Imagining the Internet

A vision for the future

This is one of nearly a thousand foresight statements shared by people from around the world. To return to the Voices of the People home page, click here. To do a refined search of the Voices of the People statements, click here. To submit your ideas to this online archive, look to the upper right corner of this page, click on "Share Your Prediction" and fill in the pop-up form.

Name: Thomas Lowenhaupt

From: New York

Bio: Founder of Connecting.nyc Inc.

Area of Expertise: Advocate/Voice of the People

Topic: Community/Culture

Headline: City TLDs To Recenter Internet in Communities

Nutshell: In 2010 the ICANN will allow city TLDs (top level domains) for the first time, allowing cities to develop their traditional proximity roles for the digital era.

Vision: Cities have traditionally been places where ideas mingled and emerged in new forms. This proximity role has been challenged by the Internet's global reach. In my home town, people have .com, .org, .net and dozens of other TLDs housing their ideas and activities. We've become dependent on search engines to try and find our neighbors.

For big cities served by regional communication channels, local issues traditionally are met only at the point of tragedy. In my "community district," with a population of 200,000 community, not one TV, radio, or daily newspaper serves our specific needs. Our .nyc TLD offers a new start, a clean sheet upon which we can plan our civic architecture for the digital era.

Date Submitted: 8/13/2008