The Future of the Internet III

12/14/2008
Janna Anderson Lee Rainie

A survey of internet leaders, activists and analysts shows they expect major tech advances as the phone becomes a primary device for online access, voice-recognition improves, artificial and virtual reality become more embedded in everyday life, and the architecture of the internet itself improves.

They disagree about whether this will lead to more social tolerance, more forgiving human relations, or better home lives.

Here are the key findings on the survey of experts by the Pew Internet & American Life Project that asked respondents to assess predictions about technology and its roles in the year 2020:

The mobile device will be the primary connection tool to the internet for most people in the world in 2020.

The transparency of people and organizations will increase, but that will not necessarily yield more personal integrity, social tolerance, or forgiveness.

Voice recognition and touch user-interfaces with the internet will be more prevalent and accepted by 2020.

Those working to enforce intellectual property law and copyright protection will remain in a continuing arms race, with the crackers who will find ways to copy and share content without payment.

The divisions between personal time and work time and between physical and virtual reality will be further erased for everyone who is connected, and the results will be mixed in their impact on basic social relations.

Next-generation engineering of the network to improve the current internet architecture is more likely than an effort to rebuild the architecture from scratch.

More predictions about the evolution of mobile communications can be found here

More elaborations about the evolution of social tolerance can be found here

More elaborations about the evolution of intellectual property law and copyright protection can be found here

More elaborations about the evolution of privacy, transparency, integrity and forgiveness can be found here

More elaborations about the evolution of augmented reality and virtual reality can be found here

More elaborations about the evolution of the internet's user interface can be found here

More elaborations about the evolution of the internet's architecture can be found here

More elaborations about the evolution of the internet's impact on work and leisure can be found here

View PDF of Report

Other Internet Evolution Resources

Memo | Use of Cloud Computing Applications and Services

Report | Digital Footprints

Memo | Wireless Internet Access

Memo | Riding the Waves of "Web 2.0"

Report | The Future of the Internet II