In a thought-provoking -and somewhat alarming – survey by the PewResearch Internet Project, a large number of experts expressed a wide range of fears in their prognosis for our global online network.
But despite the concerns raised about nation-states clamping down on free expression online, increasing intrusions into our privacy and other threats to a thriving and democratic Internet, the experts collective conclusion is pretty fuzzy: As the report points out, a whopping 65 percent of the more than 1,400 respondents said that they did not predict a significant changes for the worse in the way we get and share content online in 2025 as compared with today.
That s pretty optimistic, right?
Well, as the 2014 Future of the Internet canvassing reveals, the worries are much more subtle. For while most experts said they expect that technology innovation will continue to afford more new opportunities for people to connect, many of them voiced deep concerns that an open Internet will be challenged by trends that could sharply disrupt the way the Internet works.
As Silicon Valley s own futurist Paul Saffo over at Stanford put it:
The pressures to balkanize the global Internet will continue and create new uncertainties. Governments will become more skilled at blocking access to unwelcome sites.
According to the breakdown in the report, experts most feared these Net threats:
The report then goes on to quote from scores of its esteemed respondents. Here are some of the more pithy:, a retired European Union official, board member for EURid.eu, and Internet Society leader predicted, Surveillance … at the minimum chills communications and at the maximum facilitates industrial espionage, it does not have very much to do with security. , editor of Fast Net News, responded, Governments worldwide are looking for more power over the Net, especially within their own countries. Britain, for example, has just determined that ISPs block sites the government considers terrorist or otherwise dangerous. This will grow. There will usually be ways to circumvent the obstruction but most people won t bother. Still, despite all these furrowed brows in the bunch, the report also includes many counter-arguments from experts who, while not necessarily predicting either the demise or the survival of the Internet as we know and love it, make cogent and hopeful observations about its future. Here are a few: a professor at the University of North Carolina and founder of ibiblio.org, responded, Historic trends are that as a communications medium matures, the control trumps the innovation. This time it will be different. Not without a struggle. Over the next 10 years we will be even more increasingly global and involved. Tech will assist this move in a way that is irreversible. It won t be a bloodless revolution, sadly, but it will be a revolution nonetheless.In other words, the sky may not be falling over the Internet after all.
But then, who knows?
Credit: ec.europa.eu
