Astronaut Edwin E. Aldrin Jr., the lunar module pilot of the first lunar landing mission, stands next to the United States flag on July 20, 1969, during the Apollo 11 extraterrestrial activity (EVA) on the lunar surface.
NASA | News | Archive Hulton | Getty Images
If we were to go to sleep today and not wake up for another 35 years, we would wake up feeling frustrated by the pace of innovation.
That’s according to Robert Blumoffe, chief technology officer of web security firm Akamai, who believes the world could be “terribly disappointed” by the advances made in the web over the next three decades.
Akamai, a content delivery network, helps Internet users quickly access web content.
Tuesday marked 35 years since famed computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee presented his proposal for what would eventually be known as the “World Wide Web.”
But Blumoffe, who noted that he still believes in the Web and modern technology, warned that we may be stagnating.
“The next 35 years could be terribly disappointing,” Blumoff said in an interview with CNBC last week. “I have a bit of an opposite opinion on the matter.”
Blumofe compared the current state of the web today to the aerospace industry in the 1960s. Then, he said, there was a huge innovation with the arrival of the Boeing 747 and the first moon landing.
Today, aerospace innovation is at a standstill, he added.
“This was all in the ’60s and ’70s,” Blumoffe noted. “If someone had gone to sleep in 1975 and then woke up and looked at spaceflight today, they would be terribly disappointed.”
“Airplanes are not bigger. They are not faster either,” he said.
“Moore’s Law is over”
Blumofe said it’s entirely possible the world is going in the same direction with telecommunications.
“We may have exhausted the steep innovation curve,” he said. “That curve may have passed us by. We may be heading for a plateau.”
“Moore’s Law is over,” Blumoffe added, referring to the theory that the number of components on a chip doubles every two years at minimal cost.
Network cables are plugged into a server room.
Michael Bocchieri | Getty Images
Blumofe said much of the world is already connected and modern smartphone and TV displays don’t get more exciting than picture quality.
However, many companies are now experimenting with folding and movable screens.
While Blumofe’s network stagnation is a “possibility,” he still hopes innovation won’t plateau.
In fact, Blumoffe previously told CNBC that he thinks the Web could eventually become the realm of AI-powered agents — with people no longer using the Web, but instead going through AI agents.
Dangers of generative AI
The one big exception to the rule for Blumofe right now is AI, which he noted could make big strides in the next decade with the advent of generative AI algorithms.
But even then, Blumoffe said, AI may need to take a step back before making another significant leap forward.
As an example, he cited the dangers of generative AI models when it comes to copyright infringement.
Chintan Patel, chief technology officer of UK enterprise technology firm Cisco, disagrees that innovation for telecoms and technology more broadly is poised to hit a plateau.
“The combination and speed of technological development counteracts any plateau in innovation,” Patel told CNBC.
“The pace of change has never been faster – development and innovation are happening at pace, in different places and geographies.”
The combination and speed of technological development counteracts any plateau in innovation.
Chintan Patel
CTO of Cisco UK
The development of artificial intelligence is “fueling a new era of innovation,” he added by email.
“Tomorrow’s developer and maker has access to a whole range of possibilities that inventors of a few years ago could only dream of,” said Patel.
Brennan Smith, vice president of technology at Ookla, also doesn’t think the frontiers of innovation have been exhausted.
“When we think about what the next 35 years will bring, it will be a new era of creativity unlocked by generative AI combined with an environment that seamlessly blends the digital and physical worlds,” Smith told CNBC.
“We may still be reading words on a document no different than a stone tablet, but we will be surrounded by entirely new experiences that make our existing world even richer and more alive,” Smith added.
However, he said “huge amounts of bandwidth” will be needed to support future web experiences.
Last week, Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, told CNBC his best predictions for the future of his creation. He said he expects everyone to have their own personal AI assistants and greater ownership of data, wresting it out of the hands of Big Tech platforms.
Berners-Lee also said that regulatory agencies may in the future decide to crack down on a big tech firm, especially in the age of AI. However, he said it was unclear at this stage which tech giant would be forced to split.
“Things change so quickly. AI is changing very, very quickly. There are monopolies in AI. Monopolies have changed pretty quickly on the web,” Berners-Lee told CNBC.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/13/tech-exec-says-web-heading-for-plateau-compares-it-to-space-in-1960s.html
