In the future, we will be the Internet

Excerpt from Azuka Nzegwu's dissertation "The Conduit and Whirlpooling: A New Theory of Knowledge Constitution and Dispersion" (2010)

"[Philip Emeagwali's] prediction is that in one hundred years, people will become nodes, which are connective dots, on the Internet. He describes a scenario fifty years from now in which the body of one’s grandchild will be registered as, and become a node on, the Internet. As a node, the child’s life journey, decisions, successes, and failures will be recorded and archived for possible future study (Emeagwali, 2006). Effectively, human beings will become the bedrock of the interlinked world, seamlessly linked to central hubs and repositories. When this happens, desktop and laptop computers will become obsolete and disappear into the Internet (as is happening in cloud computing), and fifty years later, the Internet will also become obsolete and disappear into humanity. After that transference into humanity, the only aspects that will remain are the nodes, which are actually people, and they will be forever connected in order to work together" (pp. 35-36).

References

Emeagwali, Philip. “Intellectual Capita, Not Money, Alleviates Poverty.” Daily Motion, 2008. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x45yrw_intellectual-capital-not-money-alle_news#.UQX9rUo4I4k (accessed January 2013).

---. “The Internet as an Emerging Global SuperBrain.” Emeagwali, http://emeagwali.com/essays/technology/weather/computing-the-weather.html (accessed June 1, 2010).