Introduction
In reality, the Internet, as a networking person would define it, has not changed much since it was commercialized in the 1990s. The main Internet concept is still there, and so are its core technologies and applications; for example, the protocols that are responsible for transferring bits between two computers have been virtually unchanged since the inception of the Internet. However, many things have evolved and have tremendously impacted the way we communicate, perform computation, and conduct business online.
This chapter highlights recent trends and technology evolutions that appear to be shaping perhaps not the Internet itself (as seen in the strict definition of a networking person), but everything around traditional approaches to computing and communication. In my opinion, there are three main such transforming trends: the Cloud and the promise it brings for computing; the new Web with its intertwined services and applications; and Big Data computing, which opens up new horizons and opportunities with fast processing of diverse, dynamic, and massive-scale datasets. Each of these trends is not disconnected from the others, but interlinked, which – as I discuss – is the case with every aspect of the Internet today. This maze of interconnected services, applications, users, and devices is one of the two main themes that are omnipresent in the Internet today. The other is an implicit notion of shared trust, a trust that appears to transfer – irrespective of user intentions – through the links of this maze, reforms our online experiences, and also bears tough challenges for user privacy.