Pew Internet and American Life Project: Future of the Internet

The Pew Internet and American Life Project has issued its annual forecast of “The Future of the Internet.”  It offers predictions for the Internet in 2020.    Here's the high points:

• The mobile device will be the primary connection tool to the Internet for most people in the world in 2020.
• The transparency of people and organizations will increase, but that will not necessarily yield more personal integrity, social tolerance, or forgiveness.
• Voice recognition and touch user-interfaces with the Internet will be more prevalent and accepted by 2020.
• Those working to enforce intellectual property law and copyright protection will remain in a continuing “arms race,” with the “crackers” who will find ways to copy and share content without payment.
• The divisions between personal time and work time and between physical and virtual reality will be further erased for everyone who’s connected, and the results will be mixed in terms of social relations.
• “Next-generation” engineering of the network to improve the current Internet architecture is more likely than an effort to rebuild the architecture from scratch.

The line between personal time and professional time point caught my eye.  Here's what they said:

The division between personal and professional time will disappear: A majority of expert respondents (56%) agreed with the statement that in 2020 “few lines (will) divide professional from personal time, and that’s OK.” While some people are hopeful about a hyperconnected future with more freedom, flexibility, and life enhancements, others express fears that mobility and ubiquity of networked computing devices will be harmful for most people by adding to stress and challenging family life and social life.

I think the line has been pretty blurry for awhile and the jury is still out as to whether it will be part of our lifestyle or something that is bad for our health.

Commentary from higher education and library sectors about the report, but most interesting is
Geoff Livingston at LivingstonBuzz who has a detailed analysis and commentary about the findings and the "Do Good" sector.

Humanitarian do-gooders using social media to create social good Not here said 55 percent of the thought leaders. According to Pew/Internet, “The transparency of people and organizations will increase, but that will not necessarily yield more personal integrity, social tolerance, or forgiveness.”

This was the most disappointing benchmark revealed by the report. Yet recent events throughout the online world, from the mob mentality on Twitter to Arrington’s continued, ridiculously obnoxious self righteousness lead me to believe that significant progress in human nature needs to occur to achieve good online through transparency.

It’s the human plight, I suppose. Online media, while providing great opportunities to make a difference, is also exposing our ugly sides, from the need to place self first in some of the most ridiculous ways to pack mentalities to boorish treatment of others.

What do you think of the future?

Comments

[Geoff Livingston]

Thanks, Beth. At the same time, it does provide us a basis to move forward, and that for me is really my base line. Like the economy, until we hit bottom, we'll never be able to move forward. Let's hope we don't have to dig deeper into our darker natures for that bottom.

[Rodney Rumford]

Beth,
I totally agree that the line between personal time and professional time. I have worked virtually for almost 15 years and as the CEO of a small strategy & consulting agency we see this continuing. Also non technical careers are seeing this blurring and virtualization occur.

The lines between professional and personal are also very blurred and there is becoming less distinction.Thanks for the tweets regarding the study.

I do a "Mind Share" which I share with people about what is interesting, compelling and important to me (personal and primarily biz related). The lines and times for me are totally blurred and intermixed.

http://tinyurl.com/rumfordmindshare

Cheers!
Rodney Rumford