Pew. The Internet in 2020 – Hang On

To prep for some over-the-holiday thinking on the future of communications, I downloaded the latest Pew Future of the Internet survey “Future Of The Internet III,” a study released on 12/14/2008 by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, and was pleased with the amount of perspectives they gave me to digest. Predictions are a tricky business but Pew has come up with an approach that is a combination of “Wisdom of the Crowd” and extended commentary which yields some consensus while leaving room for dissenting opinions. I have only scratched the surface of the report (it’s 100+ pages) and haven’t thought through the implications on my project but wanted to share a couple highlights and some comments.

Mobility is where it’s at.

Pew survey consensus: Mobile phone/device will be the primary connection tool for most people in the world.

Comment:  Where I think this prediction is a little misleading is that “most people in the world” don’t have access to the kind of infrastructure that we do in the US and therefore a mobile phone/device is likely the only device within reach for the developing world.  While I certainly see a lot of potential for mobility services, it is also important to remember that wireless doesn’t go everywhere and though it is often perceived as a panacea for providing connections the technology does have limitations.  My view is somewhat skewed by my years of working for companies that provide wired connections, and I continue to see long-run advantages for wired networks.  At the same time a wired network benefits from the augmentation of wireless local access.

Incremental network improvement, not complete replacement.

Pew survey consensus:  Improvement to the infrastructure of the Internet is more likely to occur through incremental improvement and not a complete replacement.

Comment:  Although many of the technologies that make the Internet possible are quite old (Ethernet, TCP/IP, DNS) and have weaknesses, it is unlikely that there will be a movement to establish a new Internet.  To do so would be a costly endeavor, and would cut off the largest benefit of today’s Internet – the number of points that it connects.  The most valuable part of any network is the number of potential connections that it makes (Metcalfe’s Law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe’s_law )

Protecting content will remain challenging

Pew survey consensus:  The digital economy will still struggle with charging for content, illicit use of copyrighted material and monitoring the use of content.

Comment:  From the view of knowledge workers this issue is an important one.  While it certainly is an issue that the media industry has struggled with as music, TV, movies have become digitized – it is an issue that increasingly impacts many people outside the media industry.

Touch it, talk to it, love it.

Pew survey consensus:  Our primary means to interact with technology will be touch and speech.

Comment:  User interface sure could get a lot better.  The mouse/window interface was the last big advance that I can think of and while it is better than the command line world for most functions it is still clumsy. 

 

I’m looking forward to digging in deeper to the research and to balance the perspectives here with Grown Up Digital the latest book by Dan Tapscott discussing the Net Generation.