OTTAWA – The Internet will become a utility and the government will be the saviour of the Internet, Robert Herjavec, CEO and founder of The Herjavec Group and panelist on the popular TV program the Dragon’s Den, told a crowd of about 200 at a Canadian Internet Registration Authority event on Tuesday.
“It’s a utility. Nobody will be doing a presentation in 2021 on the future of the Internet just like nobody does a presentation on the future of electricity, it’s simply a utility,” he said during his luncheon keynote address to the 2012 Canadian Internet Forum. The Internet in North America is nearly pervasive today with more than 76% of people having access. It will become more so in the future as the current generation of connected youth – everything is online for them – grow up and become the leaders of tomorrow.
One simply needs to look at how today’s youth communicates. They don’t use email, they use Blackberry Messenger (BBM) or they text, said Herjavec referring to the communications choices of his own children. “I think what we’re going to see are certain applications or how we access to communicate will simply be online,” he said, noting that the idea of enterprises blocking applications, particularly social media, “will be foreign to people.”
“Ten years from now, the idea of blocking Twitter or any type of social media is going to be as foreign to that generation as it would be for me showing up to my place at work and somebody saying we blocked e-mail.”
But in this type of world, there needs to be some sort of online protection, said Herjavec, and he believes governments will play a big role in this regard. Just as the Canadian Automobile Association lobbied government to begin putting up stop signs back in the early days of the automobile, some organizations are going to exert pressure on the government to do something with respect to online security and safety.
“I believe that governments will be the saviour of the Internet,” Herjavec said, acknowledging that he has changed his opinion from what it was a few years ago.
He suggested that the Internet industry only need look at the payment cards sector to see how this could play out. About five years ago, the major credit card companies established a standard that dictated all web sites that process online payments have to follow a particular standard (PCi). And while there are a bunch of different standards online, this one worked because if sites didn’t adhere to the standard there would be penalties.
“I think we’re going to see something similar along that line. What it’s going to look like, I don’t know. But I do think there’s going to be an element of regulation that somebody who doesn’t have a self serving interest forces on people,” Herjavec said.
Just as companies already go to their own logs (network activity) to determine why something bad happened in their network, governments may do the same thing. “I can see a day where the government comes to an enterprise and says show me [the logs for] February 25 who accessed or sent information from this server in your company at this time. I can see that level of responsibility being pushed down to the private sector,” he said.
Asked for clarification on how governments are going to step up and save the Internet, he reiterated his view that a third party will take on some of that responsibility. Again, he referred to his own children, saying they will connect with anything online.
“Who’s responsible for that content to some degree? Is it their schools? Is it me?” Herjavec asked. “But I’m learning I can’t control everything they do, so I think there’s got to be some element of control. There’s got to be somebody that draws the line in the sand that says if you do this, I have the right to find you, and I have the right to stop you.”
