gotten to some of our remarkable innnovations. Actually I may have time for just one, so here: We have nuclear reactors in our basements. Upvote this if you want me to travel to 2014 again sometime and talk about the crazy political and environmental upheaval. Do they do upvotes on Medium? I forget! In 2030, Medium is just a size between small and large. Okay t.t.f.n.
