Charlie Chaplin once said that cinema was just a fad. In 1936, the New York Times wrote that “the rocket will never be able to leave the Earth’s atmosphere.” In 1955, Variety magazine reported that rock n’ roll would be extinct by June of that year.
Predicting the future of technology is probably foolish. But it certainly hasn't stopped us from doing it.
On Tuesday, the Pew Research Internet Project and Elon University's Imagining The Internet Center attempted to shed light on what our online lives will look like in 2025, publishing the predictions of academics and scientists.
By 2025…
You'll Forget That The Internet Exists.
“The Internet (and computer communication in general) will be more pervasive, but less obvious and visible,” says David Clark, a senior research scientist in the Department of Computer Science and the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT. “To some extent, it will be in the background of everything we do.” Joe Touch, director of the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute, agrees. We won't think about searching the Internet, we'll just do it.”
The Internet will be better than any Educational.
With existing resources like Wikipedia and Khan Academy, the Internet currently provides access to education like never before. Many of the academics who participated in the research believe that these resources will only get better over time. Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist, believes that “the greatest impact on the world will be universal access to all human knowledge. The smartest person in the world today could be behind a plow in India or China. Enabling that person—or millions like him or her—to access and communicate over the Internet could have a profound effect on the development of the human race.”
The Internet will prove Orwell right
Hong Xue, director of the Institute for Internet Policy and Law at Beijing Normal University, cites Orwell’s predictions, envisioning a future where “people will live in a transparent world like 1984.” Many of those who participated in the survey did so to predict the increase in data and information as a way to improve medicine, education, transportation, and life in general, while others fear that it will lead to increased discrimination and marginalization, allowing power to justify institutionalized oppression.
The Internet will change so quickly that we won't be able to keep up.
Philosopher and communication theorist Marshall McLuhan once said, “We shape our tools, and then our tools shape us.” Many of the commentators on the Pew survey seem to agree. As technology evolves and evolves at an unprecedented rate, there are concerns that we will fail to recognize potential consequences and pitfalls. One respondent who preferred to remain anonymous said, “the information we want will come back to haunt us, as networks learn to accurately predict our interests and weaknesses … it will tempt us to stop seeking knowledge, to narrow our horizons, even to probe ever deeper.”
The Internet will make Geography disappear.
“When every person on this planet can reach, and communicate two-way, with every other person on this planet, the power of nation-states to control man by geographical boundaries will begin to wane,” says David Hughes, a telecommunications pioneer.
The Internet Will Make Us Incredibly Lonely
Bob Briscoe, chief research officer at British Telecom, worries that while interactions may increase, they are also becoming increasingly superficial and unsustainable. Others believe that global connectivity will lead to local isolation – and insist that while a “global village” could have its benefits, there is undoubtedly also the risk of making people feel isolated.
Or... The Internet won't even exist.
This may be the most far-fetched and difficult prediction yet. Retired software engineer Robert McGrath believes there is a 50/50 chance that the Internet will not exist at all. Citing cyberattacks, McGrath speculates that the World Wide Web could be brought to its knees — taking with it the economy and the world as we know it.
First published by Huffington Post
