What is the future of the Internet?

A recent United Nations Internet summit held in Athens has raised a number of issues about the growth and future development of the Internet, not least of which is the increasingly thorny issue of the international domain names (IDN) protocol that uses English characters and is therefore seen to exclude other languages and alphabets.

This Athens conference saw the first meeting of the Internet Governance Forum, which was established by the UN to give multi-stakeholders the opportunity to debate the issue of Internet governance. All stakeholders – whether they represent states, the private sector or civil society – meet on an equal basis and through an open and inclusive process.

Nitin Desai, the chair of the IGF has spoken of his concerns about the future of the Internet.
‘People are concerned about whether the system we have now will also work five years from now,’ he states. He believes that as Internet use in Asia grows, ‘there will be more Chinese web pages than English pages.’ Mr Desai goes on to report of tensions about the regulation of the net – evidence of which first arose in March of this year when Chinese domain names were launched.

He goes on to report that the Chinese government is unhappy that users have to adopt Latin characters when accessing Chinese web pages and warns ‘we will get a Balkanisation of the net. There’s a point at which the Chinese will say ‘We have to have domain names in Chinese characters’ and they will set up an independent system.’ This view is endorsed by Geir Rasmussen, chief executive of the Global Name Registry. ‘The Internet up to now has been mostly westernised, and some countries may feel disenfranchised as they can’t access the Internet in their local language. I think this is about accessibility. Think if all westerners had to enter characters in Chinese script.’

The Athens meeting saw intense pressure on the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) ‘ who manage the domain name system ‘ to revise the IDN system as it was claimed that the Anglo-centric Internet left people isolated and marginalised. Concerns about a future split in the Internet should spur action on, but it’s not an easy solution. ICANN has been reviewing this system since 2003 but it’s a huge technical challenge and chief executive Paul Twomey has been quoted as saying that ‘the Internet is like a 15-storey building and with IDN what we’re trying to do is change the bricks in the basement.’

At this stage there is no simple solution, but it is an issue that is becoming more significant as the web continues to grow at a rapid rate. One thing is certain, it will need to be resolved to the satisfaction of every nation in the long run if the Internet is to become a truly global and neutral resource.

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