What Will the Internet Be Like in the Next 50 Years?

On October 29th, 1969, a message was sent from a rather nondescript room at UCLA in Southern California to a Stanford Research Institute computer console in Menlo Park, California. It read simply “Lo,” though it was supposed to say “Login.” The system crashed before completing the task. This was the world’s first message sent via an interconnected computer network known as ARPANET. On this unassuming fall day, the modern internet as we now know was conceived.

In the five decades since, the internet has transformed human existence. From how we wage war to how we make each other laugh, it’s unfathomable how much the internet has shaped life in that short amount of time.