2008年互联网未来展望：技术革新与社会影响

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《互联网的未来III(2008)》是由皮尤互联网与美国生活项目于2008年12月发布的研究报告。该报告基于对技术专家的在线调查，探讨了未来互联网可能带来的社会、政治和经济影响。专家们预测，随着移动设备成为主要的在线接入工具，电话技术的进步以及互联网结构本身的优化，这些变化将深刻地改变人们的生活方式。在技术层面上，专家们认为手机将成为最主要的互联网连接手段，这将推动移动互联网的发展，使得随时随地获取信息和服务变得更加便捷。同时，他们预计语音识别技术会得到显著提升，可能应用于智能家居、个人助理等领域，进一步简化用户的操作和交流方式。然而，关于这些技术进步对人类社会的影响，专家们存在分歧。一方面，他们认为这可能导致更高的社会包容性，因为更广泛的互联网接入可能会打破地域限制，加强跨文化交流，增进理解和尊重。另一方面，技术的便利也可能带来新的隐私挑战和人际关系的复杂化，如虚拟世界的匿名性可能导致网络欺凌或人际关系的疏离。此外，报告还探讨了技术发展可能对家庭生活产生的影响，例如，更好的移动互联网可能促进远程工作和学习，提高家庭生活质量。然而，这也可能带来工作与生活的界限模糊，家庭成员之间的面对面交流减少等问题。《互联网的未来III》提供了深入的社会学视角，通过对专家意见的汇总，为我们描绘了一个科技不断演进、社会关系面临变革的未来景象。报告的作者是李·雷恩ie和詹娜·安德森，他们从政策制定者、企业家到学者等不同角度进行了多维度的讨论。报告最后提供了在线查看链接（<http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2008/The-Future-of-the-Internet-III.aspx>），以便读者进一步了解详细的内容和分析。通过阅读这份报告，读者可以了解到当时专家对于互联网发展的预期，以及这些预期如何塑造我们现代社会的未来走向。它不仅是技术进步的预测，更是对未来社会变迁的思考与警示。

Lee Rainie

Director

Janna Anderson

The Future of the Internet III

A survey of experts shows they expect major tech

advances as the phone becomes a primary device for

online access, voice-recognition improves, and the

structure of the Internet itself improves. They disagree

about whether this will lead to more social tolerance,

more forgiving human relations, or better home lives.

December 2008

CONTENTS

Summary of Findings

NOTES

The results of the first survey can be found at:

http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Future_of_Internet.pdf. The results of the second

survey are available at: http://pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Future_of_Internet_2006.pdf. A

more extensive review of all the predictions and comments in that survey can be found at

the website for “Imagining the Internet”at http://www.elon.edu/predictions/default.html.

Acknowledgements

Background

Scenario 1: The Evolution of Mobile Internet

Communications

Findings

Technology stakeholders and critics were asked in an online survey to assess

scenarios about the future social, political, and economic impact of the

Internet and they said the following:

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’s connected,

and the results will be mixed in terms of 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.

About the Methodology and Interpreting the Findings

This is the third canvassing of Internet specialists and analysts by the Pew Internet &

American Life Project.

While a wide range of opinion from experts, organizations, and

interested institutions was sought, this survey should not be taken as a representative

canvassing of Internet experts. By design, this survey was an “opt in,” self-selecting

effort. That process does not yield a random, representative sample.

Some 578 leading Internet activists, builders, and commentators responded in this

survey to scenarios about the effect of the Internet on social, political, and economic life

in the year 2020. An additional 618 stakeholders also participated in the study, for a total

of 1,196 participants who shared their views.

Experts were located in two ways. First, nearly a thousand were identified in an

extensive canvassing of scholarly, government, and business documents from the period

1990-1995 to see who had ventured predictions about the future impact of the Internet.

Several hundred of them participated in the first two surveys conducted by Pew Internet

and Elon University, and they were recontacted for this survey. Second, expert

participants were hand-picked due to their positions as stakeholders in the development

of the Internet or they were reached through the leadership listservs of top technology

organizations including the Internet Society, Association for Computing Machinery, the

World Wide Web Consortium, the United Nations’ Multistakeholder Group on Internet

Governance, Internet2, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Internet

Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, International Telecommunication

Union, Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, Association of Internet

Researchers, and the American Sociological Association's Information Technology

Research section. For the first time, some respondents were invited to participate

through personal messages sent using a social network, Facebook.

In all, 578 experts identified through these channels responded to the survey.

While many respondents are at the pinnacle of Internet leadership, some of the survey

respondents are “working in the trenches” of building the Web. Most of the people in this

latter segment of responders came to the survey by invitation because they are on the

email list of the Pew Internet & American Life Project or are otherwise known to the

Project. They are not necessarily opinion leaders for their industries or well-known

futurists, but it is striking how much their views were distributed in ways that paralleled

those who are celebrated in the technology field.

In all, 618 additional respondents participated in this survey from these quarters. Thus,

the expert results are reported as the product of 578 responses and the lines listing “all

responses” include these additional 618 participants.

This report presents the views of respondents in two ways. First, we cite the aggregate

views of those who responded to our survey. Second, we have quoted many of their

opinions and predictions in the body of this report, and even more of their views are

available on the Elon University-Pew Internet & American Life Project Web site:

http://www.imaginingtheinternet.org/. Scores more responses to each of the scenarios

are cited on specific web pages devoted to each scenarios. Those urls are given in the

chapters devoted to the scenarios.

Thinking Ahead to 2020: Themes Many Respondents Struck in

Their Answers

Here are some of the major themes that run through respondents’ answers:

The mobile phone will be the dominant connection tool:More than three-

quarters of the expert respondents (77%) agreed with a scenario that posited that the

mobile computing device—with more-significant computing power in 2020—will be the

primary Internet communications platform for a majority of people across the world.

They agreed that connection will generally be offered under a set of universal standards

internationally, though many registered doubts about corporations’ and regulators’

willingnesstomakeithappen.

Heightened social tolerance may not be a Web 2.0 result:Respondents were

asked if people will be more tolerant in 2020 than they are today. Some 56% of the

expert respondents disagreed with a scenario positing that social tolerance will advance

significantly by then, saying communication networks also expand the potential for

hate, bigotry, and terrorism. Some 32% predicted tolerance will grow. A number of the

survey participants indicated that the divide between the tolerant and intolerant could

possibly be deepened because of information-sharing tactics people use on the Internet.

Air-typing, touch interfaces, and talking to devices will become common: A

notable majority of the respondents (64%) favored the idea that by 2020 user interfaces

will offer advanced talk, touch, and typing options, and some added a fourth “T”—think.

Those who chose to elaborate in extended responses disagreed on which of the four will

make the most progress by 2020. There was a fairly even yes-no split on the likely

success of voice-recognition or significant wireless keyboard advances and mostly

positive support of the advance of interfaces involving touch and gestures—this was

highly influenced by the introduction of the iPhone and various multitouch surface

computing platforms in 2007 and 2008. A number of respondents projected the

possibility of a thought-based interface—neural networks offering mind-controlled

human-computer interaction. Many expressed concerns over rude, overt public displays

by people using ICTs (“yakking away on their phones about their latest foot fungus”)

and emphasized the desire for people to keep private communications private in future

digital interfaces.

IP law and copyright will remain unsettled:Three out of five respondents (60%)

disagreed with the idea that legislatures, courts, the technology industry, and media

companies will exercise effective content control by 2020. They said “cracking”

technology will stay ahead of technology to control intellectual property (IP) or policy

regulating IP. And they predicted that regulators will not be able to come to a global

agreement about intellectual property. Many respondents suggested that new economic

models will have to be implemented, with an assumption that much that was once

classified as paid content will have to be offered free or in exchange for attention or

some other unit of value. Nearly a third of the survey respondents (31%) agreed that IP

regulation will be successful by 2020; they said more content will be privatized, some

adding that this control might be exercised at the hardware level, through Internet-

access devices such as smartphones.

The division between personal and professional time will disappear:A

majority of expert respondents (56%) agreed with the statement that in 2020 “few lines

(will) divide professional from personal time, and that’s OK.” While some people are

hopeful about a hyperconnected future with more freedom, flexibility, and life

enhancements, others express fears that mobility and ubiquity of networked computing

devices will be harmful for most people by adding to stress and challenging family life

and social life.

Network engineering research will build on the status quo—there isn’t likely

to be a “next-gen ”Internet:Nearly four out of five respondents (78%) said they

think the original Internet architecture will still be in place in 2020 even as it is

continually being refined. They did not believe the current Internet will be replaced by a

completely new “next-generation”system between now and 2020. Those who wrote

extended elaborations to their answers projected the expectation that IPv6 and the

Semantic Web will be vital elements in the continuing development of the Internet over

the next decade. Among other predictions: there will be more “walled gardens,”

separated Internet spaces, created by governments and corporations to maintain

network control; governments and corporations will leverage security fears to retain

power over individuals; crime, piracy, terror, and other negatives will always be

common elements in an open system.

Transparency may or may not make the world a better place:Respondents

were split evenly on whether the world will be a better place in 2020 due to the greater

transparency of people and institutions afforded by the Internet: 45% of expert

respondents agreed that transparency of organizations and individuals will heighten

individual integrity and forgiveness and 44% disagreed. The comments about this

prediction were varied: Some argued that transparency is an unstoppable force that has

positives and negatives; it might somehow influence people to live lives in which

integrity and forgiveness are more likely. Others posited that transparency won’t have

any positive influence, in fact it makes everyone vulnerable, and bad things will happen

because of it. Still others argued that the concept of “privacy” is changing, it is becoming

scarce, and it will be protected and threatened by emerging innovations; tracking and

databasing will be ubiquitous; reputation maintenance and repair will be required; some

people will have multiple digital identities; some people will withdraw.

Augmented reality and interactive virtual spaces might see more action:More

than half of respondents (55%) agreed with the notion that many lives will be touched in

2020 by virtual worlds, mirror worlds, and augmented reality. Yet 45% either disagreed

or didn’t anwer this question, so the sentiment isn’t overwhelming. People’s definitions

for the terms “augmented reality”and “virtual reality” are quite varied; smartphones

and GPS help people augment reality to a certain extent today and are expected to do

more soon; many think today’s social networks qualify as a form of virtual reality while

others define it in terms of Second Life or something even more immersive. Some noted

that by 2020 augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) will have reached the

point of blurring with reality. Many indicated this will enhance the world, providing new

opportunities for conferencing, teaching, and 3-D modeling, and some added that

breakthroughs to come may bring significant change, including fusion with other

developments, such as genetic engineering. Some respondents expressed fear of the

negatives of AR and VR, including: new extensions of the digital divide; an increase in

violence and obesity; and the potential for addiction or overload. There is agreement that

user interfaces have to be much more intuitive for AR and VR to become more

universally adopted.

Thinking Ahead to 2020: A Sample of Revealing Quotations and

Predictions Selected from the Thousands Submitted

The evolution of the device for connection:“People in Africa turned paid

telephone minutes into an ad-hoc, grassroots, e-currency…There are already reasons

why people at the bottom of the economic system need and can use cheap

telecommunication. Once they are connected, they will think of their own ways to use

connectivity plus computation to relieve suffering or increase wealth.”—Howard

Rheingold, Internet sociologist and author of “Virtual Community”and “Smart

Mobs”

“By 2020, the network providers of ‘telephony’ will have been disintermediated. We'll

have standard network connections around the world…Billions of people will have joined

the Internet who don't speak English. They won't think of these things as ‘phones’

either—these devices will be simply lenses on the online world.” —Susan Crawford,

founder of OneWebDay and an Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and

Numbers (ICANN) board member

“Traditional carriers have little incentive to include poor populations, and the next five

years will be rife with battles between carriers, municipal, and federal governments,

handset makers, and content creators. I don't know who will win.”—danah boyd,

Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society

“Telephones in 2020 will be archaic, relics of a bygone era—like transistor radios are

today. Telephony, which will be entirely IP-based by then, will be a standard

communications chip on many devices. We'll probably carry some kind of screen-based

reading device that will perform this function, though I assume when we want to

communicate verbally, we'll do so through a tiny, earplug-based device.” —Josh

Quittner, executive editor of Fortune Magazine and longtime technology journalist

and editor

The evolution of social tolerance: “Not in mankind’s nature. The first global satellite

link-up was 1967, BBC's Our World: the Beatles ‘All You Need Is Love,’ and we still have

war, genocide, and assassination (Lennon's poignantly).”—Adam Peake, policy

analyst for the Center for Global Communications and participant in the World

Summit on the Information Society

“Polarization will continue and the people on the extremes will be less tolerant of those

opposite them. At the same time, within homogenous groups (religious, political, social,

financial, etc.) greater tolerance will likely occur.”—Don Heath, Internet pioneer and

former president and CEO of the Internet Society

“Tribes will be defined by social enclaves on the Internet, rather than by geography or

kinship, but the world will be more fragmented and less tolerant, since one's real-world

surroundings will not have the homogeneity of one's online clan.”—Jim Horning,

chief scientist for information security at SPARTA Inc. and a founder of InterTrust’s

Strategic Technologies and Architectural Research Laboratory

The evolution of intellectual property law and copyright: “Many people want IP

protection, but everyone wants to steal. Regardless of the legal mechanisms so far—e.g.,

automatic damages, compulsory copyrights—many people would prefer the illegal route,

perhaps because it runs up their adrenaline.” —Michael Botein, founding director of

the Media Law Center at New York University Law School

“Copying data is the natural state of computers; we would have to try to compromise

them too much to support this regime.”—Brad Templeton, chairman of the

Electronic Frontier Foundation

“While I applaud the efforts of DRM [digital rights management] opponents, I am

discouraged by the progress DRM seems to continue to make in hardware as much as in

software. Having purchased an iPhone, I was delighted when Apple updated its software

to allow custom ringtones, only to discover that I needed to pay for a ringtone via the

iTunes Music Store even though the ringtone I wanted to use was one in which I own

the copyright!”—Steve Jones, co-founder of the Association of Internet Researchers

and editor of New Media & Society

“There will be cross-linking of content provider giants and Internet service provider

giants and that they will find ways to milk every last ‘currency unit’ out of the unwitting

and defenseless consumer. Governments will be strongly influenced by the business

conglomerates and will not do much to protect consumers. (Just think of the outrageous

rates charged by cable and phone company TV providers and wireless phone providers

today—it will only get worse.)” —Steve Goldstein, ICANN board member formerly of

the US National Science Foundation

“Copyright is a dead duck in a digital world. The old regime based its power on high

distribution costs. Those costs are going to zero. Bye-bye DRM.” —Dan Lynch, founder

of CyberCash and Interop Company, now a board member of the Santa Fe Institute

“You cannot stop a tide with a spoon. Cracking technology will always be several steps

ahead of DRM and content will be redistributed on anonymous networks.”—Giulio

Prisco, chief executive of Metafuturing Second Life, formerly of CERN

The evolution of privacy and transparency: “We will enter a time of mutually

assured humiliation; we all live in glass houses. That will be positive for tolerance and

understanding, but—even more important—I believe that young people will not lose

touch with their friends as my generation did and that realization of permanence in

relationships could—or should—lead to more care in those relationships.” —Jeff Jarvis,

top blogger at Buzzmachine.com and professor at City University of New York

Graduate School of Journalism

“Gen Y has a new notion of privacy. The old ‘never trust anyone over 30’ will turn into

‘never trust anyone who doesn't have embarrassing stuff online.’”—Jerry Michalski,

founder and president of Sociate

“Viciousness will prevail over civility, fraternity, and tolerance as a general rule, despite

the build-up of pockets or groups ruled by these virtues. Software will be unable to stop

deeper and more hard-hitting intrusions into intimacy and privacy, and these will

continue to happen.” —Alejandro Pisanty, ICANN and Internet Society leader and

directorofcomputerservicesatUniversidadNacionalAutónomadeMéxico

“By 2020, the Internet will have enabled the monitoring and manipulation of people by

businesses and governments on a scale never before imaginable. Most people will have

happily traded their privacy—consciously or unconsciously—for consumer benefits such

as increased convenience and lower prices. As a result, the line between marketing and

manipulation will have largely disappeared.”—Nicholas Carr, author of the Rough

Type blog and “The Big Switch”

“The volume and ubiquity of personal information, clicktrails, personal media, etc., will

desensitize us. A super-abundance of transparency will lose its ability to shock. Maybe

there will be software-driven real-time reputation insurance service, offering monitoring

and repair to dinged reputations. This could be as ordinary as auto insurance or

mortgage insurance is today, and as automated as the nightly backups performed by

most online businesses. I don't agree that this will make us any kinder.”—Havi

Hoffman, Yahoo Developer Network

The evolution of augmented and virtual reality: “Mirror worlds are multi-

dimensional experiences with profound implications for education, medicine, and social

interaction. ‘Real life’ as we know it is over. Soon when anyone mentions reality, the

first question we will ask is, ‘Which reality are you referring to?’ We will choose our

realities, and in each reality there will be truths germane to that reality, and so we will

choose our truth as well.”—Barry Chudakov, principal with the Chudakov Company

“We in the present don't think of ourselves as living in ‘cyberspace,’ even though people

of a decade previous would have termed it such. Of the various forms of the metaverse,

however, the majority of activity will take place in blended or augmented-reality spaces,

not in distinct virtual/alternative world spaces.”—Jamais Cascio, a co-author of the

“Metaverse Roadmap Overview,”a report on the potential futures of VR, AR, and the

geoWeb

“Augmented reality will become nearly the de facto interface standard by 2020, with 2-

D and 3-D overlays over real-world objects providing rich information, context,

entertainment, and (yes) promotions and offers. At the same time, a metaverse

(especially when presented in an augmented-reality-overlay environment) provides

compelling ways to facilitate teamwork and collaboration while reducing overall travel

budgets.” —Jason Stoddard, managing partner at Centric/Agency of Change

“The virtual world removes all barriers of human limitation; you can be anyone you

want to be instead of being bound by physical and material limitations. That allows

people to be who they naturally are, freed of any perception they may have of

themselves based on their ‘real life’—it is the power of removing the barriers of your own

perception of yourself.” —Tze-Meng Tan, Multimedia Development Corporation in

Malaysia, a director at OpenSOS

“We are in the last generation of human fighter pilots. Already, drones in Iraq are

piloted in San Diego. What will improve is the ability of the artificial spaces to control

physical reality, to expand our reach more effectively in many aspects of the physical

universe.” —Dick Davies, partner at Project Management and Control Inc. and a past

president of the Association of Information Technology Professionals

“In a reaction to the virtual world, entrepreneurs will establish ‘virt-free’ zones where

reality is not augmented. In various heavily connected areas, there will be sanctuaries

(hotels, restaurants, bars, summer camps, vehicles) which people may visit to separate

themselves from adhesion or other realities.”—C.R. Roberts, Vancouver-based

technology reporter

“For some reason I’ve never been able to comprehend, certain pundits can seriously

propose that the wave of the future is chatting using electronic hand-puppets. Flight

Simulator is not an aircraft, and typing at a screen is not an augmentation of the real

world.” —Seth Finkelstein, author of the Infothought blog, writer and programmer

“A map is not the territory and a letter is not the person. We have always had multiple

facades, for most, most common, work, home and play. The extension into more

immersive ‘unreal’ worlds is going to happen.”—Hamish MacEwen, consultant at

Open ICT in New Zealand

The evolution of user interfaces: “There will be ‘subvocal’ inputs that detect ‘almost

speech’ thatyouwill,butdonotactuallyvoice.Smallsensorsonteethwillalsoletyou

tap commands. Your eyeballs will track desires, sensed by your eyeglasses. And so on.”

—David Brin, futurist and author of “The Transparent Society”

“WiFi- and WiMax-enabled badges with voice recognition will act as personal

assistants—allowing you to talk with someone by saying their name, to post a voice blog,

or access directions from the Internet for the task at hand.”—Jim Kohlenberger,

director of Voice on the Net Coalition; senior fellow at the Benton Foundation

“I could see a whole physical way of communicating with our technology tools that

could be part of our health and exercise. A day answering e-mails could be a full-on

physical workout ; )….”—Tiffany Shlain, founder of the Webby Awards

“We will see the display interface device separated from the input device over the next 12

years. Display devices will be everywhere, and you will be able to use them with your

input device. The input device might be virtual, as in the case of the iPhone or a

holographic keyboard, or they might resemble the keyboards and touchpads that people

are using today.”—Ross Rader, a director with Tucows who is active in the ICANN

Registrars constituency

“While air-typing and haptic gestures are widespread and ubiquitous, the arrival of

embedded optical displays, thought-transcription, eye-movement tracking, and

predictive-behavior modeling will fundamentally alter the human-computer interaction

model.” —Sean Steele, CEO and senior security consultant for infoLock Technologies

The evolution of network architecture: “The control-oriented telco (ITU) next-

generation network will not fully evolve, the importance of openness and enabling

innovation from the edges will prevail; i.e. Internet will essentially retain the key

characteristics we enjoy today, mainly because there's more money to be made.”—

Adam Peake, executive research fellow and telecommunications policy analyst at the

Center for Global Communications

“Some parts of the Internet may fragment, as nations pursue their own technology

trajectories. The Internet is so vastly complex, incremental upgrades seem to be the only

way to get anything done…Places like China may make big leaps and bounds because

there is less legacy.” —Anthony Townsend, research director, The Institute for the

Future

“Current Internet standards bodies and core Internet protocols are ossifying to such an

extent that security and performance requirements for next-generation applications will

require a totally new base platform. If current Internet base protocols survive, it will be

as a substrata paved over by new-generation smarter ways of connecting.”—Ian

Peter, Ian Peter and Associates and the Internet Mark 2 Project

“The Web must still be a messy, fabulous, exciting, dangerous, poetic, depressing, elating

place...akin to life; which is not a bad thing.”—Luis Santos, Universidade do Minho-

Braga, Portugal

“When have we ever stopped crime? If it is a choice between having some criminals

around and having a repressive government, I will take the former; they are much

easier to deal with.” —Leonard Witt, associate professor at Kennesaw State University

in Georgia and author of the Webog PJNet.org

“The Internet is not magical; it will be utterly over-managed by commercial concerns,

hobbled with ‘security’ micromanagement, and turned into money-shaped traffic for

business, the rest 90% paid-for content download and the rest of the bandwidth used for

market feedback.”—Tom Jennings, University of California-Irvine, creator of FidoNet

and builder of Wired magazine’s first online site

The evolution of work life and home life activity: “Corporate control of workers’

time—in the guise of work/ family balance—now extends to detailed monitoring of

when people are on and off work. The company town is replaced by ‘company time-

management,’ and it is work time that drives all other time uses. This dystopia

challenges the concept of white-collar work, and unionism is increasingly an issue.”—

Steve Sawyer, associate professor in the College of Information Sciences and

Technology, Penn State University

“The result may be longer, less-efficient working hours and more stressful home life.”—

Victoria Nash, director of graduate studies and policy and research officer, the

Oxford Internet Institute

“It’s already happened, for better or worse. Get over it.”—Anonymous respondent

(Many additional thoughtful and provocative comments appear in the main report.)

This Report Builds on the Online Resource Imagining the

Internet: A History and Forecast

At the invitation of Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project,

Elon University associate professor Janna Quitney Anderson began a research initiative

in the spring semester of 2003 to search for comments and predictions about the future

impact of the Internet during the time when the World Wide Web and browsers

emerged, between 1990 and 1995. The idea was to replicate the fascinating work of

Ithiel de Sola Pool in his 1983 book Forecasting the Telephone: A Retrospective

Technology Assessment. Elon students, faculty, and staff studied government

documents, technology newsletters, conference proceedings, trade newsletters, and the

business press and gathered predictions about the future of the Internet. Eventually,

more than 4,000 early '90s predictions from about 1,000 people were amassed.

The early 1990s predictions are available in a searchable database online at the site

Imagining the Internet: A History and Forecast and they are also the basis for a book

by Anderson titled Imagining the Internet: Personalities, Predictions, Perspectives

(2005, Rowman & Littlefield).

The fruits of that work inspired additional research into the past and future of the

Internet, and the Imagining the Internet Web site

(www.imaginingtheInternet.org/) )—now numbering about 6,200 pages—includes

results from the entire series of Future of the Internet surveys, video and audio

interviews showcasing experts' predictions about the next 10 to 50 years, a children's

section, tips for teachers, a “Voices of the People” section on which anyone can post his

or her prediction, and information about the recent history of communications

technology.

We expect the site will continue to serve as a valuable resource for researchers, policy

makers, students, and the general public for decades to come. Further, we encourage

readers of this report to enter their own predictions at the site.

The series of Future of the Internet surveys is also published in book form by Cambria

Press.

Acknowledgements

About the Pew Internet & American Life Project : The Pew Internet Project is an

initiative of the Pew Research Center, a nonprofit “fact tank”that provides information

on the issues, attitudes, and trends shaping America and the world. Pew Internet

explores the impact of the Internet on children, families, communities, the work place,

schools,healthcare,andcivic/politicallife.TheProjectisnonpartisanandtakesno

position on policy issues. Support for the project is provided by The Pew Charitable

Trusts. The Project’s Web site URL is: http://www.pewinternet.org.

Princeton Survey Research Associates International: PSRAI conducted the

survey that is covered in this report. It is an independent research company specializing

insocialandpolicywork.Thefirmdesigns,conductsandanalyzessurveysworldwide.

Itsexpertisealsoincludesqualitativeresearchandcontentanalysis.Withofficesin

Princeton, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C., PSRAI serves the needs of clients around

thenationandtheworld.Thefirmcanbereachedat911CommonsWay,Princeton,

N.J. 08540, by telephone at 609-924-9204, by fax at 609-924-7499, or by email at

ResearchNJ@PSRA.com

The Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University’s School of

Communications: TheImaginingtheInternetCenteratElonUniversityholdsa

mirror to humanity’s use of communications technologies, informs policy development,

exposes potential futures, and provides a historic record. It has teamed with the Pew

Internet Project to complete a number of research studies, including the building of

Imagining the Internet (a foresight and history Web site), a survey of stakeholders at

the UN-administrated Internet Governance Forum in Rio de Janeiro in 2007, and an

ethnographic study of a small town, “One Neighborhood, One Week on the Internet,”

all under the direction of Janna Quitney Anderson. For contact regarding Imagining the

Internet, send e-mail to predictions@elon.edu. The university site is:

http://www.elon.edu/.

Introduction

Predictions often inspire lively discussion about the future and they can help

stakeholders prepare to make adjustments to meet the needs associated with

technological change. Those who think about the future are best poised to influence it

and cope with it.

Many futurists, scientists, and long-term thinkers today argue that the acceleration of

technological change over the past decade has greatly increased the importance of

strategic vision. Technology innovations will continue to impact us. The question is

whether this process will reflect thoughtful planning or wash over us like an unstoppable

wave. This survey is aimed at gathering a collection of opinions regarding the

possibilities we all face.

How the Surveys Originated and Have Been Conducted

This research project got its start in mid-2001, when Lee Rainie, the director of the Pew

Internet & American Life Project, approached officials at Elon University with an idea

that the Project and the University might replicate the work of Ithiel de Sola Pool in his

1983 book Forecasting the Telephone: A Retrospective Technology Assessment. Pool

and his students had looked at primary official documents, technology community

publications, speeches given by government and business leaders, and marketing

literature at the turn of the 20

Century to examine the kind of impacts experts thought

the telephone would have on Americans’ social and economic lives.

The idea was to apply Pool’s research method to the Internet, particularly focused on the

period between 1990 and 1995 when the World Wide Web and Web browsers emerged.

In the spring semester of 2003, Janna Quitney Anderson, a professor of journalism and

communications at Elon, led a research initiative that set out to accomplish this goal.

More than 4,200 predictive statements made in the early 1990s by 1,000 people were

logged and categorized. The result is available on the site Imagining the Internet: A

History and Forecast (www.imaginingtheInternet.org/).

We reasoned that if experts and technologists had been so thoughtful in the early 1990s

about what was going to happen, they would likely be equally as insightful looking

ahead from this moment. In 2004, we asked most of those whose predictions were in

the 1990-1995 database and additional experts to assess a number of predictions about

the coming decade, and their answers were codified in an initial futures survey: “The

Future of the

Internet” (http://www.pewInternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Future_of_Internet.pdf).

Several years later, we repeated the process with some new predictions and an expanded

base of experts. In late 2005 and the first quarter of 2006, the Pew Internet Project

issued an e-mail invitation to a select group of technology thinkers, stakeholders, and

social analysts, asking them to complete the second scenario-based quantitative and

qualitative survey, “The Future of the Internet II.”The official analysis of the results of

that survey is available here:

http://pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Future_of_Internet_2006.pdf

And we report here the results of a third survey that was conducted online between

December 26, 2007 and March 3, 2008. Some 1,196 people were generous enough to

take the time to respond to this Future of the Internet III online survey.

Nearly half of the Future III respondents are Internet pioneers who were online before

1993.Roughlyonefifthoftherespondentssaytheyliveandworkinanationoutsideof

North America.

The respondents' answers represent their personal views and in no way reflect the

perspectives of their employers. Many survey participants were hand-picked due to their

positions as stakeholders in the development of the Internet or they were reached

through the leadership listservs of top technology organizations including the Internet

Society, Association for Computing Machinery, the World Wide Web Consortium, the

United Nations’ Multistakeholder Group on Internet Governance, Internet2, Institute of

Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and

Numbers, International Telecommunication Union, Computer Professionals for Social

Responsibility, Association of Internet Researchers, and the American Sociological

Association's Information Technology Research section.

About the Survey Participants

Many top Internet leaders, activists, and commentators participated in the survey,

including Clay Shirky, Fred Baker, David Brin, Susan Crawford, Brad Templeton,

Howard Rheingold, Jim Kohlenberger, Josh Quittner, Seth Finkelstein, danah boyd, Hal

Varian, Jeff Jarvis, Anthony Rutkowski, Michael Botein, Steve Jones, Richard Bartle,

Alejandro Pisanty, Tom Vest, Milton Mueller, Bernardo Huberman, Jonne Soininen,

Don Heath, Doug Brent, Anthony Townsend, Steve Goldstein, Adam Peake, Basil

Crozier, Craig Partridge, Sebastien Bachollet, Geert Lovink, James Jay Horning, Dan

Lynch, Fernando Barrio, Roberto Gaetano, Christian Huitema, Susan Mernit, Jamais

Cascio, Norbert Klein, Tapio Varis, Martin Boyle, Ian Peter, Todd Spraggins, Catherine

Fitzpatrick, Tom Keller, Charles Kenny, Robert Cannon, Hakikur Rahman, Larry

Lannom, David Farrar, John Levine, Cliff Figallo, Sebastien Ricciardi, Lea Shaver, Seth

Gordon, Jim McConnaughey, Neil Mcintosh, Charles Ess, Alan Levin, David W. Maher,

Jonathan Dube, Thomas Vander Wal, Adrian Schofield, Clifford Lynch, Jerry Michalski,

Paul Miller, and David Moschella, to name a few.

A sampling of the workplaces of respondents includes the Internet Society, World Bank,

Booz Allen Hamilton, AT&T Labs, VeriSign, Cisco, Google, BBN Technologies, Fing,

Yahoo Japan, France Telecom, the International Telecommunication Union, Alcatel-

Lucent, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, GLOCOM, AfriNIC, Electronic Privacy

Information Center, APNIC, Universiteit Maastricht, Amnesty International, BBC, PBS,

IBM, Microsoft, Forrester Research, Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet

and Society, Open Society Institute, Open the Future, Yahoo, First Semantic, CNET,

Microsoft, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, IDG, FCC, Institute for the

Future, 1&1 Internet AG, Moody’s, HP Laboratories, Amazon.com, Gannett,

Lexis/Nexis, Tucows, InternetNZ, ICANN, Oxford Internet Institute, Institute of the

Information Society—Russia, The Center on Media and Society, Online News

Association, Nokia, the Association for the Advancement of Information Technology,

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Institute of Network Cultures, Nortel,

Disney, DiploFoundation, Information Technology Industry Council, J-Lab,

Information Society Project at Yale University, Santa Fe Institute, the London School of

Economics, the University of California-Berkeley, NASA, the Singapore Internet

Research Center, Princeton University, the federal government of Canada, several policy

divisions of the US government, and many dozens of others.

Participants described their primary area of Internet interest as “research

scientist”(12%); “technology developer or administrator” (11%); “entrepreneur or

business leader” (10%); “author, editor, or journalist” (9%); “futurist or

consultant” (7%); “advocate, voice of the people, or activist user”(5%); “legislator or

politician” (1%); or “pioneer or originator”(2%); however many participants chose

“other”(24%) for this survey question or did not respond (18%).

The Scenarios Were Built to Elicit Deeply Felt Opinions

The Pew Internet & American Life Project and Elon University do not advocate policy

outcomes related to the Internet. The predictive scenarios included in the survey were

structured to provoke reaction, not because we think any of them will necessarily come

tofruition.

The scenarios for this survey and survey analysis were crafted after a study of the

responses from our previous surveys and of the predictions made in reports by the

Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United Nations

Multistakeholder Group on Internet Governance, the Metaverse Roadmap, The

Institute for the Future, Global Business Network, and other foresight organizations and

individual foresight leaders.

The 2020 scenarios were constructed to elicit engaged responses to many-layered issues,

so it was sometimes the case that survey participants would agree with most or part of a

scenario, but not all of it. In addition to trying to pack several ideas into each scenario,

we tried to balance them with “good,”“bad,” and “neutral” outcomes. The history of

technology is full of evidence that tech adoption brings both positive and negative

results.

After each portion of the survey we invited participants to write narrative responses

providing an explanation for their answers. Not surprisingly, the most interesting

product of the survey is the ensuing collection of open-ended discussion, predictions, and

analyses written by the participants in response to our material. We have included many

of those responses in this report. A great number of additional responses are included on

the Imagining the Internet site, available at: http://www.imaginingtheinternet.org.

Since participants’ answers evolved in both tone and content as they went through the

questionnaire, the findings in this report are presented in the same order as the original

survey. The respondents were asked to “sign” each written response they were willing to

have credited to them in the Elon-Pew database and in this report. The quotations in the

report are attributed to those who agreed to have their words quoted. When a quote is

not attributed to someone, it is because that person chose not to sign his or her written

answer.

To make this report more readable and include many voices, some of the lengthier

written elaborations have been edited.

Prediction and Reactions

PREDICTION:The mobile phone is the primary connection tool for most

people in the world. In 2020, while "one laptop per child" and other initiatives to

bring networked digital communications to everyone are successful on many levels, the

mobile phone—now with significant computing power—is the primary Internet

connection and the only one for a majority of the people across the world, providing

information in a portable, well-connected form at a relatively low price. Telephony is

offered under a set of universal standards and protocols accepted by most operators

internationally, making for reasonably effortless movement from one part of the world

to another. At this point, the "bottom" three-quarters of the world's population account

for at least 50% of all people with Internet access—up from 30% in 2005.

Expert Respondents’Reactions (N=578)

MostlyAgree77%

MostlyDisagree22%

DidNotRespond*%

All Respondents’Reactions (N=1,196)

MostlyAgree81%

MostlyDisagree19%

DidNotRespond*%

Note:Sinceresultsarebasedonanonrandomsample,amarginoferrorcannotbe

computed. The “prediction” was composed to elicit responses and is not a formal

forecast.

Respondents were presented with a brief set of information outlining the status quo of

the issue 2007 that prefaced this scenario. It read:

According to the UN/ITU World Information Society Report 2007, there has been

some progress in improving digital inclusion: In 1997 the nearly three-quarters of the

world's population who lived in low-income and lower-middle-income economies

accounted for just 5% of the world's population with Internet access

By 2005, they

accounted for just over 30%. A number of commercial and non-profit agencies are

combining forces to bring inexpensive laptop computers to remote regions of the world

to connect under-served populations. In addition, by the end of 2008 more than half the

world's population is expected to have access to a mobile phone.

Overview of Respondents' Reactions

A significant majority of expert respondents agreed with this predicted

future. The consensus is that mobile devices will continue to grow in

importance because people need to be connected, wherever they are. Cost-

effectiveness and access are also factors driving the use of phones as

connection devices. Many respondents believe that mobile devices of the

future will have significant computing power. The experts fear that limits set

by governments and/or corporations seeking control might impede positive

evolution and diffusion of these devices; according to respondents, this

scenario’s predicted benefit of “effortless”connectivity is dependent on

corporate and government leaders’willingness to serve the public good.

The overwhelming majority of respondents agreeing with this scenario took note of the

current boom in cell phone and smartphone use and imagined its extension. “By 2020

we should see several billion cell phones shipping per year, most of which will be

Internet-capable; this will probably dwarf the volumes of other Internet-capable

devices, such as PCs,”wrote one anonymous participant.

There are 6.6 billion people in the world, and the UN estimates that 1.2 billion have

access to and use the Internet (2007 figures). Wireless Intelligence, a market database,

reports that it took 20 years for the first billion mobile phones to sell, just four years for

the second billion, and two years for the third billion.

The firm projects there will be 4

billion cell phones in the world by the end of 2008; about 11 percent were Internet-

enabled in 2007, and it is expected that could rise to 15 percent by the end of 2008. (It is

important to remember that some people own more than one mobile phone—in 2007 it

was estimated that 700 million people owned more than one—so 3 billion phones does

not equate to 3 billion people who have and use mobile phones.)

Several survey participants noted in their written elaborations to the survey question

that connectedness serves humanity in so many ways that even people who are

struggling to make a dollar a day in the world’s least-developed nations find the

economics of mobile telephony to be manageable and sometimes even vital to their lives.

“Communication is a basic human need,”responded Howard Rheingold, Internet

sociologist and author of “Virtual Community”and “Smart Mobs.”“People who are

trying to scrape by have immediate need for connection to information about local labor

and commodities markets. Public-health and disaster-relief information can be an SMS

[short-message-service—or “text”] message away. People in Africa turned paid telephone

minutes into an ad-hoc, grassroots, e-currency, because they had the need to transfer

small amounts of money. Billions of squatters might live in slums but still ingeniously

and often illegally deliver the construction and utilities services they need. There are

already reasons why people at the bottom of the economic system need and can use

cheap telecommunication. Once they are connected, they will think of their own ways

to use connectivity plus computation to relieve suffering or increase wealth.”

Lutfor Rahman, of the Association for Advancement of Information Technology in

Bangladesh, said mobile communication is world-changing. “Before introducing the

mobile phone in remote areas of Bangladesh, the exchange of information was through

physically meeting,”he wrote. “That wasted much time, and sometimes it became

impossible in short time because of lack of communication facilities.”

Gbenga Sesan, a Nigerian and consultant on the use of the Internet for development

for Paradigm Initiative, has written extensively about the use of mobile

communications. “With the rise in the number of mobile phone users across the

continent, it is only wise to start planning that the future will be driven through mobile

phones—governance, businesses, networking, leisure, and more,” he commented. “The

story will be the same across the world. Regardless of technology choice (GSM, CDMA,

etc), mobile telephones will form the core of human interaction and livelihood. And

when you consider the fact that some mobile phones were competing with computers in

2007, you can only wonder if owning a PC will matter by December 31, 2019.”

It Will Be More Computer Than Phone

Many who responded with a further elaboration on this scenario said while the device

we will be using will be small and possibly resemble today’s wireless phones in its shape,

it will actually be a multitasking computer, used less for voice communication than for

other tasks. “The computing power that will be able to fit into a phone-size device in 13

years will be incredible,” wroteananonymousrespondent.

“By 2020 a device that more closely resembles today's mobile phone rather than today's

computer will certainly be the primary connection tool,”said Paul Miller, a technology

evangelist for Talis, a UK-based Web company, and blogger for ZDNet. “Whether it is at

all 'phone'-like, or even used very often for voice-only communication is more open to

question, though.”

Susan Crawford, the founder of OneWebDay and an Internet Corporation for

Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) board member, agreed. “By 2020 we'll stop

talking about ‘phones,’ with any luck,” shewrote.“Nor will we be talking about

‘telephony.’ Those terms, I hope, will be dead. These devices will just be handsets of

which we'll be very fond. They'll have screens that are just large enough for us to feel

immersedinthevisualsprovided.Whatwillwebedoing?UsingtheInternet.

Interacting, doing work, talking, participating, uploading to the cloud. By 2020, the

network providers of ‘telephony’ will have been (with any luck) disintermediated. We'll

have standard network connections around the world, but they won't be optimized on

billing (as telephone and wireless connections are now). Billions of people will have

joined the Internet who don't speak English. They won't think of these things as ‘phones’

either—these devices will be simply lenses on the online world.”

Rich Miller, CEO for Replicate Technologies and an Internet pioneer with ARPANET,

wrote, “The ‘phone’ as such is more likely to be a personal media server/media gateway.

This same personal media server—size not much different than today's mobile phone—

permits varieties of ‘terminal’ devices, including display, voice input/output, etc. Audio

and video interfaces are more likely to be separate devices (like today's Bluetooth

headset, but with more user interface controls).”

Steve Jones, co-founder of the Association of Internet Researchers and associate dean

at the University of Illinois-Chicago, projected, “By 2020 I don't think it will be so easy

to distinguish between a mobile phone and a laptop. These will blend into a general

‘mobile computing’ category of device (for which we probably don't yet have a name).”

Jim Kohlenberger, executive director of Voice on the Net Coalition, a senior fellow for

the Benton Foundation and former White House policy advisor, commented, “The

mobile ‘phone’ will largely be eclipsed and replaced by the open network device—an open

mobile computing device also capable of voice. But the assumption is correct that these

mobile devices will be more significant and ubiquitous than wired devices. In terms of

inclusion, there are already developing countries that have set up open and competitive

wireless markets to foster these innovations and reap their benefits. But other developing

countries that still have government-run telecom sectors or that haven’t enabled

wireless competition could be further left behind.”

And Jeff Jarvis, top blogger at Buzzmachine.com and professor at City University of

New York Graduate School of Journalism, and many other respondents said we should

not concentrate on the appliance, but the connectivity. “We will have many devices that

are constantly connected; in that sense, it's connectivity that will be mobile and the

devices will merely plug in,”Jarvis explained. “This will lead to a world that is not only

connected but also live and immediate. Witnesses will share news as they witness it. We

can get answers to any question anytime. We can stay in constant touch with the people

we know, following their lives as we follow RSS and Twitter feeds.”

Respondents Say Mobility Is Key to Sharing Information

Everywhere in the World

In 2007 the bottom three-quarters of the world’s population included about 30 percent

of the people who have Internet access. The 2020 scenario proposed to survey

respondents that this number will rise to 50 percent. Participants agreed that mobile

communications devices—most of them not yet Internet-connected—have made an

amazing impact already and will continue to bridge the digital divide and promote

digital inclusion. Geert Lovink wrote, “We now still look at the world from a 'digital

divide' perspective, but that will soon be of little use. The massive use by the 'emerging'

underclasses of the 'Global South' of mobile phones should be interpreted as a necessity

of the labour force to gain mobility in order to increase their output.”

Charles Kenny, senior economist for the World Bank, the international aid agency,

commented, “The mobile phone will be used for an increasing range of services such as

m-banking in developing countries, but it will also remain key as a tool for voice

communication. For around a quarter of the world's population still officially illiterate

(and many more functionally illiterate), voice telephony will remain the primary means

of communicating over distance.”An anonymous survey participant added, “Voice

communication is the most common method used by humans to communicate, and

devices with voice capabilities will be key.”

Jonne Soininen, Internet Engineering Task Force and Internet Society leader and

manager of Internet affairs for Nokia Siemens Network, added, “In many places having

fixed infrastructure is not possible either physically or economically, thus, making

mobile systems the viable option for Internet access.”

Active Internet Society and ICANN participant Cheryl Langdon-Orr said she takes

issue with the figure of 50 percent of the world being connected, and she hopes for more.

“Mobile device connectivity to the Internet is indeed a cost-effective e-future vision for

many,”she wrote, “but in my utopia where the Internet Society states ‘The Internet is

for Everyone’ we would be looking at much more than 50 percent of people being online

by 2020.”

And Sudip Aryal, president of the Nepal Rural Information Technology Development

Society, wrote, “to meet this target of 50 percent or even more than that, each and every

country should make ICT as a national-priority issue. Just like the awareness of

HIV/AIDS and use of condoms, the national and international bodies must launch a

program to aware about the ‘importance of Internet in one's life’ to the grass root

communities.”

Michael Botein, a telecommunications law expert at New York University and

consultant to the Federal Communications Commission, said improved, affordable

mobile technology could help pave the way to a friendlier world. “It is difficult to foresee

a future short of a technological breakthrough in which mobile technology will have

enough bandwidth to provide data services, real-time video, and the like,” he wrote. “On

a positive note, however, cellular will allow the beginnings of universal service in most

parts of the world—as already in Latin America and Africa—and thus may help break

down long-held hostilities.”

Several respondents, including Neil McIntosh, director of editorial development for the

top news site guardian.co.uk, based in London, said, “a greater and more fundamental

problem, however, may be poor literacy and continued widespread poverty, which

technology by itself can't solve.”

Some Experts Express Doubts About Interoperability and Open

Networks

Some of those who chose to mostly agree with this scenario did so while expressing

reservations about parts of it. A number of them suggested that governments and/or

corporations concerned with retaining or gaining more control over use of the Internet

might limit some types of connection in certain parts of the world, and others projected

a potential lack of universal standards and protocols in a world of changing technology.

Michael Zimmer, resident fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law

School, wrote, “I agree almost entirely with this prediction…My only hesitation is

whether there will be universal standards and protocols accepted by most operators

internationally, since US mobile providers have shown little interest in providing full

interoperability and open devices to take full advantage of new mobile services.”

Social media research expert danah boyd of Harvard University’s Berkman Center for

Internet and Society wrote, “Traditional carriers have little incentive to include poor

populations, and the next five years will be rife with battles between carriers, municipal,

and federal governments, handset makers, and content creators. I don't know who will

win. If the carriers continue to own the market, network access through mass adoption

of the mobile will be far slower than if governments would begin blanketing their land

with WiFi (or network access on other spectrum channels) as a public-good

infrastructure project and handset makers would begin making cheap accessible

handsets for such access. The latter dynamic would introduce network access (and

telephony) to many more people, much to the chagrin of carriers.”

Ross Rader, a member of the ICANN Registrars Constituency and executive for

Tucows Inc., wrote, “This scenario may likely happen over the next few years, not the

next 12. The only real obstacle to this level of adoption and social integration lies with

the willingness of the telecommunications industry to resist the temptation to segregate

and verticalize its offerings. In other words, the communications network market must

be made much more competitive than it is today. Handsets need to be freed from

applications, and applications need to be freed from networks. Only truly open networks

will drive the sort of adoption envisaged in this scenario. We are starting to see the first

glimpses of this today with Google's Android, Verizon's open network initiative, the

power of the iPhone, but much work in all of these, and other, areas remains to be done

before the networks, applications, and handsets markets are fully competitive.”

A few respondents said they believe corporate leaders are interested in the positive

diffusion of affordable technology tools to less-developed areas of the world. Peter Kim,

a senior analyst for Forrester Research, commented, “Handset manufacturers have

already started to focus on countries with lower GDP. Continued efficiency in

production and increase in computing power, along with the natural desire of humans

to connect will help make this scenario a reality.”

Many survey participants expressed concerns about pricing. One anonymous respondent

wrote, “The success of the mobile phone as a universal-access device is contingent on

adoption of flat-rate style charges, as is normal for Internet applications, rather than

high per-minute charges which currently dominate mobile-pricing structures.”

Bandwidth, Screen Size, Poor User-Interface Are Among the

Other Potential Limits Cited

Some respondents who mostly disagreed with the scenario wrote that delivery will

continue to be more efficient through earth-based connections. “Wireless doesn't ever

provide as much bandwidth as wired connections; wireless will always be slower, thus

second-best,” wrote one anonymous respondent. “Primary ‘work’ will still be done over

wired connections, with wireless filling in the gaps and supporting mobile applications.”

Another wrote, “Will there be enough wireless infrastructure for truly complex Internet

applications on a phone?”

Another more multi-layered response in regard to limitations of the scenario came from

an anonymous survey participant: “Wireless technologies have a number of inherent

problems including but not limited to interference and capacity. The simple log trend of

traffic and data patterns precludes wireless. While some form of ubiquitous wireless

access will be available most places, fibre will be more important than ever. Phones also

have UI restrictions, any conception of phones without other peripheral interfacing

technologies such as HUDS eye movement/brain interfaces simply will not meet the

needs.”

“Unless the phone—which will really be seen as the one device that we carry around that

includes voice, text, still/video camera, GPS, AV player, computer, voice-to -digital-

information interface, Internet, television, bank account, etc.—has the capacity to

project at least a 15" display, it will be too small to use as the primary connection tool for

the majority of world-wide users,” wrote Peter Eckart, director of health information

technology for the Illinois Public Health Institute. “The majority of us will carry our

digital presence indicator with us from place to place on that device, but the bandwidth

and interface will be provided by our home or work or coffee shop, with the device there

to maintain digital identity. I do agree that the mobile device will be the primary or only

connection for poorer folks. People's wealth or income will be reflected in the size of their

display, the number of Ds (2 or 3), their connection speed, amount of digital storage,

and most importantly, their level of access to information stores.”

Adrian Schofield, a leader in the World Information Technology and Services Alliance

and manager of applied research at the Johannesburg Center for Software Engineering

in South Africa, wrote that people will use multiple devices. “There are likely to be two

distinct types of hand-held device—the mobile phone and the mobile PDA,”he

commented. “The phone will be the instrument that enables the less economically

empowered people to communicate by voice and text and to perform basic financial and

government transactions. The PDA will offer the full range of communications and

computing facilities, including TV, GPS, and video camera. Using improved solar

technology, battery life will be significantly extended and offices, hotels, and other

venues will provide free plasma screens for those who wish to access a larger image than

the one offered on the device.”

Well-known economist and technology expert Hal Varian, of Google and the

University of California-Berkeley, responded, “The big problem with the cell phone is the

UI [user interface], particularly on the data side. We are waiting for a breakthrough.”

Fabrice Florin, the executive director of NewsTrust.net, a nonprofit social news

network, wrote, “While I agree that the mobile phone will play a growing role as a low-

cost computing platform, I disagree that it will be the 'primary Internet connection and

the only one for a majority of the people across the world.' Other computing platforms

and connectivity options will become widely available by then, such as cheap computers

(or wall-based computing environments) with landline or comparable broadband

connections. I predict that these faster connections and larger-screen platforms will be

more affordable and effective from a productivity standpoint than small and slow

mobile platforms.”

One Laptop Per Child Is Seen as Limited

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is a large-scale US-based project to provide affordable,

practical computing and Internet capabilities to people in underserved communities

around the world. The effort has brought together people from the technology industry,

non-governmental organizations, and governments in the process of designing,

manufacturing, and distributing these tools.

The Future of the Internet III survey was distributed at about the same time the OLPC

computers became available; they have come under some criticism in the popular

media, and they met some criticism from survey participants. Scott Smith wrote,

“OLPC-style efforts are already beginning to fragment at the start of 2008 even before

the actual OLPC initiative gains any real ground.”Seth Finkelstein wrote, “One

Laptop Per Child is a classic ‘ugly American’-style project.”

Charles Ess, an online culture and ethics researcher from Drury University and a

leader of the Association of Internet Researchers, commented, “The One Laptop Per

Child initiative is foundering not so much on issues of economics, but more on issues of

culture. Most of the non-Western ‘targets’ for the initiative use languages that are not

easily captured through the use of the standard Roman keyboard. More broadly, the

literacy required to manipulate most computer-based communications technologies and

venues is not to be taken for granted among all populations and demographic groups—

certainly not within the US and Western Europe, much less through other cultures in

which orality still predominates (e.g., indigenous peoples). For that, mobile phones

present a relatively straightforward interface—and talking, for most people at least, is

easy! In short, talking via a phone is far more universally realizable than presuming

everyone will be able and willing to communicate via a Roman keyboard and an

expensive computer.”

Some Say 2020 Will Offer a New Paradigm

Some survey participants said this scenario as written is shortsighted and we will have

moved into a different communications environment. “A new technology will blow all of

this away,”wrote one anonymous respondent, and another wrote, “Another ‘killer app’

will emerge before 2020 that will change everything; communication will not achieve

stability in the 21

century.”

View Report Online:

http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2008/The-Future-of -the-Internet-III.aspx

Pew Internet & American Life Project

An initiative of the Pew Research Center

1615 L St., NW – Suite 700

Washington, D.C. 20036

202-419-4500 | pewinternet.org

Summary of Findings 3

Acknowledgements 15

Background 16

Scenario 1: The Evolution of Mobile Internet

Communications

Scenario 2: The Internet and the Evolution of

Social Tolerance

Scenario 3: The Evolution of IP Law and Copyright

Protection

Scenario 4: The Evolution of Privacy, Identity, and

Forgiveness

Scenario 5: The Evolution of Augmented Reality

and Virtual Reality

Scenario 6: The Evolution of the Internet User

Interface

Scenario 7: The Evolution of the Architecture of

the Internet

Scenario 8: The Evolving Concept of Time for

Work, Leisure

Pew Internet & American Life Project

The Future of the Internet III | 16