Predicting the Internet’s Uncertain Path

By the year 2020, technologies like virtual reality will come of age, and snazzy tools like "smart agents"—which scour the Web on behalf of their human controllers—will be standard. But Web users will find their privacy eroding, and computer junkies will be more prone than ever to technology addiction, say a panel of experts interviewed by Elon University and the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

For their second "Future of the Internet" report, the university and the research center surveyed more than 700 innovators and other experts, including scholars, policy makers, and engineers with companies like IBM and Google. The previous report, released in January 2005, predicted what the ‘Net would look like in 2014; the new study looks even further down the road.

The new report finds that the tech world’s big thinkers are fairly ambivalent about the direction in which the Internet is headed. While most the interview subjects expect it to become more flexible and convenient over the next decade or so, many are wary of information overload, Web addiction, and backlash from "refuseniks" who commit acts of violence against development spurred by technology.

And the experts split almost dead center when asked if the Internet’s tendency toward transparency would have a positive impact on society. Just 46 percent said the benefits of transparency would outweigh any loss of personal privacy, while 49 percent thought otherwise. —Brock Read