Astronaut Edwin E. Aldrin Jr., lunar module pilot for the first lunar landing mission, stands next to the U.S. flag during Apollo 11's extravehicular activity (EVA) on the moon, July 20, 1969. standing on
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Akamai is a content delivery network that helps Internet users quickly access web content.
Tuesday marked the 35th anniversary of eminent computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee's proposal for what would become known as the “World Wide Web.”
But Brumofe said he still believed in the web and modern technology, and warned that we could fall into stagnation.
“The next 35 years could be very disappointing,” Brumofe said in an interview with CNBC last week. “I have a bit of a contrarian view on this.”
Blumofe compared the state of the web today to the aerospace industry in the 1960s. He said there were major innovations at the time, including the introduction of the Boeing 747 and the first landing on the moon.
Currently, innovation in aerospace technology is stagnant, he added.
“It's all from the '60s and '70s,” Brumofe pointed out. “If someone went to sleep in his 1975 and woke up to see aerospace today, they would be sorely disappointed.”
“Planes aren't getting any bigger, they're not getting any faster,” he said.
Blumofe said there's a good chance the world is heading in the same direction with respect to telecommunications.
“We may have run out of steep innovation curves,” he said. “Maybe that curve passed us by. We might be headed for the plateau.”
Blumofe added, “Moore's Law is over,” referring to the theory that the number of components on a single chip can double every two years with minimal cost.
Network cables are connected to the server room.
Michael Bocchieri | Getty Images
Blumofe said most of the world is now connected and modern displays on smartphones and TVs are no longer appealing beyond picture quality.
Still, many companies are now experimenting with folding and rolling screens.
Although Blumofe web stagnation is a “possibility”, he is hopeful that innovation will not plateau.
In fact, Blumofe previously told CNBC that the web could eventually become the realm of artificial intelligence-powered agents, meaning that humans would no longer use the web but would instead go through AI agents. He said it could become.
One big exception to Blumofe's rule for now is AI, which he noted could see major advances over the next decade with the advent of generative AI algorithms.
But even then, Brumofe says, AI may need to take a step back before it can take another leap forward.
As an example, he cited the dangers of generative AI models regarding copyright infringement.
Chintan Patel, chief technology officer at British enterprise technology company Cisco, disagrees that innovation in the wider telecommunications and technology sector has plateaued.
“The combination and speed of technology development is breaking the innovation stagnation,” Patel told CNBC.
“The pace of change is faster than ever, with development and innovation happening rapidly in different places and regions.”
The combination and speed of technological development will eliminate innovation stagnation.
Chintan Patel
CTO of Cisco UK
Advances in AI are “facilitating a new era of innovation,” he added in an email.
“Tomorrow's developers and creators will have access to a set of capabilities that inventors a few years ago could only dream of,” Patel said.
Brennan Smith, vice president of technology at Ookla, also doesn't think the sky is the limit for innovation.
“If you think about what's going to happen over the next 35 years, it's going to be a new era of creativity unleashed by generative AI combined with media that seamlessly blends the digital and physical worlds,” Smith told CNBC. .
“We may still read text on a document no different from a stone tablet, but we will be surrounded by entirely new experiences that make our existing world even richer and more vibrant.” added Smith.
However, supporting future web experiences will require “tremendous amounts of bandwidth,” he said.
Last week, World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee told CNBC his main prediction for the future of his creation. He said he hopes everyone will have their own AI assistant, taking data out of the hands of big tech platforms and taking greater ownership of it.
Berners-Lee also said regulators may decide to break up big tech companies in the future, especially in the age of AI. However, it is unclear at this stage which technology giants will be forced to break up, he said.
“Things are changing very quickly. AI is changing very quickly. There are monopolies in AI. Monopolies have changed pretty quickly on the web,” Berners-Lee told CNBC. told.
