2038: One World, Two Internets

Currently, the internet is a global network connecting millions of computers around the world. Yet according to Xiao Mina, a writer, technologist and fellow at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center, by 2038 there will be two main internets out there — a forecast that echoes what former Google CEO Eric Schmidt said last year.

“One half belongs to the Libre Web, a U.S.-led federation of internet-savvy states promoting a supposedly free but surveilled internet rife with hate groups and hyperpartisans. The other half belongs to the Tranquil Net — a China-led alliance of nations committed to secure and tranquil internet free from dissent and disagreement. Mutual distrust between the Libre Web and the Tranquil Net has broken off digital ties into two parallel internets operated between two superpowers responsible for world's digital infrastructure," Xiao Mina envisions.

In Xiao Mina’s future the United States and China are locked in a tech cold war over influence, undersea cabling and mineral resources. Interestingly, the split along national lines isn’t the only one. In her fascinating yet alarming vision of the future digital landscape, Xiao Mina also foretells further divisions along race, gender, and class lines.

This troubling prediction is part of the 2038 podcast from New York Magazine's Intelligencer. Hosted by Max Read and David Wallace-Wells, the podcast series features competing visions of what life will be like twenty years from now according to experts in the fields of business, technology, policy, science and more. Some predictions (like a Chinese world order) sound dead-on. Others (like totally sexless future) are a bit more out of whack. Yet, regardless of which direction the world is expected to go, the one thing that all the presented forecasts have in common is this: they all paint the future as a turbulent one.