If the Internet is primed for serious growth as its importance to users accelerates in the coming decade, the Net is also prime as a target for serious infrastructure attacks in the same coming timeframe, according to a new study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project and Elon University.
“A simple scan of the growing number and growing sophistication of the viral critters already populating our networks is ample evidence of the capacity and motivation to disrupt,” the survey quoted one unidentified analyst as saying, adding that 11 percent of those polled dispute the prediction, while 7 percent – including some who expect no attack serious enough to involve loss of life or long outages – challenged it.
Called "The Future of the Internet," the Pew/Elon study said at least half or better of the technology leaders, scholars, Internet industry officials, and select members of the public who participated in the study believed there would be more people online, shifting dynamics in work and family life – and even the life of citizens versus the government – within the next ten years.
In fact, the study said 59 percent of respondents believe the proliferation of computing devices in home, workplace, telephones, cars, and "even clothes" would mean a growing proliferation of government and business surveillance. But 57 percent agreed virtual classes would be more widespread in formal education; 56 percent agreed telecommuting and home-schooling online would narrow the line between work and leisure, thus changing family dynamics; and, exactly half believe anonymous free peer-to-peer music and other file sharing would still be easy a decade from now, the study added.
The various experts who took part in the survey, Pew and Elon said, expressed varying views on just how far the Internet would impact on life in terms of government, business distribution models, health care, home entertainment, and quality information availability, especially in the era in which Webloggers have begun staking ground as serious news avatars amidst rising criticism of mainstream journalism.
One unnamed expert was quoted as saying that the wider dissemination of information would "increasingly become the dissemination of drivel. As more and more 'data' is posted on the Internet, there will be increasingly less 'information'," a kind of high-tech confirmation of the late journalist Malcolm Muggeridge's 1970s lament that the increase of news publishing and programming equaled a kind of "Newzak" of continuous information saying very little of substance in the long run.
But other experts cited by Pew and Elon surveyors predicted anything from TiVo "kill(ing) the commercial television format" and peer-to-peer plus online music download stores equaling the death of the traditional music album format, to the Internet "wear(ing) away institutions that have forgotten how to sound human and how to engage in conversation."
