Many more devices, for one. The trend that started with mobile phones, tablets, MP3 players and TVs, has moved on to door locks, thermostats, light bulbs, coffee makers, fridges, dishwashers, ovens, washing machines, watches, toothbrushes, garden sprinklers, and, of course, home speakers. And there are more on the way.
The Internet of Things (IoT) will be a boon for firms that want to track our behaviour, and it may improve our lives in some respects, by handing us more control. But the IoT makes us more vulnerable to cyberattacks and breaches of personal data. In the first half of 2018, the cybersecurity firm, Kaspersky Lab, detected three times as many malware attacks on smart devices as in the whole of 2017.
Perhaps the most exciting internet buzzword today is decentralisation. Backed by luminaries such as Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the decentralised Web, or DWeb, aims to break down the walled gardens of the internet, where people experience the online world through operators such as Google, Facebook and others. Rather than a small number of firms holding masses of information on millions of people, the DWeb establishes a system whereby everyone holds and owns all their data, down to the level of individual likes on social media, and can choose precisely whether and how to share that information.