[Chapter-delegates] PEW Research on the Future of the Internet

[Glenn McKnight]

http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/07/03/326965653/the-future-internet-is-not-so-free-or-open-in-pews-new-survey

What we know as the World Wide Web — the main way by which most of us
access the Internet — just turned 25 this year
<http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/02/27/282965383/the-web-at-25-hugely-popular-and-viewed-as-a-positive-force>.
Its existence has allowed for all kinds of learning and free expression,
coding and making, rule-breaking and platform-making. One American
researcher even links the Internet to a decline in religious affiliation
<http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/04/21/303375159/americas-less-religious-study-puts-some-blame-on-the-internet>
.

An estimated 5 billion of us are expected to have Internet access in the
next decade, but what will the Internet look like then? How easily will we
be able to get, share and create with it?

The Pew Research Center reached out to more than 1,400 tech industry
leaders and academics, asking about the basic way the Internet will
function come 2025. In the Pew report
<http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/07/03/net-threats/>, the threats they see
are geopolitical, economic and socially relevant. A lot of the Internet's
"future" is already expressed in the current. A few key themes:

*1) Control means less freedom:* Actions by nation-states to maintain
security and political control will lead to more blocking, filtering,
segmentation and balkanization of the Internet.

Already, China is known for its "Great Firewall," and social media
crackdowns in Turkey and Pakistan lately show a global trend toward
regulation of the Internet by certain regimes. And that's without
mentioning stepped-up surveillance.
[image: A 1992 copy of the world's first Web page. British physicist Tim
Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989.]
<http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/02/27/282965383/the-web-at-25-hugely-popular-and-viewed-as-a-positive-force>
All Tech Considered <http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/>The Web At
25: Hugely Popular, And Viewed As A Positive Force
<http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/02/27/282965383/the-web-at-25-hugely-popular-and-viewed-as-a-positive-force>
[image: Person using a tablet.]
<http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/04/21/303375159/americas-less-religious-study-puts-some-blame-on-the-internet>
All Tech Considered <http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/>America's
Less Religious: Study Puts Some Blame On The Internet
<http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/04/21/303375159/americas-less-religious-study-puts-some-blame-on-the-internet>
[image: Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff was angered by reports that the
National Security Agency was spying on her. She has called for giving
individual countries greater control over the Internet.]
<http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2013/10/16/232181204/are-we-moving-to-a-world-with-more-online-surveillance>
Parallels <http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/>Are We Moving To A World
With More Online Surveillance?
<http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2013/10/16/232181204/are-we-moving-to-a-world-with-more-online-surveillance>

"Surveillance ... at the minimum chills communications and at the maximum
facilitates industrial espionage[;] it does not have very much to do with
security," said Christopher Wilkinson, a retired European Union official
and board member for EURid.eu.

*2)* *Trust is evaporating:* "The next few years are going to be about
control," said danah boyd, noted Internet thinker and a researcher at
Microsoft. Survey respondents told Pew that trust in open communications
technologies will continue to evaporate in the wake of revelations about
government and corporate surveillance. We've reported on the U.S./China
"Cool War"
<http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014/06/06/318788569/the-cool-war-with-china-is-unseen-but-comes-with-consequences>
that
reignited because of Chinese fears of American corporate surveillance; it's
just one flashpoint in a larger theme.

*3)* *The lure of money endangers openness:* There's a serious worry that
commercial pressures will affect everything from Internet architecture to
the flow of information and more deeply endanger the open structure of
online life.

This isn't limited to prioritization for some content over others, which is
the debate over net neutrality. Experts also expect that commercial
pressures that preserve copyrights and patents mean the free flow of
information will suffer. Leah Lievrouw, a professor at the University of
California, Los Angeles, has a sense of hopelessness about it:

"There are too many institutional players interested in restricting,
controlling, and directing 'ordinary' people's ability to make, access, and
share knowledge and creative works online — intellectual property rights
holders, law enforcement and security agencies, religious and cultural
censors, political movements and parties, etc. For a long time I've felt
that the utopianism, libertarianism, and sheer technological skill of both
professional and amateur programmers and engineers would remain the
strongest counterbalance to these restrictive institutional pressures, but
I'm increasingly unsure as the technologists themselves and their skills
are being increasingly restricted, marginalized, and even criminalized."

There is more in the full report
<http://www.pewinternet.org/files/2014/07/Future-of-the-Internet_Net-Threats_070314.pdf>,
such as the respondents' take on what to do — and what companies will do —
to help clear the clutter of content overload. (Hint: Some folks are
concerned algorithms and other solutions will overcompensate ...)

Glenn McKnight
mcknight.glenn at gmail.com
skype  gmcknight
twitter gmcknight
.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/private/chapter-delegates/attachments/20140703/c8f2e649/attachment.htm>