Survey on the Future of the Internet
January 15th, 2008 Richard Posted in web and new media, web-research |
I just took this survey on the Future of the Internet, as part of the Pew Internet and American Life Project. I was not invited, but heard about it from the Association for Internet Researchers list serve. I recommend that you take the survey if you are an active web user. First, of course, you help a very worthy and interesting project. Second, the scenarios they present as possibilities for the future are very interesting and thought provoking. For example, will people, in general, become more tolerant as a result of reduced privacy? Will digital rights management, and the intellectual property laws, become even more draconian in the future, or will new economic models emerge? Apparently, the survey has been conducted previously, by polling many important stake holders, with some interesting results.
January 21st, 2008 at 7:40 am
I found the following comments for the current survey especially interesting:
“Losses from internet-related crime and terror will exceed losses from all natural disasters.”
- I believe this could become a full-blown reality because it is already happening. It’s scary to see it in black and white.
“Transportation will be refined through massive substitution of communication. The current flight to cities will be reversed.”
- Interestingly, after driving from Hermann back through Augusta a few weeks ago I thought how nice it would be to live there but would never do it because of the commute. With more companies allowing flex-schedules including working from home, I do see this becoming a reality. I have seen it become reality on a “mini-scale” here in St. Louis with the I-64 shutdown.
This is one of the platform issues I particularly liked about Obama: increasing the availability of internet to rural areas. Whether or not he will make this a reality is still up for speculation but I appreciate his acknowledgment and support of it.
“The internet is like graffiti, only it can be targeted to the right niche.”
- I really liked this simile - probably because of my art background. It’s dead on. The internet is a blank canvas just waiting for someone to leave their mark.
January 21st, 2008 at 11:22 pm
The language of these types of visionary works always intrigues me. For example, virtual selves, seamless transitions, air typing, etc. It strikes me that we are going to have to learn a whole new set of vocabulary with a whole new set of rules to be able to survive. Those people who don’t might be at a big disadvantage; perhaps it will even change our current classification systems. As I sit here typing, I definitely agree with the idea that few lines will divide personal and professional time in this new era.
January 22nd, 2008 at 9:55 am
The DRM issue is especially interesting to me and I can actually argue that we’re headed for more or that we’re headed for more freedom equally well, I think.
It’s interesting that the music industry seems to finally be throwing up its arms and saying ‘fine, fine - you win’ and going DRM-free. At the same time, the film industry is going down the same road that the music industry did - it seems to be a case of not learning obvious lessons to me.
To bridge this with the Cluetrain Manifesto I think that smart companies are going to realize that the old business models just aren’t going to work in the new market. I’m done buying a record on vinyl, upgrading to cassette, upgrading to CD, upgrading to… blah blah blah… buying it again to work on THIS player, hacking work-arounds so that I can move things around or use it the way I want, etc. I guess my tendency is to believe that consumers are going to win for once.
January 22nd, 2008 at 1:53 pm
I found the survey to be interesting especially when it comes to the music industry. I am glad that they finally gave in. Music should be shared and great artists should cause you to purchase albums
January 22nd, 2008 at 1:57 pm
I found some of the material in this survey to be a little disturbing. For example, there was a question about whether people will be more willing to forgive the pasts of those who have perhaps posted videos on youtube, or pictures on facebook, that show them doing things they might regret everyone seeing. I have no problem with the idea of people increasing in forgiveness for such acts, but what I fear is that rather than just forgiving such things, people will actually embrace such activities, and they will become the norm.
I hope people will begin to realize who is able to access the content they put on the web (facebook does a semi-decent job of this) and start behaving as if all those people are going to see their content.
January 22nd, 2008 at 2:11 pm
I confess, I got a record player for Christmas; it also has a CD player with it. I immediately pulled out the 250 albums my wife and I have between us and started dazzling my kids (5 ages 10-18) with my own little repertoire.
One question my kids had for me about the spinning albums: How do you change tracks?
January 22nd, 2008 at 2:34 pm
“people will actually embrace such activities”
@Brad: That’s an interesting point, although I’m not sure I’m completely on board. I’m trying to think of an analogy in the past century or two and I come up blank. I think it’s true that our societal norms have changed due to television, etc. but I can’t think of anything that we do now that is actually unethical or immoral. People show more skin - people can say ‘bitch’ on TV now.. lol… but nothing about any of that is inherently unethical/immmoral/problematic - its just different. (At least from MY perspective - I know that there are others who would disagree!)
I -would- like to see a time when an employer finding a picture of a student doing a keg stand at a party on Facebook would be shrugged off as probably irrelevant information in the absence of other evidence that support it as an actual problem. I mean, who hasn’t done something wacky that they wouldn’t throw a picture of down on the table in an interview..??