i ride on my elements towards the stars unseen...

Will the next internet strengthen the positives of individualism, of equality and of cooperation or will we become no more than Morlocks and Eloi? I remain optimistic as we address not only the engineering challenges, but also the human and social challenges arising. Adding systems of trust, beginning with the promises of blockchain, will and must address this failing. As we are seeing this reliance has strong downsides – phishing, fake news, over-customization and tribalism for starters. Paul Jones, professor of information science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, responded, “While the internet was built from the beginning to be open and extensible, it relies on communities of trust. These are the factors that will dominate whether people are better off or worse off.” These are people and political issues, not technology ones. The reasons will be due to choices that people and society make – political choices, choices per how we govern society, choices per how we attend to the needs of our populations and societies. And if it is not mostly for the better, the reasons will NOT be due to the technology, per se. Steven Miller, vice provost and professor of information systems at Singapore Management University, said, “Overall, the future will be mostly for the better. A tool that could have strengthened the social fiber by allowing people to know each other and share their stories, but out of it grew huge inequalities between the connected and not-connected, both locally and across countries.” A tool that could have empowered the people but became a tool for mass surveillance and population control. History will underline that it could have been the basis for radically inclusive societies, where networked communities could actively define their collective future. Juan Ortiz Freuler, a policy fellow, and Nnenna Nwakanma, the interim policy director for Africa at the Web Foundation, wrote, “Unless we see a radical shift soon, the internet as we know it will likely be recalled as a missed opportunity. Whether historians of the future judge this to be good or bad will depend on whether we can make the societal choice to embed democratic values and human rights into the design and implementation of these systems.”

In the next 50, information, communication and AI technology show every sign of being even more so. Micah Altman, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and head scientist in the program on information science at MIT Libraries, wrote, “The late historian Melvin Kranzberg insightfully observed, ‘Technology is neither good nor bad nor is it neutral.’ In the last 50 years, the internet has been transformative and disruptive. Some of these comments are included below. Many described the current state of techlash as a catalyst that will lead to a more inclusive and inviting internet. The cautious optimism expressed by many of the experts canvassed for this report grew out of a shared faith in humanity. Some responses are lightly edited for style and readability. Many of the answers touch on multiple aspects of the digital future and are not neatly boxed as addressing only one part of the story. They are gathered under broad, overarching ideas, rather than being tied to the specific themes highlighted above. The following sections share selections of comments from technology experts and futurists who elaborate on the ways internet use has shaped humanity over the past 50 years and consider the potential future of digital life.

I ride on my elements towards the stars unseen...