And life goes on

By the end of 2008, the USA economical struggles have spread throughout the world and everybody is trying to stay afloat. The military conflicts turn more and more into guerrilla wars where the only winners are the corporations supplying equipment to the rivaling parties. Internet continues its rapid growth, thanks to new technological advancements enabling huge volumes of data to be transferred at high speeds and low costs. The Internet penetrates all parts of the worlds and more and more people have access to a personal computer and the internet. Neelie Kroes continues the war of the EU against the abuse of the monopoly position of Microsoft. Governments’ regulations enforce the use of open standards and open source solutions. Through this development open source software gets more public awareness and the use of the solutions increases. Open source software enables a lot of companies to adjust the software to their specific needs, increasing effectiveness and solutions. Security In software development continues to be an important point on the agenda of developers and consumers. The move towards applications distributed over the global network makes investing in large and expensive software unacceptable. The constantly evolving browsers have become the main tool used by common people. The network has become a second reality, standing on equal bases with the actual one.

By 2009 and 2010, most governments have invested into cyberwar capabilities. The latter has been recognized as a tool for conducting warfare but still remains with secondary importance. Cyber warfare is primarily used to obtain intelligence. Because of the awareness of the possibilities of cybercrime critical systems are not connected to the internet. More money is allocated to the development of UVs – unmanned vehicles – no matter whether air, land or sea oriented. Together with the civil organizations, the military is trying to cut costs and become more efficient. The huge prices of oil and other resources become a major expense in their budgets and there is a move towards more effective and successful military operations.

Around 2015 couple of new types of resources has been developed and marketed but the final decision still depends on the large fuel corporations such as Royal Dutch Shell, Gasprom, Lukoil, Total, etc. Their infrastructures and investments have not yet fully paid off, and the big industries find it difficult to make the necessary technological turn. Nuclear energy comes back to focus and there are new developments in that area. Everything is digitalized at this time and people can’t imagine a world without the internet. Countries keep using their cyber armies to scout for holes in the enemies networks to obtain intelligence but because everything is extremely well secured the networks are almost never fully breached. Cyber war is not a big threat.

During the beginning of the second 21st century decade, cyber crime and all similar activities have been clearly defined and the Internet architecture has evolved in such a way that it is easy to see who did what. Under the threat of monitoring, VPNs have become a fashion and the global network transforms into a sea of private ones. The high quality of open source solutions has made it hard to penetrate well configured software and the major threat of hacks remains from within the organization. The transition towards new types of energy has gone without a big war. Although world powers have changed the internet stays neutral and keeps offering great wealth and opportunities.