More and more I see articles about how the internet is becoming more and more disjunct: firewalled and limited by sovereign nation states to prevent the flow of information. Today I saw an article on Slashdot commenting about Russia’s interest in creating their own internet similar to that of China’s (perhaps complete with firewall as well) and other parts of the world have had similar stories where the government is attempting to limit or reduce the availability of information made available from the internet.

The fact is that it reminds of something that scares me more than I realise: the Internet in is segmentation is similar to the ‘Internex’ of the Seaquest DSV world, a sci-fi tv show from 1993-1996. The Internex had some cross over into different countries (e.g. sovereign nations were still connected) however each nation was heavily gaurded from the next one, I assume to protect from cyberterrorism. The cyberterrorism threat in itself reminds me of the claimed issues of Chinese attacks with in the USA government departments. It is always interesting to see where fiction leads us to reality (or reality becomes like fiction) with so many parts of sci-fi becoming more and more a reality. But the question is, does the rest of the world predicted in these visions of the future also come with it? Or is the restriction of this information again the start of more borders as governments realise what the Internet is really capable of delivering to its users?

It makes me wonder. Where is the world headed?