30 years ago, at the birth of the Internet, a group of engineers got together and defined the standards that are at the core of the internet – the communication protocol, now known as IPv4. Unfortunately, these fine people never imagined that what they were creating would become the backbone of communication the world over. What was well designed for a network aimed at governments and universities doesn’t scale too well for 6 ¾ billion people. In February 2011, the last free pools of IP addresses were allocated to the 5 regional Internet registries. The exhaustion of addresses is now only a matter of time. The good news is that this hasn’t been left completely unresolved – bring on IPv6! IPv6 allows for enough unique numbers, that a trillion people can each be assigned trillions of IP numbers. Realistically this means this should never be an issue again.

So what is to come? The most that will be needed at home, in most situations, will be getting a new router to connect you to the internet – any computer within the last 5 years is already compatible. New Zealand has been working on the migration for some time, and http://www.ipv6.org.nz/ has some good information on how far along we are. However, there’s no need to panic – this doesn’t mean that your internet connection will suddenly stop working. Everything you use today will carry on as before, but any internet services that talk only IPv6 won’t work until your connection is updated

In the coming months, the team at Catholic.Geek will be monitoring this developing situation and keep you abrest of any developments. Finally, if the headline doesn’t make any sense – ::1 is the IPv6 code for talking to your own computer – home!

Ever stopped to wonder what the impact of social sharing sites like Facebook and YouTube will have on the saints of the future? Never thought about it? Well, take a look at the recent news of the upcoming (possible) beatification of the late Pope John Paul II.

Unlike most of the candidates for sainthood before him, Pope John Paul II was actually alive during the widespread adoption of the Internet and its related technologies. Every candidate from now on will be too. Not that big a deal, you might think, but what does this mean for his cause for sainthood? Or for yours?

For the Pope, probably not a lot has changed with regards technology’s influence on his cause; it is easy to assume that everything he wrote during his papacy – electronic or otherwise – would have been recorded and copied in the Vatican Archives. As they start to investigate his life for validity as a saint, there will be literally thousands of pages of information.

And so it has been for other popes who are now saints, one would imagine. But here’s the rub – from now on, so it can also be for Joe Catholic, given the amount we are sharing online. Can you imagine the investigation for sainthood in 75 years of a person born in the year 2000? Imagine how much electronic detritus there will be for the average digital native by that time! All those party photos on Facebook, those inane tweets on Twitter, those emails forwarding around not-so-funny jokes – surely, all will come under scrutiny as people are investigated.

The message here is that if you needed another reason to watch what you post online, think about your personal call to sainthood, and whether you are helping or hurting your cause with what you do online.