How will the accelerating impact of networked information and communications technologies change our lives and our world? Between 2005 and 2021 researchers from Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center conducted interviews with participants at major national, global and regional gatherings, asking them to share their expectations for the future. Imagining the Internet also conducted documentary video, audio and/or print news coverage of these and other special events. This collection of documentary multimedia reports provide a historic record of important policy discussions and workshops and speculative speeches about the potential future of human networks and their threats and opportunities. The links below will lead you to audio and/or video interview collections, including many quotable predictions shared by people from all walks of life, many of them at the top of their field.
You can also find the videos from this 2005to 2021 multimedia collection on our YouTube channel – more than 6,300 features and interview clips from major events that global and national leaders’ views and their hopes and fears on the potential future. (Note that in 2024 Imagining the Internet rebranded its work when it created a new website for its next two decades of research, renaming itself Imagining the Digital Future so the YouTube channel is titled as such.)
Global Internet Governance Forums
Imagining the Internet recorded documentary coverage at 11 Global Internet Governance Forum sessions between 2006 (its inaugural year) and 2019. The meetings were mandated by processes generated out of the World Summit on the Information Society and they were facilitated by a United Nations secretariat that is based in Geneva, Switzerland. They brought together people from industry, the technology sector, government, academic and civil society in non-binding, multistakeholder discussions of key issues. The conferences were staged in global locations such as Athens, Rio de Janeiro, Hyderabad, Sharm el Sheikh, Vilnius, Nairobi and Baku. Among the thousands of people recorded at these events are Tim Berners-Lee, Jerry Yang, Bruce Schneier, Robert Kahn, the top Internet policy leaders at Cisco, Verizon, Google, Microsoft, AT&T, Facebook and other major corporations, and non-governmental organization and legislative leaders from across the globe.
Internet Society Special Events
Imagining the Internet completed full documentary multimedia coverage of the Internet Society’s 25th Anniversary conference in Los Angeles in September 2017 and its 20th Anniversary Global INET conference in Geneva, Switzerland in April 2012. ISOC revealed a report on challenging trends for the future of the Internet at the 25th anniversary conference. The theme of the 20th anniversary conference was “Imagining the Future Internet.” Included here are the details of 20 different conference sessions, among them the naming of the inaugural class of the Internet Hall of Fame, panel sessions on key issues to the future of the Internet and keynote talks by Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales, Google Vice President Vint Cerf, ARPANET pioneer scientist Leonard Kleinrock, Mozilla leader Mitchell Baker, Internet Society CEO Lynn St. Amour, the ITU’s leader, Hamadoun Touré, and more.
Internet Governance Forum-USA
This link leads to complete journalistic coverage seven of the 10 inaugural-decade meetings of the U.S. national Internet Governance Forum (IGF-USA). The annual meetings were held between 2009 and 2019 in Washington, DC. National IGF convenings held at the time across the world were events that brought together civil society, government, business and technology leaders for open and frank conversations about the issues of the day. Plenary sessions and workshops were documented by teams of Imagining the Internet researchers including faculty, staff, undergraduate students and alumni from Elon University.
Imagining the Internet Areté Medallion events
Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center awards the Areté Medallion to highly distinguished humanist innovators, change agents and thought leaders who have dedicated their lives to initiating and sustaining significant contributions that have positively impacted the global future. The inaugural honoree was Internet pioneer Vint Cerf. See two hours of video and dozens of photos as well as a written account from events held in his honor September 30, 2016. World Wide Web innovator Tim Berners-Lee was honored in 2018. Wikipedia and Wikimedia Foundation co-founder Jimmy Wales was honored in 2021.
Internet Hall of Fame Inductions
Imagining the Internet sent video teams to document the first five induction ceremonies of the Internet Hall of Fame, invited to create an official record by leaders of the Internet Society. Hall of Fame inductions are not conducted annually. The first five were held in Geneva in 2012, in Berlin in 2013, Hong Kong in 2014, Los Angeles in 2017 and San José, Costa Rica in 2019. At the time, the Internet Society appointed a board of advisors to consider nominees in several categories, such as Pioneers, Global Connectors and Innovators. Video highlights from the acceptance speeches and brief biographies on each inductee are featured. (There were no inductions in 2015, 2016.) See interviews with dozens of all-star global Internet innovators.
ITU-Hosted WTPF/WSIS 2013, Geneva
The World Technology Policy Forum and World Summit on the Information Society were hosted by the United Nations May 13-17, 2013 in Geneva, Switzerland. These international forums brought together telecommunications ministers, government policy experts and business representatives for discussions of issues tied to the future of communications networks. Also on hand in as observers were technologists, academics, representatives of non-governmental organizations and members of civil society. Dozens of leaders shared their views about the future of the Internet in video interviews.
FutureWeb and WWW2010
Coverage of 22 separate events at FutureWeb, a conference created by Imagining the Internet to bring people together at the WWW2010 global gathering to discuss the challenges and opportunities looming in the future. More than 1,000 people – primarily the members of the World Wide Web Consortium, W3C, who continue to evolve the Web to meet new needs – met in Raleigh, NC, USA in April 2010 for these events. Among the speakers are Tim Berners-Lee, Vint Cerf, Danny Weitzner, danah boyd, Doc Searls, Carl Malamud, Paul Jones, Cathy Davidson, Andrew McLaughlin, Marc Rotenberg, James Hendler, Nigel Shadbolt, Lee Rainie and Chris DiBona.
OECD, Seoul, Korea, 2008
Dozens of video interviews with top global communications policy leaders were conducted by Imagining the Internet at the ministerial meeting of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) set to specifically focus on “The Future of the Internet Economy.” The events of the conference took place in Seoul, Korea, June 16-18, 2008. Among those interviewed were Ambassador David Gross, Hamadoun Touré, Gwen Hinze, Kevin Martin, Peter Kim, Joseph Alhadeff and Parminder Jeet Singh.
Metaverse Roadmap Summit 2006
An interdisciplinary group of about 40 futurists, technology architects, academics, journalists and entrepreneurs met at SRI International in 2006 at the Metaverse Roadmap Summit to discuss synthetic worlds, the geospatial Web, Net neutrality and much more. Imagining the Internet set up individual interviews with participants to probe the key issues and emerging advances they see in our future. Among them are Esther Dyson, Jamais Cascio, John Smart, Randy Farmer, Raph Koster, Robert Scoble, Mike Liebhold, David Smith and Sibley Verbeck.
Accelerating Change 2005
Two short films and 22 interviews were recorded at this international conference on Accelerating Change. The events were held at Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA, in September 2005. Interview participants classified themselves as research scientists, entrepreneurs or business leaders, authors or journalists, and technology developers or administrators. They shared their hopes and fears for the future in a series of interviews. This site includes the entire series of individual interviews and the short films that quickly sum up key points made by various participants. Among those interviewed are world-class futures thinkers Vernor Vinge, George Gilder, Douglas Engelbart, Patrick Lincoln, Thomas Malone and Alex Lightman. A hot topic of discussion at the event was the possibility for a “technological singularity.”