[Web4lib] The World in 2020: The Mobile Device Will Be The Primary Connection Tool To The Internet

[McKiernan, Gerard [LIB]]

Colleagues/

Pew Report :The Future of the Internet III / Dec 14, 2008 > The World in
2020: The Mobile Device Will Be The Primary Connection Tool To The
Internet

/Gerry

 

Overview

A survey of internet leaders, activists and analysts shows they expect
major tech advances as the phone becomes a primary device for online
access, voice-recognition improves, artificial and virtual reality
become more embedded in everyday life, and the architecture of the
internet itself improves.

 

They disagree about whether this will lead to more social tolerance,
more forgiving human relations, or better home lives.

 

Here are the key findings on the survey of experts by the Pew Internet &
American Life Project that asked respondents to assess predictions about
technology and its roles in the year 2020: 

 

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 is
connected, and the results will be mixed in their impact on basic 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 Evolution of Mobile Internet Communications / Prediction >

 

The mobile phone is the primary connection tool for most people in the
world. In 2020, while "one laptop per child" and other initiatives to
bring networked digital communications to everyone are successful on
many levels, the mobile phone-now with significant computing power-is
the primary Internet connection and the only one for a majority of the
people across the world, providing information in a portable,
well-connected form at a relatively low price. 

 

Links To More Predictions  About The Evolution Of  Mobile Communications
And The Full Text Of The Pew Report Available From

 

[ http://tinyurl.com/npljcy  ]

 

Enjoy !

 

 /Gerry 

 

Gerry McKiernan

Associate Professor

Science and Technology Librarian

Iowa State University Library

Ames IA 50011

 

gerrymck at iastate.edu 

 

There Are No Answers, Only Solutions / Olde Irish Saying

 

The Future Is Already Here, It's Just Not Evenly Distributed /
Attributed To William Gibson, SciFi Author / Coined 'Cyberspace