Speculating on the internet's future is fun, but we do have cause for concern

Sometimes writing about the internet can seem like a cop-out. Imagining the impact that new technology will have on human life, in all its social, political and linguistic forms, is fun, exciting and much easier than, say, reporting from the Middle East. And yet the futurologist is only a step away from the cocktail-party doom-monger boring on about speed cameras, mobile-phone masts and shopping centres.

But it is a refreshing experience to view futurologists' predictions in aggregate. A survey released late last month by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a non-partisan research centre based in Washington, DC, allows just such a view. The survey is part of an ongoing effort to collect predictions relating to the direction and impact of technological change. Researchers asked hundreds of technology thinkers and doers worldwide seven questions about the future of the internet and its benefits for human society. It is surprising how much the respondents disagreed.

The most contentious issue was privacy. The Pew researchers asked if greater transparency, aided by developments in surveillance, storage and communications technology, would make the world a better place. Just under half agreed, often with the proviso that privacy safeguards would be more needed than ever, because, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award-winner Seth Finkelstein observed, "The difference between the open society and the police state is political, not technological." The other half had a far bleaker view. "The cost of unlimited transparency will not simply be privacy," wrote Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Centre. "It will be autonomy, freedom and individuality."

Other contentious scenarios imagined by Pew included a world where autonomous machines exert control over humanity, or where virtual reality becomes so compelling for a minority of users that they surrender reality to a perpetual Second Life. Paul Saffo of the Institute for the Future was with 42 per cent of respondents when he expressed the fear that "some time after 2020 our machines will become intelligent, evolve rapidly and end up treating us as pets. We can at least take comfort that there is one worse fate - becoming food - that is mercifully highly unlikely."

All this makes the future of the internet look like a cross between Nineteen Eighty-Four and The Matrix. So it's interesting to note that, when asked what the top priority for the future of IT should be, most respondents said further building the capacity of the network and spreading technical knowledge to those not already online. Why would the survey group not just want to join the Luddite terrorists that 58 per cent believed will have emerged by 2020? Perhaps because if they did, they, like me, would have nothing to speculate about.

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