What will the Internet be like in 2021?

And Chris could not be here, but I brought on a good friend of mine up here, a guy who works for cen Net. Very clever dude, who's got it all together. I as actor, How you doing, I'm doing really well. Thanks for having me on today. Thanks for being on the show. And I as is sounding very formal, but trust us. We we're we're buddies. We often give each other the business as it were. Of course, of course,

Mr Strickland, we always give each other business. Uh. Those those those plain envelopes filled with dollar bills will continue to come to you. I as, so we we wanted to take a look and kind of just have a casual conversation of what we think the internet and our interactions with the Internet might be like in another five years, so in twenty twenty one, and uh, we're just kind

of shooting from the hip here. We're not not really consulting any gurus or anything like that, but we did come up with a bunch of little questions that we thought would be good starters for this kind of thing. And one of the points we made in the two thousand eleven podcast that Chris and I did was that we both felt that mobile browsing was definitely going to be increasingly important, that we would see desktops and laptop traffic on the Internet get surpassed by mobile devices. And

in fact, that did happen. And uh, it wasn't like we were sticking our next really far out or anything. That it was pretty clear that that was the trend even when we started back then. Now, I as, do you think that's gonna be something that we'll see continue That will will mobile devices continue to be one of the most important, maybe the predominant way that we interact with the Internet, at least on a on an active scale. Yeah, I think the mobile devices, I mean, they've shown how

important they've been over the years. And the thing is, for a lot of people of their phone is their

first real personal computer. So what I'm expecting is essentially laptops and desktops not as important, but we might actually have the ability to have in five years now where you have your phone, it's your brain for all your other little systems, because I think other smart devices like watching his glasses, other devices and form factors that we've even thought up yet, those things will be around, but they're really gonna be powered by your phone, right, Yeah,

So that that makes sense. Like even stuff with Google Glass that was something that you used a Bluetooth connection with the phone. The phone ended up doing most of the processing. The glass was just kind of a interface and display, and you still were relying upon the actual connection with your phone to grab the data from the cloud. And that does make sense. I mean you that way you remove the need for the more powerful processors and the various antenna that you would require to to tap

into those networks. You can offload that. You just need that Bluetooth interface in order for it to to communicate

with the devices the real brain. Also, I'm noticing I just notice recently a video that kind of blew my mind because it reminded me of something we saw at CS many years ago, and it was a video of a new product where you use your smartphone to act as the processor for what was really just a terminal, but it looks like, you know, a laptop computer and you dock your phone into it and that essentially ends

up being the brains behind your computer. And I can't remember you you might I as I don't know, but I can't remember the name of the the thing that was essentially that same idea from several years ago where your your smartphone and uh could just dock into a docking station and power a laptop. Um to me, it was interesting to see that idea come back again because it didn't seem to go anywhere after that initial c

e S debut. But it does kind of fall into that same idea that the the smartphone will be kind of the the center of a of a hub of devices, all of which will rely very heavily on it. Yeah, the device I think you're talking about the motto atrix, a phone that were plug into a docking station that kind of makes it a laptop. It wasn't elegant at all. It didn't work with every single docking station. Need to get a proprietary thing, so that kind of takes people off,

I know, the Kickstarter you're talking about or Indigogo. Not sure which crowd funding site it is, but I mean, well, also, I would imagine in five years we would have more smart devices that can be on their own. But I still think that having a the power and all the brains on a singular device driving the other the other devices makes more sense because, like you were mentioning other radio's,

other antennas, other battery concerns. To have all of that and each self contained object you're talking about a lot of items you have to keep charged all the time, it seems like I don't know if five years is enough time for this to really get mature. Maybe ten years from now and now we're going too far. But if battery technology moves ahead, maybe what we would see these devices that are I guess cloud connected, So you're the brain is still a computer somewhere, it's just nowhere

near you, right, I think. Also another important element to take into account is cost, and by having your phone be the primary brains behind all these different devices, it helps bring the cost down to each of those individual devices. They don't need as many expensive components and that will make adoption um less difficult. Right, It's still gonna be a barrier, obviously. It's any time we're talking about technology, there's a barrier of intrigue that's there. Um. Not everyone

can afford to do it. But by going that that route where your phone remains the primary processing unit of all these different devices, you can at least create a suite of technologies that aren't prohibitively expensive for all but you know the top of the one per centers. Yeah, we're talking about a lot of silos, right, you can probably like an Apple silo, you'll have a Android silo or Samsung silo. There's things that you can't just mix and match your accessories. You're just gonna have to get

one company's to make it work. Well, I still see that happening because sometimes I think about in the old days, how no standards were ever happened. I couldn't imagine actually having one standard port or electrical outlets. If this is privatized, weight is now it's like, well, USB A B C about three point one. Just it seems so wonky. Yeah, yeah,

that's a great point. I mean it's and that kind of ties into The next question that I have on our list the idea of silos, and this whether you have interoperability between different you know, families of technologies or if it's all within one group. One of the things we've seen kind of come to prominence over the last year or two is this idea of the digital personal assistant. Now.

In the two thousand eleven episode, Chris and I talked about how voice recognition was going to become more important, but it wouldn't take over as our primary means of interacting with our technology for various reasons. I mean, if you want to search anything that's remotely personal in nature, you probably don't want to speak it out loud in public. Also, you don't want to make people think you're crazy as

you're talking to absolutely no one visible at any rate. Um, But we're starting to see them really get more more traction these days, whether it's Apple's Sirie or Amazon's Alexa, or Google's Assistant. You know, we have lots of different examples. Do you think those are going to continue to get more sophisticated? Are are we going to see more integration into various devices, not just the standalonees or the smartphones,

but perhaps other things as well well. I could see people getting very used to talking to the Internet in general. Like you might think, now you might look a little crazy that you're talking to yourself. Although these days you see somebody talking themselves in the street, you're like, do they have a Bluetooth headset or not? Because it used to be twenty years ago you're like, oh, you're just nuts. Now it's like, oh, you might be having a conversation.

But there's a generation of kids growing up talking to smart speakers like the Echo, like Google Home when that comes out, and when Apple goes ahead, where there's that rumor that they're going to have their own smart speaker. I see that kind of interface and that natural language

really being more important. Now maybe you're not necessarily talking to your watch, but you might be writing the same kinds of questions that you would say because the way everything is changing with deep learning, the chance in five years I'm really hoping to five years and you were able to just ask a simple question without having to have all of these modifiers that are search engine optimized, you know what I mean, right, Yeah, without having to

parse your language in a way that search engines know what it is. You're actually asking you to have that natural length language recognition. I think we've we've definitely come a far away over the last decade, definitely UH with natural language where you know, it used to be that you could do a Google search for a particular string of terms and come up with a page of results and think, this isn't remotely what I was hoping to find.

And then you just go and rearrange the order of words that were in your Google query and come up with different results and see, oh this is I just have to think the way the computer thinks. Once we get away from that, where computers are able to interpret the way we think and the way different people think about the same thing, but still bring back relevant results, then we see real advances in and and a seamless

experience when we start interacting with the Internet. I think that is definitely going to improve over the next five years. We've already seen some amazing results as it stands now.

I also hope to see more of One of the things I really like the way Amazon has approached this Personal Digital Assistant UM model is their approach is all about integrating with other systems so that you can control different things within your home, even if they were not originally designed to work together through a single interface, right Like Hugh light bulbs are an example. Let's say that

I've got Hugh light bulbs in my house. Let's say I've got some sort of of Internet connected security system. Maybe I've got a couple of other appliances that are also connected through my my home network and with Alexa, assuming that the capability has been built in by developers, I would be able to interact with all of those as opposed to having to go through each proprietary system

and interface, which gets extremely clunky. It's kind of like being in front of a a an entertainment system where you have twelve different remote controls and trying to remember which one goes to what component. Uh. I hope to see more of that because, like you were saying, if we go with the siloed approach, unless you're all in with one provider, your experience is going to be really fragmented. Yeah.

It just makes me think about the Internet of Things because I have an Amazon Echo and I've had some smart technologies in my house and smart light bulbs and things, and most people would ask me, like, why would you need a smart light bulb, and these are just little fancy ways to make my apartment more personalized. But when you have an echo, you have a brain that can talk to multiple devices, you start thinking what other devices

you can get. So I'm expecting in five years a lot of people will be very aware of the good uses or connected devices, because I connected life all began is a very strange idea at first, but when you get used to it, you're like, wait a minute, why didn't this happen before? So I'm expecting a lot more dumb things to get a lot smarter five years. Yeah, And and you know, we've we've seen this is a a progression that starts with some kind of you know,

uncertain moves. Again, going back to c e S. I love talking about ce S because that's kind of like the proving grounds for these new technologies. Typically a technology will start to kind of creep in, and then the next year it will be almost everywhere, and then maybe three more years it will be to a point where people will actually want it. Right because we've seen the smart technology move into various appliances for the better part of the decade now, and in many cases, those early

implementations were either short sighted or not terribly useful. But as people are learning how to interact, and as developers are learning, you know, what people expect from their technologies, we're seeing that improve over time. I think in Internet of Things is going to continue going strong. It it isn't just a fad or a buzzword. It is going to be a pervasive technology that UH surrounds us and

binds us like the force UM. It also has some potential for some some negative stuff as well, not just the idea of making our lives easier, but we'll talk about that UH in a little bit. So one of the other elements I have here on our list is this question about again getting kind ofto that fragmented experience idea, the rise of the app. That was one of those things that that Chris and I didn't really touch on.

We didn't talk about apps. I don't think either of us had really figured out how important apps were going to be UH in general, and apps on smart devices on on smartphones and mobile devices in particular have become one of the most important stories in technology over the last few years. UH companies can spring up overnight and become incredibly successful with the right app a lot of

companies out there are banking on that success. Many of them are failing um and and it's weird because it also creates this very siloed approach to how you access and interact with the Internet, particularly apps that are related to content, where you know you might ask the question, why do I use this app versus use a more

universal interface like a browser. Do you think that we're going to continue to see, you know, a wide variety of apps moving forward, or do you think that's a bubble that will burst sometime between now and I don't see apps necessarily going away. I can see a lot of like hyper visor style apps, like we're talking about with the Echo, where it controls lots of different things. I could see a lot more apps that control other apps,

if that makes any sense. Like its like right now we have things like hoot Suite, which can access to different Twitter accounts, Facebook and all that other information. So I could see that happening, which is a little strange if you think about it, because a browser should be able to handle it. But apps on their own, they offer so much control to the companies that I think that that's not going anywhere. Because the other thing is you can create a lot of things that are offline

that you couldn't do in a browser. I think that's one of the bigger things. Unless in five years the Internet wirelessly or is that connectivity is always around, you still have to deal with being offline, and if you don't have an app, there's a good chance there's no way a browser is gonna work unless there's some kind of cash feature, which isn't something that really works so

well right now. That's a good point. Yeah. For example, I've got I've got an app that I used for for podcatching too, to listen to the various podcasts I subscribe to, and I can either stream stuff directly from the Internet to my headphones and that way I can listen live, or I can down load an episode and listen to it even if I'm offline, which of course is useful if you're going to be like on a long flight or something and you don't have in flight WiFi.

That's a really useful, uh feature. So I didn't really think of it that way, but that is interesting. I would I would love to see some more experimentation with apps. Sometimes it gets a little tricky, but you know, something that would um allow you to maximize the reach of your various music services would be nice because not all artists have work all in one or all in the same music service. And being able to go through all of them simultaneously so that you can listen to what

you want to listen to. Uh, you know, subscribing to whichever services you want, but being able to search all of them at once would be really nice instead of having to you know, go into one and they oh, wait, that's right, that musicians label doesn't work with Spotify or Pandora or whatever it may be. Um, so yeah, it's interesting. I do think I do think there's going to be a bit of a reckoning between now and where we will see a lot of apps, um, kind of collapse

in on themselves. I think we're going to see on the investment front, some capitalists venture Catalyst being a little more careful with which apps they jump in and back. I just don't see it as sustainable in the long run for the kind of approach we're seeing right now. Where you know, it seems like every week you're getting one or two stories about some brand new app debuting with incredible amounts of financial backing. Uh, and no business

plan to speak of that that cannot continue indefinitely. So I think there's probably gonna be a bit of a shaky bubble kind of moment between now and hopefully by one it will have settled back down so that we can have product of useful apps continue. I don't I don't want to see anyone tank. I just don't think that the way things have been going is sustainable in

the long run. The other thing I was thinking is that the way I've seen companies talk to developers, the idea that you write one app and runs on multiple platforms, Android, Chromos, or if you run a Windows app it runs on every Windows thing and iOS at some point has to have some kind of ties to os ten or mac os.

I would imagine in five years these apps that are just kind of like, oh, it's only for my phone, it's only from my watch, or it's only for whatever, these these apps will actually be much more powerful than when you can install them on full fledged computers, or you can have the same experience or slightly modified experiences for different screens. I think that's the future we're headed for. So we're not gonna lose the apps. We might get more productive apps, But I don't see it being this

world of the way it is now. It's definitely gonna be much more, kind of like the way the i OS apps can be iPhone and iPad. I can imagine this happened with all other kinds of apps as well. Yeah, that's something that Microsoft has been pushing for for a long time. I mean Windows eight was our first indication that they really wanted to create this universal experience where the technology, the programs you depended upon would work across

multitude multiple platforms seamlessly. And we're we're seeing that with a lot of ways that apps are uh designed, you know, like um, Netflix is a great example where you're watching Netflix on one platform, you pause your viewing, you go, you turn on a different platform, and you can pick up right where you left off. That that's sort of that same idea, this idea that you can have a

persistent experience across whichever platform you want. It may be that the interaction with that platform has to be different because it's just a it's you know, it doesn't have the same interface, but the experience you get is as close to being universal as you can possibly get. Um. I agree that that's definitely gonna continue you and and it will probably be very impressive, at least to the

twenty sixteen versions of US. Maybe versions of US will be you know, totally blase about it, but but right now we'd be really we'd really be thrilled by that. One of the other things we did not talk about in two thousand and eleven, neither Chris nor I anticipated it was the rise of Google Fiber. Uh, and seeing Google Fiber come out. I'm in Atlanta and Google Fiber is currently deploying in Atlanta to the point where lots of different neighborhoods in the Atlanta area are eligible for

signing up for Google Fiber. Not me yet, but any day now. Um, So we didn't anticipate Google Fiber showing up. Do you think Google Fiber is actually going to have a disruptive effect on the industry as a whole or do you see this as being something that might might be beneficial for certain regions. But that's all we're going to see. We're not gonna get a wider effect than that.

I think there's gonna be quite a wide effect. In recent news, Versing went out and bought a o L and uh something else was the other one, Yahoo, right, And essentially it makes it some kind of digital advertising giant to take on Google. And I loved seeing the news only for the reason that maybe it would get like like light a fire under Google and go, wait a second, if those guys are going to be an I s P and they're going to have this kind of content management, why don't we do the same thing

considering we're competitors with them. So I'm expecting Google to be one of the first to just full on go head to head against a horizon against the wireless carriers out there, because Google Fiber, while it's good, the infrastructure layout just seems to take so long and then run into a lot of regulation problems. But if they can buy up you know, essentially the wireless last mile, if that's how this is going to go, I would think they would be one of the companies to do it.

And I was trying to out, like, what other company do I think in five years would actually have a wireless service? I would say in the US anyway, Amazon could easily become some kind of wireless carrier because their whole model is just get you to buy products over and over and over again. So if they can stop that one last barrier of well, I don't have a

connection to Amazon, I'm gonna do this. Why not do that with not only their fire devices but any device because in the past they used to have wireless built into their kindles through other services. There's really not a lot of reasons why a company like Amazon wouldn't enter

that fray, especially in my future. By the way, Google has already entered this, and it's gonna have enough of a disruption that other companies will no longer be afraid to fight an a T and T Hoverizon and I guess T Mobile at the time, because that's usually the biggest fears, like if I go against these guys, they won't carry my phones, and then that's going to cause

an issue. But when there's enough competition, it no longer matters well, and it's just nice to see any competition at all in that space, at least with the wireless side. You could argue, particularly with the cellular and the LTE side of things, you could argue that there is at least some competition here in the United States. When you get to home internet access like wired internet access, that

level of competition starts to drop off dramatically. Depending on where you live, you may not have any options other than a single provider. Uh. In my case, I have one decent option at least from a data speed, although anyone who listens to a show that I, as an I do knows that it's reliability is more than a little questionable. By the way I asked, I don't know

if I'll be able to record this week. We'll find out, uh the But but seeing actual competition there is really encouraging because it suddenly forces these major companies that haven't had to worry about that kind of thing for more

than a decade to really seriously consider it. Especially seeing is how ones like Comcast are in the business not just of providing Internet service, but are also cable television companies, and that business I didn't really think about touching on that because it's not it's related to Internet, but it's not truly Internet. That business has been really kind of teetering on this edge of a precipitous drop for a couple of years, and we expect that to happen any

day now. Really, So seeing that kind of pressure come up is encouraging to me because I hope that it will ultimately benefit the consumer where you have real options, not just options in name only for real good Internet access like decent speeds. And it also be nice to not see any more data caps. I'm really hoping the

data caps go away. That was something we touched on in our two thousand and eleven episode, and UH turned out that that ended up being a real big issue, particularly since we're seeing more and more streaming video these days at higher qualities than ever before. You're talking about things like four K and UM and perhaps even higher resolution video moving forward. Uh, data caps are a real problem. Do you think that's gonna be something that will persist?

Do you think companies are going to hold onto data caps for as long as they possibly can, or do you think that demand and competition will ultimately make data caps a thing of the past by the year. There's what I want to happen. When I think it's gonna happen. Okay, let's let's hear what you want to happen. What I want to happen is I would like there to be enough bandwidth if there's basically these companies are auctioning off

or selling to you various speeds. Okay, you can pay you know x amount of money for outter ten naka bits per second. You can pay why for thirty you can pay z for one gig a bit wireless, but that's not gonna happen. What's gonna happen is you're going to get this giant fire hose of speed, like we're gonna give you one gig a bit per sect it, but your cap is five gigabytes. You through this now, no gigabytes to gigabyte. There's there's obviously a change there,

but that's the thing that keeps making money. It's actually relatively simple to explain to people as well. When it comes to caps um, I don't see that being changed unless, like we talked about, other companies get into the game where there's enough competition, maybe somebody can disrupt that marketing. But the way it is now, it seems like the old old ideas was unlimited, and we'll have unlimited and

then people would never let them go. Because of the changes that have happened, I think caps are here to stay, at least only on the wireless space. On the wired side, the home based stuff, I still think if they have caps would all to be very very high kind of a ludicrous number that's very hard to hit because that's how it's sold at home. It's about speed, that's how you get home internet. So I still see wireless companies just sticking to caps. One particular wired company, I still

think we'll do caps. You know the company, Yeah, this is the same one I was ring too earlier. Yes, yeah, yeah, now I know that company well too. Well, some might say, uh yeah, I I really hope that the push from Google Fiber will ultimately make the wired data caps a thing of the past, as companies have to differentiate themselves more in order to win over customers rather than run the risk of seeing their customer base deplete into nothing.

That's my hope. My fear is that this is just going to continue to be an issue in and that people, even though they'll have the access to much better um Internet service, will not be able to take full advantage of it because of those things, at least not without paying a hefty fee for either the unlimited package, which I'm sure some companies will offer, or you know, overage fees because you keep going over the amount that you're

allotted per month, uh, somewhat arbitrarily, if not entirely arbitraily. That's the grumpy old man version of this episode. Uh, let's talk about something that gets me even more angry, net neutrality. So net neutrality, we we've seen a lot

of progress over the last five years. One of the things that that happened that Chris and I didn't really predict was the move on an official front to try and reframe cable companies are are cable providers internet service providers I should say um in a way that would allow them to fall under rules that would ensure net neutrality would continue. And we've seen a lot of resistance of that to that idea over the last couple of years. Uh,

you know, the companies are fighting this like crazy. What do you think the status of net neutrality will be by I think it's gonna be so much for it is the way it is now. I think that the T Mobile method that we've seen was basically what we're going to see by everybody. And what I mean by that is there's no prioritization of bits over other ones. However, certain bits do not count against caps. It's almost like

bending a rule like crazy without breaking it. So I think that's how we're going to ride this line because I know, when it comes to net neutrality in the United States, one of the ways that companies can say, hey, listen, we can actually prioritize bits is based on network congestion or network management. As long as you can come up with the reason why you need to do this, a legal reason, it'll make sense to do it that way. But I'm assuming the tamabile method is actually the future

of net neutrality. It's not. Again, it's not prioritization. It's just not counting something towards a cap. So in other words, uh, it's not that you would get faster or more reliable service. Let's let's use a fictional approach. So let's say that I've got a a a video service. Uh we'll call it, I don't know, not Flicks. So I've got not Flicks, but I also am Let's say a subscriber to Tim Warner.

So Tim Warner is my internet service provider, and Tim Warner, that guy Tim has got the own his his own video service that is competing with not Flicks. And Tim Warner's service doesn't count against my data cap, but not Flix does. Now, if I were to watch the same movie on either service, I would have, at least in theory, the exact same experience as a customer, the same same bit rate, all of that stuff, uh, no buffering, you know,

same quality of video. It wouldn't matter. But when it came time for me to pay my bill, I wouldn't have any danger of going over if I was relying on Tim Warner's service, then on not Flix, where I might go over because that is still counted against my data cap. Am I capturing what you're you're kind of proposing here mostly except the concern becomes when Tim Warner

has its own content with it. With the current example I was making, I was talking about the Team Mobile, it isn't exactly they have skin in the game when it comes to music services or whatever. So when you're talking about a an i SP that also has a content arm, that's when it gets a little murky. However, it's still not prioritization. It's simply not counting data against

your cap and the cap there's nothing illegal about a cap. Yeah, So that's so I think that is something I think we will continue to see and also as we keep seeing wireless companies or I s p s get into the content game and vice versa. This is going to get pushed now that we're talking about this, This might become the new fight. Can a company that has has two different interests do this kind of not prioritization and get away with it? Yeah? I mean the easy real

world example of that is Comcast. I mean, Comcast definitely has a vested interest with you know, NBC Universal and all this. They have a huge content arm as well as internet service provider business, and the two combined. You know, it's it's very easy to bring up the concern of a conflict of interest if you were to prioritize in some way, shape or form the native content versus stuff

that comes from other companies. Uh. I agree. I think we're going to see a lot of really messy fights, some of which may end up being like big news that people like you and I pay a lot of attention to and the general public just grumbles about their cable bill. Um, that's based upon past experience in my case. One about the concept of privacy by one, we're already seeing some uh, some struggles out there. We've got so many devices out in the hands of people that have cameras.

They're not only capable of shooting video and recording uh sound, as well as just shooting images. They're not only capable of uploading that stuff later, they can stream it live at this point, and we've had famous examples, recent examples of that being used to great effect, uh, sometimes with really disturbing consequences, important but disturbing consequences. But this is also raising up questions of what will privacy be like?

What is the expectation of privacy in a world where you are surrounded by potentially hundreds of live feed video cameras that could broadcast to the entire world. What do you think it'll be dead privacy and in five years

dead dead dead dead dead. Uh. The idea of having a reasonable expectation of privacy, when could you possibly imagine in a space other than I guess maybe a bathroom, where do you have a space where you think you have a reasonable expectation that you will not be recorded, where you will not be seen by a camera or live streamed. At this point, in this modern age, it's

getting more and more normal. Yeah, there's a chance that I could be walking around in a store, in a mall or whatever and somebody's live streaming this on Facebook Live in five years from now, people don't get way more used to this concept. So this idea, I think of the legal standard a reasonable expectation of privacy. That

changes when it comes to reasonability. So when it comes to your face showing up on a billboard for you know, not Flix as as a user because you were outside on a phone and if somebody saw you on your phone looking at knot Flix, that might be used. It could be in terms of service. Then we can use your image if we get you on the street. There's all kinds of changes because cameras are everywhere. It used to be the fear of oh no big brothers watching me,

but everybody's watching each other. You can live stream anything at any given time. I don't think privacy is going to be the same kind of great thing we held sacred, you know, years ago. Now it's just gonna then it's

going to be in the future. This idea that well, of course, of course we're live stream This is just how it is, you know, that's the way reality is now, right, Yeah, And it gets even more complicated than that because you also have organizations that are pushing back against this encroaching world of live video. I'm I'm thinking specifically various police

forces around the United States in particular. I mean, this is something that we've seen in other countries, but you're starting to see it in the US where you're seeing more of an opposition to the idea of capturing this

stuff on live video. There was a case in Pennsylvania not too long ago in which I believe it was a college student who was using his phone to video police that were gathered outside of a party, and he was detained for that, and there was this whole court case, and eventually the court said in their decision that the right to video police police officers in a public space.

I guess maybe it wasn't a public space because it might have been in front of a private house party, but two video police like that is not protected under the First Amendment in the United States unless you are specifically using it to provide meaningful commentary or critique of the police force. Which seems to be a pretty major legal decision in my mind, one that I am sure

is going to be contested over time. But but seeing this kind of uncomfortable reaction where law enforcement groups, not not universally but in pockets are opposing to opposing this kind of approach tells me that maybe by one will have a point where privacy is dead dead dead dead dead Mark Zuckerberg style. But it's not gonna be a gentle pathway. We're gonna see lots of different reactions, both from official agencies and individuals who are going to protest this.

I think, ultimately, as you say, fruitlessly, because I don't think that I don't think you can stop this train now. It's it's moving, it's not there's no way to derail it. Uh. The question is just how long is it gonna take to get to that destination where we've just you know, come to the conclusion that that you're essentially always on camera.

But it'll be great, you know, the future everything that people who have like throwback parties, you know, like there's nineties parties now, in the future, it'll be like privacy parties and there's nobody's got got a phone. You gotta chill out, and you can't live stream, and it'll be like a thing that people like do kind of like camping. They decided we're gonna go off the grid, or we're gonna not live stream just for thirty minutes, I know,

it's crazy, but we're going to be dark. It'll be kind of like the the advertising campaign for Las Vegas about what what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. It's gonna be kind of like that, like, all right on this weekend, we're not broadcasting what's happening, it's you experience that when it happens. When it's over, it's over, and that's it. Uh. That does appeal to me, even as someone who seems to be surgically attached to his phone.

I very like I go through that level of distress if I don't have I realized I don't have my phone on me. I go through that panic mode. But it does also sound nice to kind of get away from that if you're making a conscious effort to do so. I don't like it forced upon me. Um. So, what about related to privacy? What about cybersecurity? Obviously we've seen lots of high profile cybersecurity risks and attacks. We've seen

a lot of information about various vulnerabilities being exploited. There are, of course, major conferences that are dedicated to both uncovering and demonstrating the power of exploiting vulnerabilities. I honestly think because I've been asking you to answer every one of these questions before I do. It's kind of the safety

net version. I think, Uh, this is just gonna become one of the most important issues by and I have no doubt that there will be several uh major, major stories that involve cybersecurity failures, possibly even a couple of catastrophic or a catastrophic I should say catastrophic stories thrown in there, and by catastrophic I mean things where either it's discovered that there have been uh foreign agencies spying

on very important material. We've already seen examples of that in the past, whether it's in the United States or other countries. We're gonna see more of that come to light, I think over the next few years, and also just other examples of things like corpiate corp corporate espionage or you know, whether it's something where one company is acting against another government against the company, or um disenchanted former

employees against the company. I think we're gonna see a lot more of this to a point where cybersecurity is going to be one of the biggest and most important industries by one. What are your thoughts. I think in some areas it'll be really important for industry and just in general, like when it comes to everyday security. If you work at the corporation, you work at a business, that kind of thing I just think as a but the public consciousness, it will remain as it as it

has been. We have the whole here. Look at the NSA has got everything on everybody at all times, and it still didn't cause a shift in behavior. Now there might be some new interest in hey, is my phone? Is its fingerprint scanner going to be used against me? Do I have to be conscious when you use my thumb? Or does my pass code? Can I not give a passcode? Those kinds of questions do come up for the general public.

I just think the public consciousness, with the connectivity we have now, there's a real ease in just turning off your brand and going yeah, I know that happened over there, but you know, I really want to check on this live stream, I really want to mess with this app, I want to do this other thing. So while it should be really really important, and while your privacy and your protect and being protected in your data being protected,

it should be important. We see stories all the time about breaches and overreaching by agencies and finding out there's state sponsored attacks. Yet it's only those who are intrigued or interested in security that are already reading the stories, kind of feeding itself, not exactly touching hitting a chord with the public. I don't know what it would take if the n S A stuff didn't do it. I don't know what it would take other than aliens showing up and think we have docs on you, and it's

still be more in the aliens and the documents. I agree with you in the sense that I think the general public will not be more attuned to the risks and the the various problems of cybersecurity, and even the or the advances and cybersecurity. I also think the general population isn't necessarily going to be more um aware and alert and and take proactive steps to better protect their

own systems. Whether that means, you know, something as simple as changing the password on your router to uh, making certain that you're not using the same passwords for various services, all that kind of stuff. Using encryption. I don't think that's gonna be a big deal for most people. But I do think on the back end of things, on the actual cybersecurity industry end of things, that's gonna be

a huge, huge are of growth by one. Like if someone were asking me, like they were interested in technology and they were wondering what area would have you know, good good growth, good potential, I would say cybersecurity is way up there. Uh it's not. I don't think people would necessarily consider it glamorous, and a lot of folks

just don't necessarily understand the importance of it. But based upon the things that have happened, I mean, you know, look at the stuff that's happened over the last five years, from stocks net to you've got the Sony hack, which was huge news a couple of years ago, Um, the Ashley Madison hack where you had uh, you know, essentially

blackmail rolled into hacking. These are big stories and I think that's just going to continue over the next few years, which is that's why I feel like it's gonna be even bigger by not bigger in the sense that people will, like the average person was going to talk about it, but bigger in the sense that more and more our companies and and government agencies are going to pay a

lot more attention to that side of things. And the other thing is there's a lot of technologies that can take care of the cybersecurity end, even if the users in paying attention, like biometrics, like you know mention the fingerprint scanner, there's the note seven it's got it's new

Irish scanner. You would think that with that kind of technology that might help the public might not care that Oh look, I can use a fingerprint or use my eyes to unlock something, but that will actually up to security in general because you're not using the same one, two, three, four five password Because people do that. Yeah, yeah, I mean there's a reason why a lot of brute force attacks can be effective, and that's because a lot of

people use the same week passwords. Their entire databases just filled with millions of common, simple passwords, and that's why a lot of those brute force attacks can be can be ultimately successful. It's because people are not practicing good computer security. So using bio tricks as a means of of of improving that is a step in the right direction. I mean, obviously no system is completely full proof, but um, this this is definitely a better step than one two,

three for five, which is on my luggage. Um, I've got a question here that I'm just curious what your thoughts are and some again something that we didn't really touch on the show. But do you think internet based currencies, and I'm specifically thinking of like cryptocurrency like like bitcoin, will play a large role in one or do you think that that's just something that it's going to be popular with a certain segment of the population but never

really grow beyond that. I'm curious about your thoughts on this. I think it's gonna stay niche. I mean, there's nothing demanding that we stop using dollars or euro or pounds. So the idea of having this cryptocurrency or that you're minding something like the like bitcoin particular, where you can keep creating them, it takes a long time and it figures itself out that Have you done an episode on bitcoin? Yes, okay, so listen to that episode to fully explain it, because

I'm not going to do it justice here. But I don't see it being something that would take over even though we have this increasing globalization. When it comes to the Internet, you can get anything from anywhere, any time with any device. That's awesome, but it took a lot of time to get that infrastructure in place. If you introduced a new currency that's gonna make it work. I

don't see that becoming a bigger deal. I still seeing see it having a minor interest for people who really want to get into it, But I don't see it growing much larger than that. What do you think. I think you're right. I think if there are any if we see any major state backed cryptocurrencies, then there's the

possibility that that could take off. But then you start asking the asking questions of why bother going through the trouble of creating a cryptocurrency when you could just create areas services things like Google Wallet or Apple pay, the ideas of like the transaction services. So it has nothing to do really with currency other than the fact that those are the units with which you know that you

use to determine how much you're paying for something. But it's actually a wealth transfer system, for lack of a better phrase. I think that's what we're going to see continue to grow. We're going to see those services get more popular and used in and implemented in a variety of different products, including I mean wearables being a really simple example. I can easily imagine a lot of wearables having that particular capability built in as part of what

it does. But I agree with you that the cryptocurrency I think will remain the realm of a smaller population. And I would also argue that it's those people who

they purposefully try to maintain that, right. I think that those populations don't necessarily want to see a widespread adoption of the currency that they like, because, for one thing, it allows that currency to be used for stuff that they might not want more attention drawn toward, right, like some of the more shady or possibly outright illegal things

that we've seen bitcoin used for, and other cryptocurrencies as well. Yeah, the idea with with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, it's essentially cash online, an untraceable unit that can be passed from one person to another without necessarily being caught with this kind of paper trail with credit cards, that kind of thing, And like you're saying, it should stay I imagine staying niche because it's almost in some respects cryptocurrency is a

solution and looking for a problem. Yeah, you don't really need to do this, especially with all of the banking structures out there to do a lot of I don't want to say legitimate, but other business. You know, you want to do regular business. You can do that so many different ways. At this point, I remember your way back when this is looking is it the wrong way of looking at the internet? But people were afraid to

bank online. But people have gotten very comfortable with it now, so maybe a little too comfortable in some cases could be Yeah, yeah, I think I think a large part of it is your philosophy. If you're if you're like a cryptoanarchist, then this type of currency would have a very strong appeal, right like, Uh, there, there's I think there's an element with not not every but many bitcoin enthusiasts that the one of the strongest appeals is that

it isn't a state backed, centralized unit of currency. Uh, it has this other kind of mystique to it that doesn't rely upon an authoritative force determining the value of that currency. And there's that part of the appeal, and I can understand that, But I also understand that that's a part of the appeal that really just appeals to that small segment of the population. Not everyone shares those same values. So I think that that by its nature,

will continue to limit cryptocurrency to its relatively small population. Well, um, here's something that you and I have both worked in YouTube videos. YouTube has changed a lot over the last several years. Do you think the YouTube of one will look remarkably different from the way it looks now? Are we going to have thousands of multi channel networks out there or will it even be possible for an independent artist to upload something and have it see an instance

any sort of traction whatsoever. I think independent arts will still be able to upload things, and things will go viral when they do, or they'll be shared if it's good. I always think that great content rises to the top no matter what. But I was trying to figure out what is the role of YouTube? This is separate. Didn't even look at any of your notes or questions. I was thinking about YouTube in the future. I thought the Internet and the future is going to be super fast.

You're gonna have a lot of video, You're gonna see over the top solutions with cable companies, You're gonna have a lot of this network television online, and then you have YouTube. And I was trying to figure out what is it going to be And the closest thing I could come up with is I could almost see YouTube becoming a network of source. They already have their own channels, so it would be its own network with its own channels,

which is weird. I guess, kind of like HBO or HBO has got one, two, three, they've got kids, all that kind of stuff. So I could see it going that way where it's imagine or over the top service that's bundling in YouTube, which should theoretically be free, but maybe it's YouTube read a premium version that has the premium content available. That's where I really see it going, because if television goes online entirely online, television should be

a part of that. So I would think YouTube somewhat becomes a network where even though it's it's still generated by a lot of independ it's there are obviously a lot of companies putting money into it. Every now and then you'll see a surprise hit, kind of like I guess if you think about it in the movie structure, where you can have a low budget hit happen with movies,

why not with television. Yeah, I can see that. I mean, it's a it's a weird thing to think about because I wouldn't have really anticipated the multi channel networks coming up and multi channel network for those of you who aren't familiar. Uh, It's the name pretty much gives it away. It's a it's a network of different YouTube channels that have banded together to make kind of a unified business.

So you may have uh, six or seven different channels all bundled together under one network where you can easily see the different individual channels within that network. Each of those individual channels might be very different from one another. They may not be thematically linked at all. Uh. It could just very well be that they've banded together and mostly in an attempt to tap into the same promotional power so that one independent creator can take advantage of

an audience built by another creator. Uh. And obviously ill I would argue that the more closely aligned the various channels are, at least in tone, if not content, the easier it is to migrate some of that audience over so that they also adopt the new platforms. I don't know if that's gonna be as strong a presence in one. I almost see this being like another bubble, kind of

like what I was saying with the app bubbles. I think we're gonna see some multi channel networks do just fine, they'll stick around, they may even grow, they may incorporate others, But I think we're gonna see a lot of them collapse. I just don't think the online business is hard. Creating online content is not easy. It's not easy to do, and it's really not easy to do successfully. Right, Like, it's already it's already got a barrier. The technology barrier

has come way down. But to do high quality content is already challenging, and then to have that content be discovered is growing increasingly challenging over time. Uh, particularly when it comes to video. I mean, we've heard the stats about how there it's more than I don't know what it's up to now. Last I looked, and this was months ago, so I know it's update was something like a hundred and eight hours of video or uploaded to

YouTube every minute. So when you start looking at that volume, you realize the chances of being discovered out of that massive amount of stuff being put up every single minute are are pretty pretty low. It's really really a challenge.

So I'm curious to see in one if that shakes out at all, If either people abandon YouTube, you know, people who are spending a lot of time and effort to try and get something discovered end up walking away from it if they don't meet with any success or if it will just be even crazier than it is now, and I on se don't know, I can see it

go either way. You just spark my imagination here because I was thinking the way Google has invested in deep machine learning, the way Facebook has done the same thing. This idea that you just said, you know, hundreds of hours of being uploaded like every minute, the the idea that there's all of this content and discover ability is really low. That's where all this deep machine learning makes

a lot of sense on the back end. So if you're done watching a YouTube video on whatever, you're watching it on the future, it will actually recommend something similar or something maybe in style, maybe in comedy, maybe just an appearance, maybe something like that, because the analysis of the content should be greater at that point where this is actually a good problem to have. Having too much content to go through is actually awesome. From I would

think any viewers like what do I pick? I could pick anything that that it does become very paralyzing in the fact you don't know what to pick. But if these algorithms get better. If deep machine learning has figured out, how what are the parts and components of this thing

that you enjoyed, we can give you another one. I think that maybe that's the future of YouTube networks that they have built at these these playlists essentially for you and your interests based on your interests, because as fast as the internet will get in five years, and whether you have net neutrality being a problem or not, and all these other problem concerns when you're trying to consume it,

if you can't find anything, it's a problem. I really think when that happens, we'll see an improvement on this deep machine learning where you will get content that makes sense for you at that time. Yeah, curation is a huge problem, right, like a like a challenge curation curating huge amounts of or going through an enormous amount of information in order to curate it and get the stuff that's most relevant to you. This is one of the

biggest challenges that come with big data. Uh, the idea that yeah, you've got tons of information out there, and a lot of it is potentially useful in many different ways, but how do you actually sort through all of that to get the best out of what you have, same sort of thing here that we're talking about, trying to find the videos that are most going to resonate with you, whether it's from an entertainment perspective or being thought provoking,

whatever it might be. It also reminds me a lot of a patent Oswald routine where he talks about his TiVo going crazy because he he used his tvo to record a Western and then his TiVo went nuts and started recording all the different programs that have horses in them. Uh because because it came to the conclusion that he must really like horses, and just shows you that machine learning there is a process. It's not always perfect right

out of the gate. Uh So, a couple of other things I wanted to ask before we conclude this episode. This kind of ties into again something that we're both concerned with as as content creators on the Internet. What do you think the monetization of the Internet is going

to look like? In five years? We've been seeing web advertising as the primary way for at least large companies to earn money off of creating content for the Internet, but we've also seen a lot of different reactions to web advertising from the rise of ad blockers to UH discussions about what are the best practices. Do you think web advertising is going to remain the way that that

large UH intent content creators are going to go. Do you think other methods like the Patreon method, like a subscriber method are going to actually grow over the years or is there going to be something else? Like how are we going to make sure that we can pay for stuff so that people keep making the stuff we like?

And this is this one is a really hard question because for years people have been conditioned that you can get content online for free, and then it's because there were ads on there, and then after that it's like, wait a second, we don't need to see ads because we can use ad block And then you realize, wait a second, this company isn't get money, but I like this this company. Can I just white list them? Should I do that? Or do I go to another site

that reblogs it or not? So in the future, I'm expecting advertising isn't going anywhere the old style, you know, adds, the actual banner ads takeovers that kind of stuff that's gonna be there no matter what. I'd imagine you'd see much more sponsored content, uh content that's somewhat harder for ad blockers to find as ads. I know Facebook's doing a push with that right now where they're trying to fight ad block plus trying to make sure that they

have as much ads that they can on their sites. Also, like we were talking about with mobile apps, that's an area where you can have a siloed application that an ad blocker wouldn't work on in theory, so you might see it that way, I would hope, and I'm actually I hope. I actually think of a throwback concept of micro transactions where you are paying a couple of sense instead of having a subscription. But I see this this being the model for contents in the future. With advertising.

You'll have your standard advertising, you also have your Patreon method of basically paying per month what you want. I could see a subscription thing on top of that and micro payments, in other words, allowing any single way to break the paywall with this either turn off your ad blocker, or pay us two cents for this, or give us a subscription for the year. I just see a lot of companies being very, very open to how their content is going to be received and not just sticking forever

to this. You must look at our Betterer ad and here is a nice little other ad that says you can't read this until you pay more money. Paywalls that work for other bigger companies out there. I don't think that they should be as high for smaller places. Yeah, I agree with you. I think uh. I think we're gonna see the Patreon method get adopted by more and more smaller content creators. UM, particularly those that are working on this as a passion project as opposed to it

being like a a a business business. This right like it's they want to make money off of it, but they also are in it because this is something they truly want to do. UM. I see a lot of more people going down that route. UM. I agree that we're going to see a lot of companies say, look, here are all the different ways that you can support us. Pick whichever way works best for you, and then we

will continue creating the stuff you like. I think that is probably the I think it's gonna take us a while to get there, but I think this is the best approach again, to just give those options to the consumer. And I agree with you that we have conditioned people

to think that stuff on the Internet is free. Somehow like it it We just magically create it, and somehow we're also able to pay rent and buy food, uh, and that it's all wonderful and we will continue to do so in perpetuity and we're never going to get evicted or star to death. That's not the way the world works, unfortunately. So I think we're definitely gonna see

a lot more sponsored content. We're gonna see some branded content stuff that uh, you know, We're gonna see some growing pains with people experimenting with how do I create something that serves the brand that's sponsoring me, but also is of genuine value to the people listening, so it doesn't end up becoming a very long commercial that people feel like they're fooled into consuming because they hate that. I don't know if you know that. I asked, people

hate being tricked into watching a commercial? What's that? I couldn't hear you over, my beautiful citizen. What I just kidding? Right right? I was thinking a while ago, we lived in a world where paying for music online sounded like the craziest thing. You could get it as much as you want, you could find it anywhere. But if the cost gets low enough then people you saw that people change their methods to pay per song. Now the subcription

services are completely the way to go. So I think if the if the business side figures it out and goes, look, we can't keep it going the way it is now. It's just not not sustainable. There's a chance that people will relearn this and then go, yes, I wouldn't. I wouldn't take this. And I really hate saying this, but I wouldn't just swipe a newspaper right, And there's content there and there's nothing wrong with charging for content that you make. And I'm just saying this as a content producer.

I say this as a content consumer that I do pay for this stuff I want to see Otherwise, how will people know you basically vote with your dollars? Is my idea on that, which is like people's idea, But it's it's going to take some time. It does. There's just such inertia to not change anything. Yeah, but well, I mean you've got you've got billions of dollars wrapped up in an industry that is not known to be

fast to react to changes. And I'm talking about the marketing industry in general, advertising industry um which has it's it's it's linked to pretty much everything we're talking about in this little little discussion. Uh And and yeah, you can't expect it to change very quickly. And yet the the wants of the customers are changing, and and that what they are willing to do changes and you have to react to that. I think, uh you really hit

on it. The idea that if you're if the price is right and if it's easy enough to get, like I think you have to have both of those things. You have to have the right price, and you have to make it really really easy for people to buy

your stuff. Uh. DRM was a huge problem that I think ended up being a big negative for a lot of people, for lots of different stuff, not just music, but you know, various software packages, that kind of thing that as you make it more difficult for people to buy a legitimate copy of your product, they're going to go further to get illegitimate copies because they don't have to deal with all the mess that comes along with

trying to buy something legally. Uh So, making making it is easy to get and at the right price, I think Urondo something like I think there I think there might be money in that um, and people are willing to support the stuff that they love if they feel like the value they get back is of of equal amount to what they're putting into it. You can't just ask people to pay for junk and expect it to go on forever. Um. I mean, it might work for the short term, but it's not really a long term strategy.

You know. I have a lot of other questions that we wrote down, but this episode is going pretty long, so I just think of gonna uh to to kind of end on one big question, which is about accessibility. We've seen accessibility of the Internet improve quite a bit over the last five years, but we still have a long way to go. More than half of the world's population does not really have access to the Internet, so there are billions of people who do not have at

least easy access to the Internet. Some of them might be able to get access with a great deal of effort, but you know, the more effort you have to spend, the smaller the returns are on actually getting that access. But we're seeing a lot of projects trying to change that. So things like Google having a project Loon, and Facebook having its proposed satellite and drone program to supply uh

Internet to lots of different parts of the world. Both of these companies have a vested interest in people getting access to the Internet. It's not like it's purely altruistic. But do you think that we're going to see near universal access to the Internet. Eric Schmidt of Google fame said back in two thousand and thirteen he thought by everyone would have access. Do you think that's a little Do you think it's realistic or is that a little ambitious?

I think it's both. And considering how Google it is a company in Facebook, and as you mentioned, they're vested interesting being relatively strong on this, I'm gonna boldly say by there's going to be universal accents whether it's the thing is about receiving it, so you can have the earth covered an Internet via balloon or satellite wherever you want to use. The fact that hardware has gotten so cheap, like Android one phones, we're seeing stories about five dollar

cell phones. It wasn't so long ago that I was excited reading about the one laptop per child projects, which at this point seems kind of not antiquated but kind of silly because how you, yeah, you can get so much more power now with phones and low end phones these days, like oh well this is this is a piece of junk phone. I wouldn't buy this, But they have gotten so cheap and so available to so many different areas that it's the other half of the equation.

Just having wireless and some kind of access to it is one thing, but having the hardware out there, I think that is going to get there by Maybe I could see that happening where these devices are so cheap that it's just something you have. You should have this. At this point, it's almost like a hand or this could be talking about because it's like a hand you want to make sure you have this device with you at all times, or Swiss army knife. You have to

have it. And with Google and Facebook consistently going ahead now, I don't see Google and Facebook being like all the Vista and my Space. They seem to have enough power behind them that they can keep going for a good another five years. You would say they're too big to fail. No, that's not what I'm saying. I think I think they're they're motivated enough, and they are. There's another There's that company we talked about, Comcast, that's a rag on that much.

Their method of change isn't what I see from Google or Facebook. Those two companies work to get more and more coverage and they're going for bigger goals than just the short term shareholder uh numbers. Right, Because with Comcast, what what their strategy was, and this isn't a secret. I mean I covered this in in a deep episode series about how Comcast works. The Comcast story. The way that they're company traditionally would grow is they would go

out and buy other companies. They weren't creating new markets. They were purchasing the companies that were serving markets they weren't in yet. So that's a very different strategy, as you point out, right, because once you get to a point where you bought up pretty much everyone you can buy without facing massive resistance on a on a regulatory side, you can't you can't grow anymore. You have to create,

you can't just buy other stuff. And really the Comcast history was pretty much uh just stuck in that mentality of buy other companies that are already doing what we do, and now we that those customers become our customers. That's how you grow your customer base. This is a very different approach. I I love the idea of everyone having access by one. I mean, the implications of that are so far beyond just having the ability to finally access

the Internet. We've seen the Internet play a an incredibly important part in massive historical moments throughout the last five years. I mean, the Arab spring alone was such a huge story, and I imagine that we'll see more stories like that, particularly as access to the Internet becomes closer to being universal,

and I find that encouraging. I think there's going to be a lot of tumultuous problems along the way, but I find that when you get this level of communication, this incredibly powerful tool in people's hands, then amazing things can happen. Uh not all of them involving videos of cute cats. That's just a bonus. But that's my own personal kind of optimistic view. Um. I as, thank you so much for joining the show today and and sticking your neck out to look out and say, what's it

gonna be like in five years. I look forward in to calling you up and going over these results wherever I wherever I'll be, I'll have access to the Internet. So it will be a problem, that's true. Yeah, it won't matter like if you're taking a vacation in Antarctica, I know that I'll be able to have you chat, maybe have a couple of penguins in the background, and we'll have a Hopefully my connection doesn't freeze. Yeah, that's

that's great. That's great. Leave the puns to me, chuckle heads, all right, Yes, please tell people where they can find your work, you guys, go to see net dot com. We've got lots of great news how to use reviews. You can also check out top five dot net dot com. If I want to promote top five, which I do, count down a fun see netlist every week at top

five dots net dot com. And if you want to hear I as talk about stuff with me uh and uh in a format that's not safe for work, you can always check out our podcast Without Pretense with Eric sandean Our, our our third host. Um. But it is not It is not not a polite show at all. But but it does exist. It is a thing that happens. Uh. Yeah, we we named it this year in two thousand and sixteen, we named it the best podcast for two thousand fourteen. So that tells you all you need to know about

that show. Alright, so, guys, if you have any questions, comments, suggestions for future episodes, please get in touch with me. The email address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com, or drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter. The handle at both of those locations is tech stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again really soon. For more on this and bothands of other topics is how stuff works dot com w w W