A recent survey conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project and Elon University indicates that a majority of Internet leaders, activists, and analysts agree with predictions—some of them surprising—about where the Web may be in 2020. Among the predictions:
A low-cost global network will be thriving and creating new opportunities in a “flattening” world.
Humans will remain in charge of technology, even as more activity is automated and “smart agents” proliferate. However, a significant 42 percent of survey respondents were pessimistic about humans’ ability to control technology in the future. This significant majority agreed that dangers and dependencies will grow beyond man’s ability to stay in charge of technology.
Virtual reality will be compelling enough to enhance worker productivity and also to spawn new addiction problems.
Tech “refuseniks” will emerge as a cultural group characterized by its members’ choice to live off the network. Some will do this as a benign way to limit “information overload,” while others will commit acts of violence and terror against technology-inspired change.
People wittingly and unwittingly will disclose more about themselves, gaining some benefits in the process even as they lose some privacy.
English will remain the universal language of global communications, but other languages will not be displaced. Indeed, many felt other languages, such as Mandarin, would grow in prominence.
At the same time, there was strong dispute about some futuristic scenarios among notable numbers of the 742 survey respondents to the survey. Those who raised challenges said they believe governments and corporations will not necessarily embrace policies that would allow the network to spread to under-served populations; that serious social inequalities will persist, and that “addiction” is an inappropriate notion to attach to people’s interest in virtual environments.
The experts and analysts also split evenly on a central question about whether the world will be a better place in 2020 due to the greater transparency of people and institutions afforded by the Internet. Forty-six percent agreed the benefits of greater transparency of organizations and individuals would outweigh the privacy costs, and 49 percent disagreed.
“Key builders of the next generation of Internet often agree on the direction technology will change, but there is much less agreement about the social and political impact those changes will have,” said Janna Quitney Anderson, lead author of the report “The Future of the Internet II” and a communications professor at Elon. “One of their big concerns is who controls the Internet architecture they have created.”
The report is built around interviewees’ responses to scenarios stretching to the year 2020 and hundreds of their written elaborations that address such things as the kinds of new social interactions that will occur when more “meetings” take place on screens, the changes that will occur in nation-states, the evolution of autonomous technology, and the proper ways to police the Internet.
The Pew Internet/Elon survey was conducted online by invitation to experts identified in an extensive literature and periodical review and to active members of several key technology groups: The Internet Society, The World Wide Web Consortium, the Working Group on Internet Governance, ICANN, Internet2, and the Association of Internet Researchers. Many respondents are at the pinnacle of Internet leadership; some of them are “working in the trenches” of building the Web. The survey was an opt-in, self-selecting effort. That process does not yield a random, representative sample.
In a related study, the Pew Internet Project on Sept. 20 released a data memo, “Politics Online, August 2006,” which revealed that on a typical day in August, 26 million Americans were using the Internet for news or information about politics and the upcoming midterm elections. That corresponds with 19 percent of adult Internet users, or 13 percent of all Americans over the age of 18. This represents a high point in the number of Internet users turning to cyberspace on the average day for political news or information, exceeding the 21-million figure registered in a Pew Internet Project survey during the November 2004 general election campaign.
Comparing August 2006 figures to a similar point in the 2002 midterm election cycle is particularly revealing. In July 2002, approximately 11 million Americans, or 13 percent of online users, said they got some news or information about politics and the campaign from the Internet on the average day. The August 2006 number is nearly two-and-one-half times larger than the mid-summer 2002 figure.
