Survey Examines Net's Future
Information will continue to flow freely online 10 years from now, according to the guesses of most respondents to a Pew survey released Friday about the future of the Internet. The survey, conducted Dec. 2-Jan. 11, asked 895 people affiliated with the technology sector about their expectations for the state of the Internet in 2020.
The Internet will remain open and "most disagreements over the way information flows online will be resolved in favor of a minimum number of restrictions," 61 percent of the survey respondents said. But some indicated that their response was only "hope" rather than a concrete expectation.
Taking the opposite view, 33 percent of respondents predicted "the Internet will mostly become a technology where intermediary institutions that control the architecture and... content will be successful in gaining the right to manage information and the method by which people access it."
One respondent who channeled this skepticism was Susan Crawford, a former White House technology adviser in the Obama administration. "The locked-down future is more realistic as things stand now. We've got a very cautious government, an international movement towards greater control, and a pliant public," she wrote. "I wish this wasn't the case."
Google's chief economist Hal Varian seemed more optimistic. "It seems to me inevitable that nation states will attempt to exert more control over the Internet," he wrote. "However, I think that these will be relatively small changes, so that the Internet will remain relatively free."
The question of Internet openness is problematic since respondents each bring their own understanding of what forces may threaten the free flow of information, according to survey co-author Janna Quitney Anderson, an associate professor at Elon University. The threats that respondents prioritized in their responses could have ranged from cable companies to governments, she said.
"There are constantly arguments over what [freely flowing information] means," she said. "We saw that argument playing out in the responses."
Such disagreements were on display last month when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced in a speech that the Obama administration would make Internet freedom and openness a diplomatic priority. The speech, however, was criticized by China, which has imposed an internal firewall that blocks users in China from accessing some Web sites and information. Despite this, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman claimed that "China's Internet is open."
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