Digital Journal — Would you like a Chinese Internet? An Indian Internet? Or an American Internet?
As absurd as that sounds, the regionalization of the Internet could become a very real future, according to a United Nations official. “People are concerned about whether the system we have now will also work five years from now,” Nitin Desai, chair of the UN-led Internet Governance Forum (IGF), told
BBC News.
He predicts the future will see more Chinese Web pages than English pages, and he noted how the Internet is increasingly being shaped by organizations on the “edges,” as opposed to government or public sectors. That’s an issue that concerns nations who want more involvement in developing the Net, Desai said.
Government and private sector bodies “feel they need to be reassured that the system they are relying on is secure, safe and reliable, that they cannot be suddenly thrown out of that system by some attack,” Desai told
BBC.
Desai believed the widespread use of internationalized domain names will insult countries like China, who prefer to use the Chinese alphabet rather than the Latin one. This could lead to the “Balkanization of the Internet,” he added, painting a gloomy picture where various nations try to wrest control of the Web away from global organizations.
Sounds depressing, doesn’t it? But regionalization doesn’t have to separate networks into islands of connectivity that can’t talk to each other. Rather, a positive impact looms: There could be different level of safety, speed and choice, allowing the public to experience a freedom of the Net they have not yet witnessed.
For instance, Chinese netizens can enjoy their global pages in Chinese, rather than English. As long as restrictive countries like China don’t block users from accessing certain pages, Internet Balkanization need not be an albatross to be avoided. If done right, it can actually enhance the Internet experience instead of hinder it.
