Anonymous responses:

This page holds full anonymous responses with no analysis to our 2018-19 research questions: Where will the internet and digital life be a half century from now? What changes do you expect in connected technology, what will evolve? Based on that expected evolution, how will individuals’ lives be affected by the change you anticipate may be taking place over the next 50 years? What are the best and worst changes of the past 50 years? What was the biggest surprise or shock?

Results released Oct. 28, 2019 – Fifty years ago, on Oct. 29, 1969, a team of UCLA graduate students led by professor Leonard Kleinrock connected computer-to-computer with a team at the Stanford Research Institute. It was the first host-to-host communication of ARPANET, the early packet-switching network that was the precursor to 2019’s multi-billion-host internet. What’s in store for the NEXT 50 years of digital life? To illuminate current attitudes about the likely future evolution of humans plus internet-facilitated technologies in the next few decades, Pew Research and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center conducted a large-scale canvassing of technology experts, scholars, corporate and public practitioners and other leaders, asking them to respond to the following prompt:

The Next 50 Years of Digital Life: Where will the internet and digital life be a half century from now? Please tell us how you think connected technology, platforms and applications will be integrated into people’s lives. You can tackle any dimension of this question that matters to you. You might consider focusing on questions like this: What changes do you expect to see in the digital world’s platform companies? What changes do you expect to see in the apps and features that will ride on the internet? How will digital tools be integrated into everyday life? What will be entirely new? What will evolve and be recognizable from today’s internet? What new rules, laws or innovations in its engineering over the intervening years will change the character of today’s internet? And, considering your expectations for the next 50 years, how will individuals’ lives be affected by the changes you foresee? Choose one:

• In the next 50 years, technological change will produce significant change that is mostly for the better for individuals’ lives.
• In the next 50 years, technological change will produce significant change that is mostly for the worse for individuals’ lives.
• In the next 50 years, technological change will not produce significant change in individuals’ lives.

More than 500 experts responded to some aspect of the queries; many did not respond to all.

About 72% said they expect or hope that there will be significant change that is mostly for the better.

About 25% said they expect or fear that there will be significant change that is mostly for the worse.

About 3% selected to respond that there will be no significant change.

Note: Many respondents wrote in their comments that they would have preferred to be able to choose to respond that there will be significant change for the better and for the worse.

Additionally, respondents were asked the following follow-up questions. The full set of respondents’ remarks that begin directly below this section are in answer to the primary set of queries that are listed above; if you’d like to jump past the hundreds of those lengthy responses in order to read respondents’ remarks to the following particular questions, please click on the links:

• What one thing has surprised or shocked you the most about the evolution and impact of the internet since 1969?
• Describe one major way people’s uses of the internet have changed things for the best in the past 50 years.
• Describe one major way people’s uses of the internet have changed things for the worse in the past 50 years.
• And find here a full report on responses to the question, “What will historians’ verdict be 50 years from now about the impact of the internet on people’s social, economic and political lives today?”

To read the full report on the Next 50 Years of Digital Life, click here:
https://www.elon.edu/u/imagining/surveys/x-2-internet-50th-2019/

To read the credited responses to the questions, click here:
https://www.elon.edu/u/imagining/surveys/x-2-internet-50th-2019/credit/

“Change will mostly be for the better”

Following, presented in random order, are the full responses by study participants who chose to remain anonymous and not take credit for their remarks. Most of these are the much-longer versions of expert responses that are contained in shorter form in the official survey report. This page includes many responses that were not in the official report.

In this section of responses, when given three choices, respondents answered that in the next 50 years technological change will produce significant change that is mostly for the better for individuals’ lives.

A professor of social simulation and director of a center for policy modeling based in the U.K. wrote, “Some things are more obvious, such as: a total integration of human inputs (perceptions) and outputs (actions) with the internet and especially the objects and tools around them. However other possibilities include: (a) that whole knowledge systems might be accessed (rather than bits) and combined on the fly (b) there may be much more competition alternative systems as part of the internet – a complex combination of different systems rather than one internet (c) cyber war might be so intense that the internet constitutes different defensive zones each with a lot of content but somewhat insulated from each other with heavy defensive algorithms.”

A well-known journalist, blog author and leading internet activist wrote, “The future of technology depends on our willingness to break up the digital monopolists and reinstate the antitrust measures that prevent predatory pricing, market-cornering and other anticompetitive actions. In particular, companies must not be able to convert their commercial preferences against ‘adversarial interoperability’ (when a competitor or toolsmith makes a tool that modifies their products and services to make them better for the users, without the service provider or manufacturer’s permission) into a legal right to invoke the state to punish competitors who engage in this conduct. The question should be ‘Under which circumstances will tech make peoples’ lives better?’ and ‘Under which will it make lives worse?’ Technology exists in a mesh of policy, economics and norms, and the outcome is an emergent property of all these factors. Limiting the question to ‘better/worse’ elides the most important factors.”

An Internet Hall of Fame member expert in network architecture wrote, “I anticipate that, on balance, innovations that make use of the internet will improve the lives of many people, more than the negative impact that will be associated with some aspects of our increasingly digital lives. Better healthcare, real-time language translation and a host of other capabilities that can improve lives.”

An ARPANET and internet pioneer, computer engineer and biotech company founder wrote, “Fifty years is such a long period that I believe it foolish to attempt to guess about technical progress. Amazing things will happen, but which ones is very hard to predict. Over this period, we may actually achieve human level AI performance, although I remain skeptical. Very likely interfaces between people and machines will advance to unguessed levels, likely with neural implants, perhaps ones engineered out of living cells, and relying on synthetic biology approaches. I doubt any specifics, but the world will be very different. I’m an optimist, difficult as it is to maintain that view in today’s political climate. We’ll be able to do more and better things.”

A professor of computer science expert in systems at a major U.S. technological university wrote, “The internet already changed many things, and we can expect more changes to come in the next 50 years. The internet changed our lives: We shop in new ways, we bank in new ways, we drive in new ways, we learn in new ways, we live in new ways. The internet changed our lives by augmenting our world, by introducing us to new information, new knowledge and new realities. By providing instantaneous access to the world, the internet amplified our power and desires. Through the internet, we can see and interact with someone, or something, at the end of Earth, and soon, in space. As a result, the world has become tighter, faster and smarter.  The major technological components, information technology (computing) and communications technology (networking), will continue to evolve by leaps and bounds. We can assume safely that we will continue to enjoy bigger computers, larger storage capacities, wider bandwidth and faster networking speeds. Granted, there may be different technological evolutionary paths, changing the relative costs of the technological components and thus favoring some applications temporarily. Overall, through the span of 50 years those component technology evolution differences would be blurred. As result, the world will become increasingly tighter, faster and smarter. It may not be considered a healthy change, but we can expect a decrease in the storage of factual knowledge in our brains. There is hardly any need for Jeopardy skills when all the answers are just a few clicks away. The ‘new smart’ will belong to those who can ask the right questions and combine the answers better than others. The ‘power of knowledge’ has been shifting to those who have high quality information, and the distribution of wealth may reflect (increasingly) both the distribution of political power and knowledge power. The continuous (and seemingly unstoppable) evolution of information and communication technologies will enable the evolution of knowledge, and the role that knowledge will play in future societies and economies. The distribution of knowledge will influence the distribution of power, and political power will certainly attempt to control the distribution of knowledge. On the one hand, the future technological changes will lead to positive societal changes, if the political power in control of knowledge is benevolent and progressive. On the other hand, if the political power is repressive (e.g., the Orwellian vision described in his book ‘1984’), then the technological changes will result in significant negative changes, possibly a dystopian society. In other words, technological changes are enablers that can be used for good or for evil. The question of whether they will better or will worsen an individual’s life is not a technological question, but a political one, of how technological advances will be used. My hope is that the political forces will evolve toward bettering individual lives.”

A distinguished professor of information technology and management at a major U.S. university and fellow at an MIT initiative responded, “I expect that there will be some form of implant-based brain augmentation by digital technology, and that those who choose to will be able to communicate with others just by thinking that they want to. I do believe there will be increased ability to monitor and control individuals, which will have mixed impacts on humans. Crime will become much less common as it will be inevitable that criminals will be caught. But I suspect that totalitarian regimes will also use these technologies to control their citizens, as China is already doing.”

An internet pioneer, company founder and president and 1970s manager of a AI center said, “I was one of the early internet builders. We had no idea where it would go. What became Google makes sense. Just build a huge catalog of data. Curating that is a delicate endeavor. Humans will disagree on that for eternity.”

A professor in a school of liberal arts at a major university based in India responded, “The Internet of Things will increase exponentially. There is a possibility that men will become lazy if they fail to grow differently skilled – physically lazy, mentally more active.”

A professor of sociology at a major U.S. university responded, “It seems likely that in 50 years there will be very few free spaces left for citizens to engage with one another without corporate or government sponsorship/surveillance. This will have implications for content and, I suspect, make it very difficult for individuals to avoid corporate advertising and government sponsored messaging. I also expect there will be big advances in efforts to directly connect us to the virtual world (e.g., via implantable technology). This will give some (read predominantly wealthy) individuals instant access to information. While I’m certainly not a fan of everything shared online, there is strength in diversity.”

A director of marketing for a major technology platform company commented, “I was an early user of ARPANET at Carnegie Mellon University and even then we were able to utilize internet technology to solve human health problems to make citizens’ lives better and improve their access to care and services to improve their health outcomes. The benefits of the internet in the health care industry have continued to improve access to care and services particularly for elderly, disabled or rural citizens. Digital tools will continue to be integrated into daily life to help the most vulnerable and isolated who need services, care and support.  With laws supporting these groups, benefits in these areas will continue and expand to include behavioral health and resources for this group and for others. In the area of behavioral health in particular, I believe digital tools will provide far-reaching benefits to citizens who need services but do not access them directly in person. Access to behavioral health will increase significantly in the next 50 years as a result of more enhanced and widely available digital tools made available to practitioners for delivering care to vulnerable populations, and by minimizing the stigma of accessing this type of care in person. It is a more affordable, personalized and continuous way of providing this type of care that is also more likely to attain adherence.”

A lead QA engineer at a technology group said, “Twenty years ago someone told me that in the future all of our applications and data would be online. I did not believe it… and here we are today. The advances in technology are based on continued availability of electricity that makes technology and connectivity possible. I have a feeling that while many advances are made, some in our society will want to separate themselves. Like in the 1950s the big thing was canned goods, instant meals, and now 50 years later many are going back to cooking from scratch. I do expect an increase in ‘Big Brother.’ I do hope that the more invasive, the more ways that we can protect ourselves become available. I guess it depends on who is in power politically and at the top of some of the corporations. I’m optimistic that good will prevail for the most part.”

A researcher and teacher of digital literacies and technical communication responded, “In the future I expect to have network interactions embedded or subcutaneous on humans. We will have more interactions that are done in networked environments rather than in person. We may not even have to speak to a person for several days. The work I’m doing in augmented reality tells me that people are okay with giving up certain rights in order to be networked and this leads me to think that they actually like this work.”

A digital accessibility consultant responded, “Augmented reality is likely to become part of the everyday experience. Transceivers in clothes or even under the skin will give people direct access to the internet all day every day wherever and whenever they find themselves. Thus, information will be available at all times and people will be able to control their environments through sending signals. It is unlikely that this will be done through thought alone for some time, but that is likely to come at some stage in the future. This is likely to lead to less interaction between people and certainly less personable interactions as people are likely to interact with information on the internet rather than each other. However, people with disabilities may gain somewhat as they will be able to gain access to information and services through the internet which they cannot do now because of the inaccessible nature of much of our current-day environments.”

An expert on converging technologies at for a defense institute wrote, “The internet 50 years from now will look nothing like it does today. Physical infrastructure will be entirely pervasive and wireless (perhaps non-electronic) and digital elements will be directly interfaced with human brains. And the minds of different individuals may be directly linked. This will be a new era for mankind, which is difficult to hypothesize about.”

A professor and director at a major U.S. university said, “The Internet of Things will result in more and more devices in people’s homes and lives being interconnected. While this will be touted as time-saving and labor-saving it will present additional challenges from distraction and reducing the quality of intra-personal relations to added security vulnerabilities.”

A member of the editorial board of the ACM Journal for Autonomous and Adaptive Systems commented, “I envision millions of devices, objects locally interacting with each other, learning from their activities, usages and users’ feedback and providing instant, on-demand services not pre-coded or pre-designed. These services are the result of collective interactions happening locally with no central servers. Ethics and privacy is granted by default. When a user’s request or need cannot be met, devices/objects provide themselves the missing software (self-coding) or request any missing hardware. Provided ethics, privacy and users are primary concerns along the development of advanced AI, I envision an AI that is at the service of individuals in their daily activities, to help and empower them be they young or elderly. Regarding democratic rights, I envision advanced services helping citizens and government co-designing rules and regulations.”

The principal of a communications consultancy who previously worked for decades at leading technology companies responded, “Voice technology is out in front and will continue to be integrated with tasks: driving/riding, app tasks, search. Mobile will continue to dominate how people access the internet, though we’ll move away from standalone apps into more integrated offerings. For the platforms: I believe Amazon and Google will still be with us in 50 years, Apple too. Not confident that Facebook will last in the form we know it today (reputational damage and migration to other better social services). Briefly, on the whole I’m a technology optimist. Overall, over time, there has been greater benefit to humanity because of technologies we use than not.”

An anonymous respondent commented, “The Internet of Things will create a seamless web among persons for tracking health issues. Mass customization will accelerate as barriers to entry fall. People will be richer, healthier and safer on the whole but will not feel that way because they compare themselves to their contemporaries.”

An expert in defense science and technology responded, “The rate of change seems to be accelerating, so 50 years from now is too long of a time horizon. I expect capabilities beyond our dreams.”

The director of a major global futures observatory said, “Artificial general intelligence and quantum computing available in a future version of the cloud connected to individual brain augmentation could make us augmented geniuses inventing our daily lives in the self-actualization economy as the conscious-technology civilization evolves.

A data analyst for a technology company said, “Assuming the government does not turn the internet into a closed system, the internet will be more pervasive in our lives than ever. Everything that can be done online will – from jobs to entertainment to social interactions, most will be done online. The biggest change will be the new generation of users who will never know a world without the internet. They’ll grow up knowing how best to take advantage of it and understand that at the other end of their connection is another person somewhere in the world rather than an anonymous entity they can be terrible too. This will be reinforced with the creation of interactive platforms that will not allow trolling and hate speech since everyone dealing with it now sees how destructive it is to not keep those intentions in check. Not sure if we’ll still have internet usernames but signing onto the internet will probably require a fingerprint or retinal scan rather than passwords. The devices we use will be smaller and will use a combination of augmented and virtual reality to interact with the world online and offline for business and for personal use. Unless policies preventing this are put into place, all of our activity will still be tracked for better or worse. For the better, first responders will be able to find accident victims or put on alert if the data coming in suggests that something like a fire or storm is going to be bad. For worse, everything people scan to see details online will be coupled with an ad to buy something in relation to it. Technology always has the ability to improve people’s lives. It’s how people use it and how we as a society define what is acceptable behavior that will color how much it improves our lives.”

An assistant professor of media studies at a major U.S. university commented, “An urgent problem is the predominance of personalized advertising over all other business models. So long as the political economy of the internet is shaped by surveillance and the extraction of personal data from users who have no recourse, any democratic potential of these new communication technologies will be squandered. I expect the internet to break into separate networks, governed by different laws and rooted in different material infrastructures. People may subscribe or participate or connect to multiple different networks and savvy users will be able to maintain separate identities. This is already underway thanks to the platform economy but it will take time for people in the U.S. to stop thinking about ‘the internet’ in the singular. In the next 50 years, I expect that changes in medicine, transportation, energy and food production will bring about improvements for most people. These improvements will be enjoyed disproportionately by people with wealth and privilege who live in major metropolitan areas. At a longer timescale, I am less optimistic about the benefits of today’s technological innovation. Unless leaders of industry and government make environmental sustainability and social justice their top priorities, we will make the planet uninhabitable for human beings.”

A senior researcher in a unit for technology and society foresight at a Middle Eastern university said, “Free internet access worldwide. This is regarded as a basic human right. Communication is perfectly secure, thanks to quantum technologies.”

The director of a foresight and strategy consultancy commented, “The internet will develop through the Internet of Things (IoT) and alternative networks will be developed through blockchain. Internet development will improve people’s lives.”

A professor of communications said, “Simple, mundane tasks will be taken care of by AI, allowing more time for creative thinking, arts, music and literature.”

An expert in algorithms and bias and assistant professor artificial intelligence at a major European university wrote, “The next 50 years? Very hard to predict. What we can expect is that the combination of ‘all things becoming digital,’ the Internet of Things (making the physical world more digital) and the fact that algorithms populate ‘the digital’ and are becoming increasingly more intelligent, pervasive and autonomous, will make ‘algorithms run the world’ (in any way thinkable). At some moment the question of who owns or controls the algorithms will become the prime question for humanity, and at the moment algorithms will become uncontrollable (by humans) we will face a whole lot of other questions. Whether that will happen in the next 50 years or earlier, or later, who knows? But, that there is this trend of algorithms replacing/controlling any interaction between humans and the world (and other humans) is undeniable and already happening: Facebook controls much of our social communication, Google manages our lives and information consumption, Twitter mediates our chit-chat, and with the rise of modern smartphones the control of visual information (e.g. Google Lens) is coming. And this is just the beginning. Algorithms will take more control over our lives (health, music preferences, job choices, satisfaction, etc.) and the world (markets, cities, deployment of resources and much more).”

A professor of computing sciences expert in AI based at a technological university in Mexico said, “Digital life today is very fragmented. We can do something on this device but not the other one, they are not compatible, and so on. In some years digital life will be fully integrated and operate in a seamless way. A seamless and fluid digital life will provide many services which today are hard to get, as for instance health monitoring, which will be done almost continuously.”

A postdoctoral associate at MIT said, “In my opinion, the Internet of Things will become as prevalent as the internet is today. Most physical objects will be connected and integrated with the digital net. This will create many opportunities for advancements and a great number of companies, apps and services will be created. However, this will also present fresh new security and privacy concerns that need to be addressed. Changes in digital life in the next 50 years will augment and enhance human capabilities, allowing humans to function much more efficiently. Certain biological limitations of humans will be removed, which will also make society more equitable.”

The co-founder of an information technology civil rights program wrote, “The internet will become as ubiquitous as electricity. That means sensors will be everywhere. Governments will engage in surveillance. But the same surveillance capabilities will allow you to get immediate help from 911, for example, with the operators knowing exactly the context of the call and the situation in progress. Moreover, currently 80% of 911 calls are prank calls. That number will go down to zero. There are other examples: If your car goes off the road into a cliff and you’re unconscious, the car will likely inform emergency responders automatically.”

A vice president for marketing and alliances at a technology business commented, “Internet will be invisible. Devices will automatically connect to internet and always on Individuals will have their own servers, and accessible from anywhere through internet.”

An assistant professor of information science at and member of the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence commented, “Connective symbiosis (human-human, machine-human, human-machine) will continue to thicken. Whatever network technology will be newly proposed, the networking trend shouldn’t change. As a society, we are flexible and we will find new jobs replacing these taken by machines. We will have more money, more time, less differences. Machine-supported solutions from legal to everyday life should continue to be beneficial for our well-being (longer lives, better health, satisfaction level).”

The director emeritus of a center for information technology and society based in the Silicon Valley area commented, “Robots will help in physical activities and cognitive activities. The help robots and AI will provide will be important for the elderly and disabled.”

An anonymous respondent said, “Technology, and the evolution of technology, hews closely to long-standing human hegemonies, priorities and identities. We will probably be more dependent than ever on networked technologies (such as autonomous cars and mapping), but we may also be increasingly wary of invasions of privacy and the way that the data we have been donating to large tech firms can be used in service of those aforementioned hegemonies. We will be even more instantaneously connected, and machines will make more decisions for us for our convenience, but I expect that we will also have a ‘reckoning moment’ in which we decide that our digital footprint is as important and protectable as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, for example.”

An internet sociologist said, “We will be much less aware of the internet because it will be mostly seamlessly woven into our everyday lives. Technology has the power to increase our connectivity and autonomy.”

A distinguished engineer working for one of the world’s largest computing hardware companies commented, “I expect it to be pervasive. Everything will be stored in cloud storage. Devices and appliances will be smart and connected to the net. Sensors will be used everywhere from parking lots to agricultural fields. It will help bring awareness and shed light on many things that were hidden from the public.”

An expert in knowledge, creativity and support systems said, “If current trends are followed, then it seems like more and more of our spheres, even our bodies, will be more and more integrated into the network. Individual and even social welfare will be better taken care of using AI + networks.”

A professor of mathematics and statistics commented, “In 2069, people will reminisce about today’s internet the way that we reminisce today about technology and art and culture 50 years ago. 1968 has received a great deal of coverage in media this year due to the tumultuous nature of events then. In 1969, we landed on the Moon. How large was a computer then? How hard was it to contact someone remotely then? While the technology will allow some to disseminate propaganda and negative views more effectively, people will be able to collaborate, learn, serve, heal and inspire more effectively.”

A lecturer in communications law based in Washington, D.C., wrote, “I imagine that the most important change will be in the user interface. I imagine that people will be seamlessly and continuously interconnected without having to use a device of any kind. I expect that the benefits of digital technology and connectivity will slowly filter down the economic ladder.”

A research scientist who works for Google said, “You want a 50-year prediction? I’m not sure what to say. GOOGLE is only 20 years old – would you have predicted that (and all of the side effects) back in 1968 (50 years ago)? Likewise, Amazon is 24 years out. My point is that predicting tech changes in the online/software space is really, really hard. Remember the rise (and fall, and rise?) of walled gardens? Did anyone predict the fall of AOL back when it was the biggest company around? A few things I can predict with confidence…  1) There will be new business models that we do not yet know about. Amazon was enabled by a host of technologies that didn’t exist in 1968. Play that same tune forward. 2) There will be a backlash against the Internet of things. Just sayin’. 3) Eventually, we’ll figure out how to do sufficiently high frame rate and precision registration so that VR/AR actually works. Both will be interesting; both have the possibility of being world-changers. (But I don’t know how that will happen yet. Probably, it will happen in a way we don’t yet understand.) 4) Bandwidth will eventually make it into the entire third world. THAT will change the online landscape as much as when the Arpanet became open for commercial purposes. (That is, dramatically.) 5) The social effects of connectivity (esp. third world) + bandwidth + radicalized pockets of folks will make the current internet battles seem tame. AI will be important, but it’s not going to be the big driver.

An anonymous respondent wrote, “The digital life will be pervasive everywhere and we will become part of it. Each technological revolution has improved quality of life in the past. Thus, it will do the same in the future.”

A principal architect for a Top Five technology company and longtime contributor to the IETF and Internet Architecture Board commented, “I believe that the executives of Facebook will be indicted and their trial will begin the process of reform. Once we get over the idea that tech executives can commit heinous crimes and hold them accountable, the tech world will begin the process of change.”

An anonymous respondent said, “A lot of what we thought 50 years ago that could happen, didn’t. Not sure that could we be better prognosticators. The future will be different; that is all we know about it. In general, technological advance has been for the better (we do live longer, healthier, with a higher standard of life and so on). It is likely that it could continue in general. There are a lot of problems for the future (and I do think the effects will be quite variable) but for a random person, it is likely that things will be better.”

A policy adviser for the U.S. banking system said, “This is totally unpredictable. Anyone who thinks he or she can predict accurately 50 years into the future is deluded. Generally, tech change historically has generally improved conditions of life. If history is any predictor of the future, that pattern will likely continue, mostly in developing countries however.”

A professor of information science wrote, “When I’m feeling dystopian, I see a world that looks a little too much like ‘Mr. Robot’ or ‘Person of Interest,’ with government or private organizations knowing too much about us and having too much control over us. I’d like to believe that interconnectivity could, instead, provide us with more ubiquitous access to information and with the ability to establish connections and deliver services across space and time. I’m never too sure which I think is more likely. I hope that increases in access to information and services will enable a fairer distribution of goods and one that allows those with fewer resources to achieve success in their endeavors.”

A representative for a Middle Eastern telecommunication directorate wrote, “As far as the technological history is concerned, there has been no single case that the advance of technology and innovation has worsened the lives of individuals. This is similarly valid for AI.”

A professor emeritus expert on technology’s impacts on individuals’ well-being wrote, “Sadly I think we will find ourselves spending nearly all of our time immersed in internet-based activities. We are already spending, on the average, more than five hours a day using our smartphones and by that time smartphones will be replaced by smart devices, implants, etc. Relationships will suffer, as will our feelings of freedom. I already see the beginnings of an increased obsession to what is contained in the little box we carry with us 24/7/365 as opposed to the world that is right in front of us. It is Sherry Turkle’s dichotomy of SL (online life, or a ‘second life’) vs. RL (real life). SL appears to be winning already, and we are talking about what will happen in 50 years. It is happening now.”

An anonymous respondent wrote, “Applications will continue to become more pervasive but we can expect significant disruptions due to system failures, gaps in AI abilities and security breaches. Legal issues involving liability could develop significant customer resistance. Routine issues will become easier to handle, particularly in the area of transactions. Complex tasks, such as vehicle automation, may be stunningly difficult to manage. Intellectual property ownership of unique solutions may make some solutions prohibitively expensive, as has happened with pharmaceutical suppliers holding monopolies.”

A digital and interactive strategy manager commented, “Connected technology can allow greater learning opportunities if individuals may be in two separate places. With enhancements to video calls and conferencing, it will be easier to grasp difficult concepts. Again, a strong set of ethics must be adhered to. AI can help create efficiencies through new green industries. New training of these technologies may be needed and could aid in job growth.”

A technology company founder and CEO said, “Evolve.”

An anonymous respondent wrote, “More of the same, i.e., more storage, faster speed, higher reliability, more ubiquitousness, etc. People will be able to access information more easily and to act on it when most convenient to them. I know somebody who has been able to go and work down south for three months each winter for the last 25 years. It is unusual. Something like this will be normal 50 years from now.”

An anonymous respondent said, “I have absolutely no idea. And I imagine most predictions would look silly. How many predictions from 1969 about what the future of connected technology will look like seem on the mark? Technology may change, but human beings and societies change much more slowly. Connected technology, etc., will be adopted where it fits into what people want (whether or not meeting those wants are good for society.). Technology will change how we live on a moment-to-moment basis – like mobile technology and the internet have already done. But, people will still have the same root desires and needs – food, clothing, shelter, love/connection, desires for power/recognition/status. I remember watching ‘Star Trek’ reruns (the original series) as a kid thinking that the communicator was the most fanciful and farfetched device. Yet, we now have that with mobile phones. It’s changed how we live on the surface but hasn’t profoundly changed humanity. I’m generally bad at predictions, so I honestly don’t know.”

A professional working on the setting of Web standards wrote, “Looking ahead 50 years, I expect that AI will either be more evenly and equitably integrated throughout societies, or that there will have been AI-driven disasters that jeopardize human and other animal life, or may have already destroyed life. On the more positive side, and focusing on medical research, I would expect AI-driven research and simulation of artificial life including cognition would have provided the tools to cure most disease, as well as to advance human capabilities through bionic augmentation. On the negative side, I would expect that AI combined with rapidly increasing capabilities of bioengineering, and with persistent sociopathological tendencies of a small minority of the population, could have led to uncontained AI-driven cyberwarfare or biological devastation. A key determining factor differentiating these two futures might be the magnitude of social investment in a robust ethical framework for AI applications, and continued emphasis on development of a just society, with social safety nets, to help mitigate the risks of development of sociopathic behaviors that would be especially dangerous with easy access to AI.”

A top research director and technical fellow at a major global technology company said, “I believe that networked computing will be a deeper part of society in all ways and the fruits will be largely positive. Rich telepresence with deeper ‘situatedness’ will be commonplace. This will lead to opportunities and platforms for shared experiences, such as new forms of networked education and health care delivery. With deep connection, there will concerns about privacy and political abuses and these will need to be addressed with advances in technology –and with innovation with policy and laws.”

An anonymous respondent wrote, “In 50 years, the internet and all it contains will be completely unrecognizable from that of today. Hardware and applications will work seamlessly into people’s lives. I believe screens will become a thing of the past replaced with projections and or holograms. Smartphones and computers will be reduced to perhaps earpieces or eyewear, which will be voice controlled. Virtual reality will also play a part in this change allowing people to escape day-to-day demands via video games or virtual worlds. It returns to the question of how will people emotionally adapt to this new technology? I am a strong believer in the fundamental social needs of human beings. If new AI isolates, people will be bad. If it better connects people in meaningful ways, then that will be a plus. Certainly, all new advances will be made to improve upon people’s lives both professionally and personally.”

An anonymous respondent said, “It is my hope that platforms/ giants like Facebook, Google and Apple take more responsibility for their intrusion into our lives.”

An anonymous respondent commented, “I think connections between people are going to change. I think people will work from home more, having virtual meetings that are presented in 3D. I think this will produce a general depression among people having a lack of connection to others. In general, people will thrive; they won’t have to spend time shopping, commuting and doing menial tasks. But I think we are going to lose our connection to each other.”

A director of e-business research at a large data-management firm said, “Access to technology will create new unbridgeable gaps and more deeply stratify global communities unless platform providers ensure universal access. Chips embedded in humans will replace all external devices. Progress will need to be made on defining the rights of robots, what is privacy and universal income.”

An anonymous respondent who worked for a pioneering internet company commented, “Wordless solutions for the questions we type or speak today offer lots of opportunity. One random example: Can my device please tell me what species of mosquito just bit me and whether it carries Zika? Do I need an implanted device for that? Problems will be solved. However, an increasingly divided society will see many benefits and services accrue to the more affluent.”

A post-doctoral fellow studying data and society said, “In the next 50 years, life in most countries will be digitalized. With the internet and speed of computing power, communication and transactions will be done quickly. I think ethics will become an important topic in innovations. In the next 50 years, it is not about if AI can accomplish a task but ‘should’ it be allowed to accomplish a task. Digital tools and services will be much cheaper for most people.”

A well-known writer and editor who documented the early boom of the internet in the 1990s wrote, “We will take omniscience over the state of the world for granted because we will be connected to everything, always. We are therefore all the more likely to be distracted from asking questions that really matter. On balance, greater knowledge leads to greater happiness – though there is a lot of distraction to get through along the way.”

A senior strategist in regulatory systems and economics for a top global telecommunications firm wrote, “The network will be the backbone of civilisation. Everything connected, everything digital. Security will remain a major concern of course as the whole system becomes ever more complex and also increasingly vulnerable. Huge advances in health care will make everyone better off as compared to today.”

An anonymous respondent commented, “Social media will be even more pervasive, with people playing a key role in the system, not only as users but also as info providers. Education will be transformed with more virtual learners of all ages than traditional. Virtual reality will transform entertainment. Work, especially information-related work, will be streamlined and done at the speed of thought (data scientists will need to transition to AI stewards). Departments of Governance will be formed in governance to manage system threats, which will be more widespread. Transportation will be improved with all vehicles connected to maximize safety and throughput.”

An anonymous respondent wrote, “Technology has generally increased human life expectancies, standard of living, etc. I expect this to be the case again.”

An anonymous respondent said, “Everything automated. Automated procedures eliminate human errors.”

An anonymous respondent wrote, “Watch Woody Allen’s movie ‘Sleeper’ or Michael Crichton’s movie ‘Runaway.’”

An anonymous respondent said, “There will be more voice-driven applications with voice recognition software making key entry devices less essential. People will need multiple devices to have backup for one that does not work or is lost. Market forces will facilitate changes for the better overall.”

An anonymous respondent wrote, “The internet will be more and more integrated in our daily lives. However, I see a problem developing. I think the ability to connect to people all around the world is actually splitting us into smaller groups, not uniting us together.”

An anonymous respondent said, “Most likely the internet of today will feel like old phones. It is likely that new paradigms will evolve to support the new AR/VR and immersive experiences of the next 50 years and the development of quantum computing should allow major improvements to the way the internet core functions work. There is already work on future internet and this will only increase. And with the development of more and more connected objects and the use of AI both in the object and in data centers will generate multiple opportunities for an immersive lifestyle with those objects not only being autonomous but also supply the ‘how to’ in order to use them fully automatically. More connected objects and connected experiences will allow to get over the digital divide and allow everyone to profit from the digital lifestyle. At the same time advances in green tech will also allow the connectivity not to be made at the expense of the environment.”

An anonymous respondent said, “It is impossible to predict the future so far away because of the probability of technological singularity. So far all the trends lead to it; it is hard to imagine a future where it does not happen.”

An anonymous respondent wrote, “The changes to digital life in the next 50 years will enable enhanced introspection into what it means to be an individual as well as emphasis on personal responsibility when interacting with an almost fully connected digital world. Digital life will be more oriented toward personal monitoring of health and well-being than today. People will use this information to try and stave off genetic predilections for diseases and mental illnesses. However, the motivation for doing so depends on whether or not digital privacy and health care rights are enhanced or eroded in the coming decades. People will be more conscious of privacy concerns and engage in a more calculated public/private divided digital life. The world will become more digitally globalized as language barriers, political barriers and geographic distances are overcome by algorithms and augmented reality. This may be especially helpful in light of the disruption of hundreds of millions of lives due to climate change. This will also largely depend on the balance of power between (democratic) governmental entities and private companies. Powers seeking to reign in purposeful misinformation campaigns may run afoul of censorship allegations regardless of whether these were intended or not. Digital life will also be facilitated by some kind of brain-machine interface. This will lead to apps and features will be more accessible for those requiring physical or cognitive assistance.”

An anonymous respondent commented, “Humans will have embedded chips that will manage their health and track their locations. I think all ‘things’ will be connected. I think much/most will be voice activated and voices will be cataloged (as with faces, DNA). I think there will be lots of CRISPR interventions. I don’t think laws will keep up with the changes. I think there will be less writing and reading, more shorthand FYI, more voice and speech, likely voice effectiveness training… And this system, despite redundancies, is fragile. There will be hacks and outages, local and spreading to global, analogous to hurricanes and tornadoes. *If* we are all still here, not washed away by rising oceans or shriveled by increasing heat or starved by decimation of food variety. There will be more homogeneity, more culling, more conformity. Easier to govern and manage – is that better?”

An anonymous respondent wrote, “I imagine that in 50 years, every aspect of human life would be connected to everything else. Not only will your alarm clock be connected to your toaster, which is already happening with the advent of the Internet of Things, but your report card would also be connected to, say, a restaurant’s app which will make reservations for you when you get good grades. It seems that the internet is progressing toward having a few giant companies controlling most of the aspects of the internet. I expect this to continue because 1) It would be hard for a new company to compete with these existing ones because of a lack of resources and 2) If company X is providing most of the appliances in your household, you would want the new appliances you buy to be able to connect to them. In that sense, they would function like social media where popularity would drive success. In order to integrate all these aspects, the cell phone, or a version of the cell phone, will function as the hub of these apps. An AI assistant like Cortana, Alexa, Siri, etc., would take over the entire interfacing with these apps. I think that these aspects might still remain in an evolved form 50 years from now. I expect the face of computer and internet security to completely change, especially when quantum computing becomes a reality. We will have to fend off different types of security threats – for example, people hacking into prosthetic organs of humans or household appliances like toilets to flood the house. These new threats and security measures would change a significant portion of how we interact with the internet. For personal identification, biometrics would go beyond fingerprint and face recognition, to DNA recognition and possibly other techniques not invented yet. I think that social media would become even bigger, even integrating with augmented or virtual reality, where people can meet in AR and participate in activities that are currently impossible. While people will certainly become more dependent on AI, I look at it as more of a symbiotic relationship. In terms of intelligence, AI will help humans learn faster, with the help of new learning techniques and maybe even hardware. Because AI and technology will improve comfort and ease of living, individuals might be more geared toward artistic pursuits of different kinds. People would, in general, have more friends than they have now, because of the reduction of physical barriers, yet able to have more privacy. AI would also change the way that family members interact with each other, helping kids think their parents are with them, even when they aren’t.”

A policy director associated with the European Commission wrote, “Industrial, educational, medical, efficiency and clean energy and climate improvements that will make life better should all be results of AI technical innovations and applications – greater attention to personal data, privacy and integrity of individuals will be important. Millions of people in the world still do not have access to clean water, education, clean energy, fast and cheap communication and the health and welfare benefits that are associated with that (not to mention economic growth and job potential).”

An anonymous respondent commented, “The current Internet Protocol (IP) which serves as the networking foundation will change from an address-based routing protocol to a more general information-centric architecture with improved capabilities for content, context and mobility. Security and privacy will be addressed more substantively in the emerging architecture. The current internet business model based on peering and service level agreements (SLAs) will retain the current distributed architecture but will evolve to accommodate new in-network computing services. Finally, today’s model of large centralized clouds will likely migrate to an edge cloud model in which computing is more spread out and located close to the user. There is no question that advances in communication and computing will lead to a better life for most of the world, including those in less developed countries. Access to information and computing is central to participation in the information economy and I expect that more than half of the world’s population will be connected to the internet over the next 50 years. This trend will raise life quality and GNP in all parts of the world as the relative value of information vs. physical objects continues to increase. Of course, there is risk of increasing inequality due to concentration of wealth with mega companies and venture funding groups, but this can and likely will be offset by political structures necessary to achieve a better balance.”

“Change will mostly be for the worse”

In this section of responses, when given three choices, respondents answered that in the next 50 years technological change will produce significant change that is mostly for the worse for individuals’ lives.

One of the world’s foremost experts in the sociology of human-technology interaction said, “I fear not only an integration but surveillance, so that there is a chill on political and social expression. Already you see the start of this kind of regime in China. Social control in exchange for convenience is what I mostly fear.”

An infrastructure engineer for a leading social network company commented, “In the next 50 years, digital life will be a mixed bag. The push to monetize every aspect of digital life will continue, potentially causing large disruptions in the way we live. Not all these disruptions will be for the positive, particularly in the areas of human dignity and worth. As humans increasingly rely on social networks to make decisions, they will find themselves unable to resist the ‘mob of the moment,’ which will cause political and social problems far beyond our current ability to manage. These problems may well be met with attempts to ‘regulate’ expression to prevent mob actions from occurring, which could, in turn, lead to less free societies – the opposite of what was intended in the invention and fostering of these technologies. The law of unintended consequences is likely to show itself in many other aspects of our lives, from sexuality to social order. We are building highly complex systems for one purpose, and failing to realize that complex systems, and their social offshoots, have unintended consequences far larger than anything we can imagine. The backlash to these movements, once the unintended consequences set in, are far greater than imagined, as well. The initial goals are often mixed, causing both a gain and loss in human dignity; the backlash is often mixed, as well. Whether dignity ratchets up or down is an open question at this point, but right now we are seeing human dignity ratcheted down, with human life being devalued en masse. The problem of ‘content wants to be free’ will need to be resolved, as well; if content is free, then the human effort put into creating that content is useless. This would reverse the trend of thinking being more important than doing, and virtual products being more valuable than physical ones. Until the worth of human effort can be balanced against the ability to move and copy information freely, the problem of paying people to create will remain. Looking at current trends, it seems human life is being made worse by technology, and this trend will continue. The primary problem right now is the push toward escaping the bounds of reality, which we somehow think will add to human freedom and dignity. The ultimate reality will be far different, as we are escaping into a narrow room that has far tighter bounds in our quest for freedom. It is like escaping what we perceive to be a prison camp only to find ourselves in a desert where life cannot be sustained, but we have conditioned ourselves to self-hate our natural condition. In large part, this is not a problem with the technology itself, but rather our approach to our humanness, and our rejection of our humanness, on all fronts. Because of our long stretch of human accomplishment, we think we can stop being ourselves. This escape from ourselves in order to ‘be ourselves’ will lead to a place where we are reduced to animals. This will not be freedom.”

A professor emeritus at a major U.S. university’s school of information responded, “I’m unable to reflect on these questions about the future of AI separate from the context and trends in global economics, governance and politics. I remain hopeful, yet I am pessimistic. The U.S. form of capitalism has ‘won;’ variations of it have been adopted in virtually all nation-states. It has yielded extraordinary technical innovation and economic development, progress in health care and medicine and overall improvements in living standards. Yet the benefits of this economic infrastructure are unequally distributed among the global population, and currently this benefit inequality seems destined to widen. Without a revolution or upheaval in values and structures, we can posit that AI becomes increasingly embedded in existing corporate/government organizations. With this evolutionary movement, the emergent structures can continue to become more centralized. The increased centralization of power is likely to be manifest as the larger platforms (corporate or government, the boundary may become more porous or blurred) exercise their economic power with greater control of individual choice and behavior. The control might be exerted either through a ‘Big Brother’ model, with more personal intervention at the highest level or a more Kafkaesque model, with AI aiding governance systems to make decisions using complex and hidden algorithms whose origins and evolutionary paths are not evident and can’t be dissected and understood. I selected that things will be worse. Today’s perspective of ‘better’ is associated with a) better health, b) better living conditions and c) greater individual freedom. My response was based on (an expected) decrease of individual freedom.”

A senior data analyst and systems specialist expert in complex networks responded, “This is an area where I think a few science fiction writers, such as John Brunner, have seen the future. The future version of the internet will be more ubiquitous and more seamless (building on the Internet of Things), but it will also be much less secure, with people suffering damage from various kinds of hacking on a daily basis. However, this lack of security will gradually become the ‘new normal,’ and the outrage will fade. There will in fact be a mixture of positive and detrimental effects over the next 50 years. However, the positive effects will largely apply to businesses, which will save money, and the detrimental effects will largely apply to individuals, including increased unemployment, reduced privacy and greater social isolation.”

A professor of computing and digital media expert in in artificial intelligence and social computing said, “In 50 years we will have at least one large-scale internet-enabled attack against an entire country, lasting more than five days: power grids, banking, transportation, utilities. People will die. This will (at last) trigger a complete rethinking of the internet protocols, and they will be redesigned with security by design. It will become illegal to use non-conforming devices. The trends around democratic governance of technology are not encouraging. The big players are U.S.-based and the U.S. is in an anti-regulation stance that seems fairly durable. Therefore, I expect computing technologies to evolve in ways that benefit corporate interests, with little possibility of meaningful public response. As such systems take in more data and make bigger decisions, people will be increasingly subject to the systems’ unaccountable decisions and non-auditable surveillance practices. Soshanna Zuboff’s term ‘surveillance capitalism’ describes this state of affairs.”

An associate professor of digital studies at a major U.S. university wrote, “I can’t even guess what the world will look like in two years, let alone 50. The best predictions from 50 years ago were by deep critics like Lewis Mumford, who was virtually 100% right about most things, and those predictions have almost been forgotten.”

An internet pioneer wrote, “If history is a guide, the 10 most valuable companies in the world will be different than they are today. These new players will have succeeded in re-centralizing something that earlier generations had de-centralized. Perhaps we return to desktop/mobile phone single-vendor dominance. Combined with human-computer interfaces, the prospect of single-vendor control over the operating system of a substantial portion of your brain is rather frightening. As to the core internet itself – I suspect it won’t actually change a lot. Just like railroads or highways, infrastructure sees short periods of time of great innovation, and then a long plateau. I don’t think the internet has seen much change in the last 10 years (aside from being bigger, colder, harsher and filled with more bad actors), so I suspect that plateau will continue more or less for another 50. It’s awfully hard to be an optimist these days about the trend lines. Even today, human psychology has to evolve to deal with the rise of interconnectedness we see, let alone what greater bandwidth would bring.”

An associate professor of computer science at a U.S. university commented, “As power consumption per unit of computation decreases, wearables will become the primary computing platform for most people. But that is relatively near-term. Fifty years is too far out to project much. I don’t see any real value in this question. Humans have adapted poorly to life in a technological society. Think of obesity, time wasted on low quality entertainments, addictions to a whole range of drugs and more. As the noise in the information stream increases, so does the difficulty for the average person to extract a cohesive life pattern and avoid the land mines of dangerous or unhealthy behaviors. Genetics, cultural change, social and legal structures do not change exponentially, but aggregate knowledge does. This mismatch is a crucial realization. As Reginald Bretnor noted in ‘Decisive Warfare,’ kill ratios for weapons not only increase, but so does their ability to be wielded by the individual. So it is with most things in a technologically advanced society. But have people cultivated the requisite wisdom to use what is available to better themselves? Looking at American society, I would generally conclude not.”

An associate professor of sociology at a major university in Japan responded, “The digital divide will become a more serious problem. Most tech companies will make apps and digital tools for people who easily utilize internet and digital devices and also for English users. This creates an illusion of ubiquitous internet, but the infrastructure will tend to be made for only those people. This could create huge social problems.”

An assistant professor of social justice at a U.S. university wrote, “People will become helpless and rely on tech for almost everything. Tech will take over almost all routine activities, but this will not empower most. Rather, tech will serve as a prison.”

A professor expert in American studies said, “In 50 years I do expect technology to be integrated further into our bodies: under our skin and into our minds. We will rely more heavily on digital technology that is solar powered and using other non-fossil fuel energies, as those will be largely exhausted and the purview of the very wealthy. Unless we soon make policies to regulate data collection, privacy and use as well as the policies and practices laden into algorithms (such as racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia and so on), and also fix the new, grossly unfair tax laws that favor the wealthy in the U.S., I fear we may wind up with a very small elite controlling most of the population. I hold out hope for other countries to lead the way or for a liberal rise to actual liberation in the U.S. on such policies. I have such fear and agitation around the developments around technology – although those all have to do with policy and capitalism rather than the tech itself. At the same time, I was just told I will need a new knee, but I’m merely 40. Doctors, friends who also need new knees, PTs and so on all explain to me that in 10 years, a new knee will last 25 years instead of 10 or 15 as they do now. I think of my one day, longer-lasting knee, and I feel a great deal of excitement about what possibilities we will have as cyborgs, but I also think of who will be able to have access to such technology and care and I feel it is, again, very limited. Digital tech will be used to liberate as much as control and condemn us in our future, particularly if we rely on the capitalist narrative that tech alone will liberate us, for we will fail to see our own impact and role in our lives.”

A CEO and telecommunications expert wrote, “The status of the internet in 50 years will vary from country to country. Millions of people will not yet be connected. And in countries that are fully connected, the next issue that will be disturbing each individual is a lack of contact with live nature… Today not all countries in the world are seeing the need of internet but maybe in 50 years’ time, they will finally realise and reap the benefits. Digital life will divide lives (rich and poor). Rich people will interact with only rich people. Digital life for some people will also create artificial living and happiness. Digital life will cause no more human-to-human interactions but human machine-to-machine. Digital life creates no more human senses.”

A professor emeritus at a major U.S. university’s school of information responded, “I’m unable to reflect on these questions about the future of AI separate from the context and trends in global economics, governance and politics. I remain hopeful, yet I am pessimistic. The U.S. form of capitalism has ‘won;’ variations of it have been adopted in virtually all nation-states. It has yielded extraordinary technical innovation and economic development, progress in health care and medicine and overall improvements in living standards. Yet the benefits of this economic infrastructure are unequally distributed among the global population, and currently this benefit inequality seems destined to widen. Without a revolution or upheaval in values and structures, we can posit that AI becomes increasingly embedded in existing corporate/government organizations. With this evolutionary movement, the emergent structures can continue to become more centralized. The increased centralization of power is likely to be manifest as the larger platforms (corporate or government, the boundary may become more porous or blurred) exercise their economic power with greater control of individual choice and behavior. The control might be exerted either through a ‘Big Brother’ model, with more personal intervention at the highest level or a more Kafkaesque model, with AI aiding governance systems to make decisions using complex and hidden algorithms whose origins and evolutionary paths are not evident and can’t be dissected and understood. I selected that things will be worse. Today’s perspective of ‘better’ is associated with a) better health, b) better living conditions and c) greater individual freedom. My response was based on (an expected) decrease of individual freedom.”

A law professor based at a U.S. university said, “The book ‘Re-Engineering Humanity’ provides a reasonable description of the slippery, sloped path we’re on and where we seem likely to be heading. The authors’ big concern is that humans will outsource so much of what matters about being human to supposedly smart technical systems that the humans will be little more than satiated automatons.”

A professor based in Mexico responded, “I suspect that unless major economic and social changes arise, the future is quite dim for the internet. It is currently under siege from large multinational corporations and right-wing governments attempting to limit freedoms and access to the internet. Current trends point to a much more restrictive medium, driven mostly by profits instead of creativity. This is an important challenge for researchers and engineers, that need to push technologies forward while also helping maintain the open internet that we mostly have today. There are also large-scale privacy concerns – the internet could be turned, quite easily, into a system for surveillance and propaganda. This must be avoided. Nonetheless, AI and machine learning technologies do bring a lot of potential for the average user and social groups, offering the possibility of easily leveraging these tools to help social movements and low-income nations solve pressing problems that will arise. I am worried that the digital ecosystems being developed today will limit people’s access to information, increase surveillance and propaganda, and push toward limiting social interactions and organization, particularly if current policy trends continue.”

A university fellow expert in digital economic policy commented, “Digital life will increase the trend toward autocratic management of the public sphere, emphasizing the lack of alternatives in the media due to corporative concentration.”

A professor of artificial intelligence and cognitive engineering said, “People will realize that they have lost freedom to companies. Alternative networks will emerge. There is a higher density of comstats and enough alternative frequencies. Dictatorships will try the same. People will also realize that it is not AI per se that is dangerous, but the human profit seekers behind AI tools and agents. There will be a loss of freedom and anything you or your relatives did or said can be used against you. It cannot be predicted on what criterion you will be singled out for termination, purportedly to ‘save the planet.’ It is highly likely that individuals get a carbon footprint quota. Life will be terminated when you have reached it and evidence for quota excess is collected via internet and the Internet of Things, where your behavior is monitored.”

A director for an internet registry responded, “There will be ongoing radical development by which biology, at physical and molecular/genetic scales, will become integrated with digital technology. We can assume that this will be pervasive throughout society, but both the applications and the costs and conditions under which they may be accessed, are unpredictable. The greatest determining factor in the overall result will be political rather than technological, with a range of outcomes between utopian and utterly dystopian. The outcome of 50 years of technological change relies on political factors, which are impossible to predict at this time. My answer to this question is consciously pessimistic, because the global political environment is currently highly averse to protection of individual rights, and therefore highly conducive to a dystopian future.”

The chief marketing officer for a technology-based company said, “The Internet of Things and AI will be an interconnected theme for the next decades. They will exponentially help to automate and organize society and the world at large with enhancing existing infrastructure and innovating new ones. At the same time, security and privacy will become a very important and critical subject of discussion as individuals and societies at large realize that the benefits come at a severe cost to these freedoms. Then again, the EU is pushing and shaping this agenda with its latest effort for protecting from these technologies via GDPR. We will see how all of these play out. At the moment key technology platforms do seem to realize the power and the responsibility. EU’s Guy and U.S.’s Zuckerberg nailed this exact subject in their recent interaction. But the biggest problem and threat for humanity emanates from our historical insecurity and craving for power. As infrastructure is becoming more dependent on AI and the Internet of Things, ‘weapons of mass distraction’ will become more focused. I am all-in for innovation and improving the standard of living for all humanity. However, in all my previous answers I have downplayed the pros and made several arguments against future technologies (AI, Internet of Things, social media, etc.). I took this angle because we need to become more vigilant about our fascination with technology and self-indulgence. Yes, it does paint a darker picture and forces a more cautious approach, but some of us are required to do this for the sake of a more balanced and fair future for all humanity. I’m one of the lucky ones, born in Europe with a very high standard of living. Same goes for the people behind this research. Let’s be vigilant of our actions and how we shape the future. We have been in a constant battle with nature and resources for the past 100 years. In historical terms it was a momentous leap forward in education, connectivity, traveling, efficiency, etc. But, at the same time, we are all committing an environmental suicide and behave like there is no tomorrow – only the instant pleasure of technology. There will not be a tomorrow if we continue to ignore the cause and effect of our unipolar obsession with technology and self-indulgence.”

An online communities researcher said, “We will continue to have problems of community and identity online, where malicious actors quite easily pose as others and manipulate people’s opinions. Global climate change will continue unabated as long as ignorance and capitalists are allowed to triumph over humanity.”

A program director for technology at a U.S. Ivy League school said, “Adoption of technology will be uneven, and the rich will get richer. Surveillance technology will keep the masses from organizing for social and political movements. The rich will get richer.”

A professor of electronic engineering and innovation studies who is based in Europe commented, “The majority of activities related to information management will be transferred to ‘the cloud.’ A radical change will occur in the way the people see human-machine and human-human interactions. Humans will be entirely dependent on information systems (just like our generation got used to be dependent on electricity or transport systems). Also, I expect radical innovations in neural connection (i.e., human brains integrated with computers), but the effects of this remain, to me, highly unpredictable. The problem is not technology but, rather, the human capability to have some control on it. There is substantially no discussion about what technology can bring about, how we can use these, and what effects we would like to have. The people are increasingly inexpert and are only passive observers of changes that they perceive only when they are affected by them. Public discussion (and, even less, democratic discussion) on all this is substantially absent in ‘democratic countries’ – not to mention those that are not democratic at all.”

An anonymous respondent based in Turkey wrote, “There will be a cashless society. E-shopping will dominate people’s lives. The Internet of Things will become a part of us – embedded, for instance, in clothes, thermoses, heating systems, etc. However, due to the lack of transparency and understanding of algorithmic systems and their owners, humans’ individual autonomy and agency is going to decrease.”

An anonymous respondent commented, “I don’t think we can predict how inter-communication will change. It will probably be ubiquitous and continual. Predicting everyone staring down at their smartphones 50 years ago would have been impossible to imagine. We’ve shrunk the size and increased the computing power in everyone’s pockets and, short of running into the hard limits of physics, exponential change will always continue for the class of society that can afford to benefit from it.”

An anonymous information administration manager responded, “The need to safeguard systems and data may well turn out to be a, if not the, driving force in how the internet evolves over the next 50 years. I am loath to predict how this will play out in practical terms but given the overall drift in American and western societies am not particularly hopeful at this time. On a different topic it remains to be seen what the long-term effect of ‘always-on’ access to the internet will be on the post-millennial generation. To what extent will this change social relations between colleagues, friends and family members? I don’t think we will have answer to that question until today’s late teens (birth years starting in 1997 or 1998), who look quite different from millennials (1981 to about 1996 or 1997) are well into their 30s.”

An anonymous respondent wrote, “Over a 50-year timeline human-level AI is significantly more likely than over a 12-year one. The difficulty of getting human-aligned goals correct in the first AI to exceed its programmers’ ability to outsmart it is enough to outweigh both the excellent worlds where AI is a success and the typical worlds where humans are still the smartest entities on the planet.”

A British-American computer scientist commented, “I don’t think society in a recognizable form will survive climate change, increasing inequality and the centralization of essential systems to 2069. Increasing centralization of essential systems will reduce society’s resilience in the face of these problems, leading to societal collapse.”

A member of the Internet Hall of Fame said, “In 1970, today’s internet could not have been predicted. The election of a black president could not have been predicted 50 years before. All one can do is linearly extrapolate from the present. For example, Edward Bellamy’s classic ‘Looking Backward’ did not come close to predicting the technologies of 50 years later. He just extrapolated from his present. There are occasional geniuses such as Jules Verne, but such are very, very sparse. One easy thing to predict is that 50 years from now the world will be coping with massively changed weather. [I believe things will be worse in future because I expect] less privacy, less democracy and less individual self-esteem.”

The founder of a technology research firm wrote, “I always recommend ‘He, She, It’ by Marge Piercy for an understanding of where the internet could go, and she wrote it before the internet existed. I think cars won’t be the same and fully expect that we won’t be riding individual cars in 50 years. If we are still functioning as a planet and all this has to be contextualized within dramatic climate change as well as population increase and the resulting migrations flows, with their concomitant political disruptions. Digital life will leave more people behind as it is created for young people by young people, and in an aging planet, this will not serve us well.”

A professor of psychology for a human-computer interaction institute commented, “Humans have benefited from instant availability of information, but at cost to social engagement and intellectual flexibility. I fear this will only increase in impact. It will be more and more difficult to determine the validity of sources of information, and people will have weaker tools to make judgments for themselves. Perhaps I am discouraged by recent political events, but to me they are a harbinger of more to come. We could look to the past: The National Socialists knew all about controlling information.”

A strategy consultant wrote, “The internet will be a mandatory second brain, an essential tool for access to your identity and the benefits of global citizenship. Universities will go completely virtual and location-less, as will entertainment. Criminal transgressions and infractions will be measured both in prison and reduced online access. Opinion of the masses will matter more than facts and reflect on online identity. People will lose individuality and cultures will die, merged into one Eurocentric mass with threats to trade, aid and international access. Minorities will be corralled and shamed online into silence and acceptance as online speech and media overwhelms typical law. Copyrights will be enforced beyond fair use, leaving entertainment and information heavily blockaded from the poor.”

An engineer and chief operating officer for a project automating code said, “The internet will become a highly regulated and monitored form of communication with its main aim to promote consumerism. People’s use of it in seeming information will be mined to an intimidating extent, putting severe limitations of personal freedoms. People wanting social change, which will mean equity and justice will withdraw from electronic communications. The use of encoding will eventually be made illegal except for those with socio-political power.”

An anonymous respondent who worked for a pioneering internet company predicted, “There will be implants in humans that continuously connect them to the web. This will lead to a loss of privacy and the potential for thought control.”

An anonymous respondent predicted, “Wearable communications and computing systems. Health monitoring, continuous on-demand interactive information, sensory enhancement. Perhaps even subcutaneous communications devices. One would hope for an increase in privacy and security. One would hope for less commercialization and oligarchies, but sadly, it will likely be the opposite.”

A director of a center for digital health and behavior commented, “It will become increasingly difficult to retain meaningful control over our own data; new and innovative laws would be required to protect privacy and distribute resources.”

A distinguished fellow of the American Economics Association said, “There will be an increasing integration of computers with human brains, and integrated physiological sensors and actuators. There will be a decline in privacy and autonomy.”

A digital rights activist predicted, “Eroding attention spans creating filter bubbles driving out potential disruptors due to the market power of established behemoths.”

An anonymous respondent commented, “There will be more stuff. More pollution will hurt people. If the election of Donald Trump is an indicator of the bad that comes from a more e-connected world, then we have a lot to be afraid of.”

A research scientist based in North America wrote, “One of the greatest challenges facing our workforce in the changing nature of work is the way insurance coverage is usually contingent on employment. In a freelance culture, this contingency is dangerous. The Affordable Care Act went a long way toward healing this, and moves insurance coverage away from employment status and toward universal coverage. If the GOP wants the techno-libertarian way of life to succeed (i.e., platformization of work) then they must concede that the ACA is the only way to make this a sustainable reality for the American worker. The combination of rampant efficiency of work and work technology, combined with the GOP’s power in the White House, Congress and Supreme Court spells disaster for the American public. Workers’ rights were hard won. We only have a 40-hour work week and safe work environments because of decades of agitation. Technology is ripping those hard-won rights away from workers.”

A technology fellow for a global organization said, “The next 50 years will include more integration of computers in our bodies and bodily choices.”

A public affairs consultant based in Europe said, “It is not about the technology itself. It is about the lack of regulation (from the institutions) and the lack of understanding (of the general public).”

An anonymous respondent wrote, “Really just more entrenchment and normalization regarding my previous answer, which I’ll paste again here. Point is, unless a new kind of education and awareness (an ecological awareness a la McLuhan’s integral awareness) we are likely in trouble. Technology is not neutral. Computer/digital technology in particular has a number of logical biases built in, and no matter what content/program/algorithm is installed. By this I mean to say that computers, and the cultures they spawn, value organization, prediction and control above all else. (Oops, no room for that previous answer here again – you will recall.) The ‘dream of modernity’ (unquestioned idea that newer = better) is a powerful trope that is hard to shake. It is inherently optimistic – and we all want to be optimists. But, so far, history does not show this bearing out across the population. But even those in position of power and wealth are not in control – though they may often find themselves along for a more comfortable ride.”

An anonymous respondent commented, “I have no idea. 50 years from now, I think climate change is going to have a very destabilizing effect on economies and societies worldwide, so it’s difficult to predict how long we will have the infrastructure to support rapid technological advances.”

An anonymous respondent said, “The sacrifice of personal freedom as real-time surveillance becomes ubiquitous.”

An anonymous respondent wrote, “Widespread networked computing will have collapsed 50 years from now, as will society.”

An anonymous respondent commented, “It depends on what the overall state of the world will be then and whether one subscribes to the mantra of continuing progress. Those of us who take climate change seriously and see the continuing failures to deal with it must see the possibility of some very nasty changes, even down to the mass movement of populations and the contraction of natural resources including landmasses. In this vision of the future, fixed infrastructure may be a casualty and the local generation of electricity may be the difference between survival and not. One hopes that this pessimism will turn out to be unfounded but at the same time this sort of economic decline or even collapse cannot be ruled out and its impact on technology will be profound. Ad hoc networks might become the main game in town for example. Technology is only part of how the world works and cannot be subtracted from political and economic perspectives in this way. In my opinion, your view is narrow and biased.”

An anonymous respondent said, “If current trends continue, we will be living in a frightening dystopia, where personal data is collected and monetized by a small number of giant companies. Neo-liberal economic policies are resulting in increasing inequality and are unsustainable.”

An anonymous respondent wrote, “I’d like to think we’ll move to a more integrated symbiosis with technology similar to the culture in Iain M. Banks novels but fear that we will end up in an extremely dystopian situation where autonomous AI makes decisions for society with significant disparities between the haves and the have-nots. This is not inevitable, but I think controlled self-learning and self-management is necessary for a beneficial contribution to society. Networked systems will have a significant impact on the future of work, with AI acting as middle-management task allocators to a wide base of workers at the bottom of the hierarchy and the AI-cognoscenti sitting on top and valued higher in society. Work may be hyper-fragmented and much more metered to reflect this. Increased cyborgism and augmentation will create different types of value-added workers. Entertainment will be much more interactive and customised but also potentially reduce productivity.”

“There will not be much change”

In this section of responses, when given three choices, respondents answered that in the next 50 years technological change will not produce much significant change in individuals’ lives.

A principal researcher for one of the world’s top five technology companies commented, “What technology makes possible in 50 years depends on what technology exists in 50 years. Will Moore’s Law and related semiconductor accelerations be extended through quantum, optical, or some other computing? A breakthrough there in the next 20 years would lead to unimaginable consequences in 50 years. But it seems more likely that they won’t, so we can expect a slow realization of the full capabilities of technology that is not qualitatively different from today’s. That leaves substantial room for increased capability as cloud computing and the Internet of Things get worked out with modest assists from data science and machine learning, and as our attentional balance shifts from novelty and eye-catching visual design to utility and productivity. The shape of the future could hinge on whether the world moves toward autocratic rule, as in China and Russia, and now with the U.S. and other governments considering that direction, or whether it extends democratic institutions to meet challenges in a world so complex that the public can’t engage meaningfully with many issues. In either case, privacy will be gone, with our lives visible to governments or corporations that – in the face of pushback such as GDPR – will raise the amount they pay us for full access. Only bad actors will refuse the offers they make; whether we will build systems to let bad actors operate with the current degree of cloaking is an open question. A challenge ahead is the growing complexity of our systems. We tend to change them by adding layers rather than rearchitecting the original design, much as we overlaid our reptilian and mammalian brains with neocortex. The Y2K crisis non-event may have given us a false sense of security. The best work of forecasting could prove to be E.M. Forster’s brilliant 1909 novella ‘The Machine Stops,’ depicting the slow collapse of a world-spanning AI-governed internet. The other challenge is that our mammalian and reptilian brains will not adjust to the new technologies in healthy ways and may make use of their power in disastrous ways. Some things will be better for everyone; some will empower those with privilege or a new opportunity for access. Some things will be worse for some or most people. I fear it will be a net negative because corporations and governments will use technology to manipulate, making people dissatisfied so they will spend more and work harder to benefit the corporations or support government actions not in their best interest. We see increasingly anxious students and adults falling victim to online manipulation by forces fostering discontent, and we see populist governments interested in controlling but not exorcising the manipulation. It is discouraging to see scholars more frenzied about their publication count than curious about the world.”

An anonymous respondent responded, “Blockchain is going to kill the internet for human use. Device-to-device communication will take over, and we’ll be Neanderthals turning over our paychecks for services to keep our cars running, update our embedded medical devices to intervene against the flu, antibodies, etc. The rules/laws of profit, if left unchecked, will create the biggest quality of life differences imaginable. It will be significantly better in terms of quality of life and longevity for some; the lower income folks will be further marginalized.”

An anonymous respondent said, “In the last 50 years, we have seen a rearrangement of the dominant companies in society. No one would have predicted that General Electric would be removed from the Dow Jones average. No one would have predicted that IBM would not be a computer company but a consulting company and systems integrator. No one would have predicted that the leading company in the world would be founded by two hippies, one who was an acid-dropping Buddhist who handed the reins over before his untimely death to the only openly gay CEO in the world. In the words of Niels Bohr, predictions are difficult, especially about the future. The utopianism that drove the last 50 years will fall by the wayside. Technology has changed many things, but people are the same. The global village is a small town with all the oppressive closeness of a small town. Tiny-minded people shame people for trivial faux pas. The internet is going to be a mechanism for social control rather than intellectual liberation, because it must be.”

A technical information science professional commented, “The daily living ‘operations’ will change drastically from today – how we work, how we take care of family, how we ‘commute’ from place to place, how we entertain, etc. However, the fundamental of living, creating and maintaining meaningful relationships with others will be more dominant focus of our lives, and those concerns and efforts will not change. If we don’t take care of the social injustice issues of today, the future will be worse. So the ‘neutral’ answer I picked is really the ‘fittest’ of the three options.”

An anonymous respondent commented, “Oh, brave new world that has such addictive pacification tools available! People will not be better or worse off. They will be distracted from their situation with individualized circuses.”

Following are responses to the prompt:

Describe one major way the internet has changed things for the better in the past 50 years

A CEO and editor-in-chief wrote, “Knowledge.”

An Internet Hall of Fame member wrote, “Email and analogous person-to-person communication facilities have been a tremendous, positive outcome of internet technology.”

A senior data analyst and expert in complex networks responded, “People have access to much more information (electronic books, journals, etc.) than they did 50 years ago.”

A retired professor of computer science based in Asia responded, “Globalization:  The world is like one country, and mankind its citizens.”

The director of a major technological university’s digital economy project said, “Productivity levels, and therefore overall output levels, are at an all-time high, even if they are not growing as rapidly as we’d like. This gives us more economic resources to solve the world’s problems, from hunger to health care to knowledge creation and discovery.”

A professor of computer science expert in systems wrote, “The internet has effectively shrunk our world as we know it. The information flow is now almost instantaneous across the globe, enabling unprecedented sharing of information and services. An example of new benefits is the rapidly growing ‘sharing economy,’ e.g., Uber, Airbnb, and bike sharing. Instead of a (traditional) dedicated commercial/professional infrastructure, Uber and Airbnb are able to provide equivalent services at the same trust level, primarily due to the availability of real-time tracking and big data analytics. Bike sharing is an example of new affordable services that were impossible in the past.”

An internet pioneer and executive director of a technology foundation wrote, “It has cut the cost of communications to effectively zero, globally. Thus, it has brought us closer together, mostly for the positive.”

An information and communications technology policy adviser for an African nation-state responded, “Today, any outage of the internet brings activities to a standstill. The internet has revolutionised communications. It has allowed vast amounts of information to be uploaded and downloaded and enabled us to create our own content through various applications. Social media allows us to post our experiences and share with total strangers.”

A professor of AI and soft computing at a university based in Italy said, “Free access to information.”

A digital strategies expert commented, “Networked communities and communications, on a global scale.”

An internet pioneer said, “People are more connected.”

The executive director of a global digital policy project at a Silicon Valley-based university commented, “Efficiency of communication between people and much greater efficiency in a variety of tasks.”

A journalist, author, blogger and leading internet activist wrote, “Allowing lower-cost group-forming, especially by people with traits that are not otherwise easy to cluster around because the traits are rare and present in widely dispersed people (heterodox views on gender, politics, etc., or those concerned with rare diseases, etc.).”

An executive director wrote, “More instantaneous and ubiquitous information access.”

An assistant professor of communication studies commented, “In many countries, the internet has helped social movements and dissenting voices communicate to larger groups of people without having to speak only through the mass media. This has its downsides – enabling movements I’d consider pernicious – but it has also generally created a more democratic sphere of information.”

An associate professor of computer science at a U.S. university commented, “Low-cost asynchronous communication.”

A respondent based in Turkey wrote, “If it remains free, with no interference, development for good might have a chance.”

A former employee of Northrop Grumman, Sun Microsystems and Xerox said, “It saves vast amounts of time searching for information.”

A professor of digital humanities at a California-based university warned, “Access to information and a sense of connection to others is positive, but the swarm behavior of media has unprecedented and unpredictable outcomes.”

A director of marketing for a major technology platform company commented, “Due to the wide integration of the internet into daily life over the past 50 years, citizens have become more self-actualized. They can seek information and resources to solve the problems (of all types) they encounter in daily life and connect with other people and entities or sources to learn about possibilities to increase their awareness.”

A professor in the school of liberal arts at a major university in India responded, “The internet has become as important or essential as electricity.”

An associate professor expert in economic sociology and stratification commented, “All academic articles are available online. When I was a grad student in the 1990s, I had to travel overnight to a different city to find early issues of top journals.”

An assistant professor of social justice at a U.S. university wrote, “Nearly instant access to information, research and data.”

A lead QA engineer for a technology group said, “The internet has made information more readily available and helped us find old friends, be connected to family from far away, compare prices, know about the world and follow events far away, and allows work from home.”

A researcher and teacher of digital literacies and technical communication responded, “The internet is pervasive. More people have access to more things. That’s a good thing that can also be a negative, but overall it’s good.”

A technical evangelist commented, “It facilitates communication on many levels.”

A longtime telecommunications policy consultant based in Europe commented, “It gives us information on tap.”

An expert on converging technologies and defense strategies wrote, “The democratization of information.”

A professor and director at a major university based in the U.S. South said, “The internet has enabled people and communities to connect in ways that have enhanced and made easier communication. Telecommunications monopolies have been undermined. In addition, the internet has made information available to people that previously would have been impossible to access by anyone other than those at significant levels of literacy and living standards.”

The author of research into fairness and machine learning commented, “It has increased access to information and democratized telecommunication and some forms of media.”

A member of the editorial board of a major ACM journal commented, “The World Wide Web has completely changed the way we proceed in our daily lives, with a large impact on the economy and the ways in which companies deliver their services.”

A representative for a Middle Eastern nation-state at ITU and ICANN functions wrote, “There are numerous examples of ways in which the internet has advanced our lives. One example is access to information. Type a word into Google search and thousands of topic-related results are made available – a super-accessible encyclopedia of everything.”

A principal architect for a major global network company responded, “Access to knowledge and information has never been freer.”

The author of research exploring complex multi-agent systems said, “Improved access to knowledge, democratized and proliferated institutions, allowed greater mobility and provided economic growth.”

The principal of a Silicon Valley-based communications strategies consultancy responded, “Connection to information and people never before available.”

A law professor expert in internet and society said, ‘The internet has vastly expanded communication-based capabilities for humans. These include the generation and sharing of all sorts of intellectual goods – speech, data, ideas, etc. – as well as many social goods – social capital, relationships both strong and weak.”

An anonymous respondent said, “Communication between individuals has been greatly enhanced. A vast wealth of information is available to users of the internet.”

A data analyst for a technology company said, “The internet has made borders irrelevant in most cases. We can interact with people anywhere in the world, expanding our knowledge and experiences that erase the walls history has put up revealing the connections that have always been there.”

A researcher in human-computer interaction who is based in France said, “Access to knowledge (Wikipedia, search), music (YouTube) and culture in general, research results, data about everything and direct access to experts.”

A director and futurist based in Spain commented, “It has improved things in many ways such as e-commerce, e-procurement, e-administration, etc.”

A professor based in France with expertise in AI and software engineering wrote, “Potential access to human knowledge everywhere.”

A CEO based in Germany responded, “Global person-to-person communication. Transparency, connectedness, exchange.”

A senior researcher in a unit for technology and society foresight at a Middle Eastern university said, “Easy access to all types of information. Ability to acquire knowledge in ways that were impossible 50 years ago.”

An assistant professor of media studies at a major U.S. university commented, “The internet has substantially lowered the cost of transmitting certain kinds of information over long distances. At a local level, this has allowed family members separated by oceans to keep in touch. At a macro level, it has enabled powerful forms of collective intelligence and collaborative creativity.”

An ARPANET and internet pioneer, computer engineer and biologist wrote, “Everyone has access to more information and easier access to critical materials. I still remember the value of collections of product catalogs, now completely unnecessary and redundant.”

A professor and chair in telecommunications and law at a U.S. university said, “The internet has largely reduced many of the access limitations and high costs borne by rural residents. These people are no longer captive to limited local choices, but even with such empowerment there are severe consequences such as the hollowing out of the central business district in small towns.”

An information security researcher, chief officer and director at a major U.S. university said, “Medical advances are one positive example of how the internet has made things better. These advances are both in the prescriptive and educational areas.”

A senior statistician at a data science company said, “The internet allows people to work remotely. This includes people who have been placed in unlucky geographic locations (I am writing this from ‘flyover country’) and those with disabilities who cannot physically access a brick-and-mortar office job.”

A professor emeritus who is an expert on technology’s impacts on well-being wrote, “We have infinite access to information, which includes communication (which provides information), but we are not acting like optimal animals foraging for that information. We are acting like a squirrel with ADHD who can’t keep focused on the tree with all the nuts and has to jump from tree to tree.”

A fellow at a Harvard University institute commented, “Technology is more accessible.”

A researcher in the AI group of a global technology solutions company responded, “Greater connectivity among us.”

The scientific director of an AI and cognitive engineering institute based in Europe said, “Being informed, on the spot, during daily life.”

A professor of computing sciences based in Mexico said, “Guidance in cities (by means of GPS, maps and internet connection) has made it much easier to navigate them than before. For instance, for refugees in recent humanitarian crises, the smartphone has been their most valuable asset.”

A leading sociologist and author said, “Scientific research; collaboration.”

A research scientist and author wrote, “Information and knowledge has expanded in ways never imagined, with scholarly work much more available, data more available, and people can look up information – from mapping addresses to simple history – with just a click.”

A professor of public policy and administration responded, “Access to information.”

A professor of computing and digital media said, “Scientific knowledge is more widely available.”

The director of a center for technology, society and policy located in Silicon Valley responded, “Easy access to encyclopedia-type information for a very large population, many of whom might have potentially had access but probably weren’t regularly consulting information sources to learn new things, is a significant contribution to learning and understanding.”

A vice president for marketing and alliances commented, “It is now easy to get the information, the data one needs anytime, anywhere.”

An online communities researcher said, “The internet has allowed those who were socially isolated and in need of support to find that support. (Alas this also works for Nazis.)”

An associate professor of international business and communications responded, “It has shrunk the world and made global connectivity a possibility.”

A senior corporate strategy analyst said, “The internet offers a connection point between space and time without judgement of the idea or purpose. It can be used as a weapon for good or evil. It does not judge, but it can serve as the jury.”

A public policy director responded, “New, productive positions have become available for producers and new, efficient options have become available for consumers.”

A past program director at the U.S. National Science Foundation said, “There are many. Access to much more information is the biggest for me.”

A professor of data science at a Silicon Valley-area university responded, “Removed the chore of physical movement of information on paper, making human processes more efficient and retrieval so much better.”

A professor of knowledge-based systems who is based in Estonia commented, “It gives knowledge to all people.”

A professor of computer science and engineering at a major U.S. university responded, “High-speed communication, significantly speeding many business practices.”

An assistant professor of information science at a major university in Japan commented, “The internet connects people (and machines) to help them (from preserving marriages to creating international collaborations).”

The director emeritus of a center for information technology research located in the Silicon Valley commented, “Google became the encyclopedia. The internet helped to bring together the scientific community.”

A program director for technology at Harvard University said, “Online games are fun.”

A professional technologist commented, “The internet has made it much easier for us to access information that you would have otherwise had to pull up in a library, in public documents at a courthouse or on the Yellow Pages.”

An anonymous respondent said, “Instant and high-bandwidth communication.”

An expert in statistical analysis who works with the U.S. government said, “Making information more accessible.”

A distinguished engineer for one of the world’s largest computing hardware companies commented, “Connecting people and allowing them to communicate.”

A professor of electronic engineering and innovation studies who is based in Europe commented, “Increased freedom of communication is outstanding. However, this may not last long in the future. I expect more control over communications than in the pioneering years of the internet.”

An expert in knowledge, creativity and support systems said, “Informational and social improvement are important contributions.”

An anonymous respondent based in Turkey wrote, “To keep contact with the people who are really far away.”

A professor of mathematics and statistics commented, “Distance education: A person’s learning opportunities are not determined by location.”

A lecturer in communications law wrote, “E-commerce.”

A research scientist who works for one of the leading internet platform companies said, “The Google effect, i.e., rapid access to a much larger body of knowledge than was ever possible in the past, has changed many people’s lives for the better.”

An anonymous respondent wrote, “Information is now accessible to us 24/7. This improves our knowledge of diverse matters.”

An anonymous respondent wrote, “I can keep in touch with my far-flung family and friends. However, there is definitely an age effect. Older people are not using the internet nearly as much and to their benefit. This may induce a kind of neglect as Boomers age.”

An anonymous information administration manager responded, “It improved the speed of communications and allowed people to stay in touch with a wide network of people more easily.”

An anonymous respondent said, “The internet has flattened hierarchies and made many communications systems faster and better, bringing the equivalent of a worldwide library to the hands of anyone who can type.”

An anonymous respondent said, “The internet has made a lot of things easier than in the past, for instance, accessing knowledge and maintaining contact with people. It has made possible things that simply were not possible before, for instance, the ability to listen to basically any music ever recorded.”

A policy adviser for the U.S. banking system said, “There is more international communication at a much lower cost.”

A professor of information science wrote, “The internet has provided a phenomenal increase in access to information and to educational resources that once were limited to those with power and wealth.”

An anonymous respondent said, “E-commerce has expanded the set of goods and services available to everyone.”

A technical information science professional commented, “It is much easier to maintain a ‘second tier’ of relationships, for example, with extended families or past classmates. The internet also makes it a lot easier for people with similar goals/interests in only one aspect of their lives to get to know each other.”

An anonymous respondent wrote, “Transactions, from purchasing to managing finances to scheduling and registration have become simple, accurate and fast – all within the past 25 years.”

A British-American computer scientist commented, “Individuals’ access to information has vastly improved, but note that this is a double-edged sword.”

A digital and interactive strategy manager commented, “Being able to find authoritative news sources. When the U.S. president tweets out falsehoods, sites that fact-check his inaccurate information help to keep your facts aligned to the truth.”

An anonymous respondent wrote, “For some of us, the internet has allowed access to quality information and ability to live asynchronously while working. In 1982 I was driving 36,000 kilometers per year. In 2015, for the same job, I drove only about 9,000 kilometers. I belong to a privileged community (I am a research engineer). I lived 42 years at more than 7,000 kilometers from where I grew up, while still keeping my original social circle unchanged.”

An anonymous respondent commented, “Much better access to technical information such as the IEEE Digital Library, digital newspaper archives, etc.”

An anonymous respondent said, “Getting quick, accurate answers for many small questions.”

A professional working on the setting of web standards wrote, “Considering the internet and the web: We have greatly-increased access to human knowledge for many people around the world.”

A top research director and technical fellow at a major global technology company said, “There is incredible connection among people, fast-paced and inexpensive communication, the acceleration of scientific investigation, the sharing of experiences and data, and the provision of new forms of ‘connected experiences’ from car to home to office to school.”

A member of the Internet Hall of Fame said, “Better communication with people and access to information. Enhanced services in many areas.”

A chief operating officer wrote, “The internet has increased the ability of those of limited means to access a wealth of global knowledge.”

An anonymous respondent wrote, “It has created a platform for people to communicate to a large population including friends and family.”

An anonymous respondent commented, “Access to information for anyone. Students are so far advanced from where they were 10 years ago because of access to information.”

A director of e-business research at a large data-management firm said, “It has enabled people across the globe to communicate instantly with each other in ways that were previously impossible.”

The founder of a technology research firm wrote, “Email is great. Texting is helpful. I love having a library at the edge of my desk, or in the palm of my hand.”

An anonymous respondent who worked for a pioneering internet company commented, “The combination of phone and GPS/mapping has led to the creation of many confidence- and safety-enhancing applications. Adding the ability to bear witness with video has led to (partial) social awareness of injustice.”

A professor of psychology for a human-computer interaction institute commented, “It has facilitated information retrieval, from records of immigration to your DNA/relatives to how to treat your illness.”

A strategy consultant wrote, “Remote work and communication is far more possible from around the world.”

A post-doctoral fellow studying data and society said, “The internet has made communication so much easier.”

An engineer and chief operating officer for project automating code said, “It has, previous to now, been a force for democratisation.”

A change-maker working for digital accessibility wrote, “Improved access to information.”

An information-science futurist commented, “In real estate, it’s location, location, location. On the internet, it’s connection, connection, connection. Today we can find, connect to and interact with family, friends, and colleagues in ways we never have before.”

An anonymous respondent who worked for a pioneering internet company said, “Access to information.”

A director of a center for digital health and behavior commented, “Increased ease of communication and travel.”

A well-known writer and editor who documented the early boom of the internet in the 1990s wrote, “Global communication brings people together.”

A longtime economist for a top global technology company said, “Accelerated access to knowledge and services.”

A senior strategist in regulatory systems and economics wrote, “Access to information and communication with people around the globe has improved immensely.”

A senior researcher in AI commented, “Easy access to information (in the broadest sense).”

A digital rights activist commented, “Anyone can share their voice with a (theoretically) global audience.”

An anonymous respondent wrote, “I now have instant access to millions of journal articles, books, etc., without moving from my desk. Same for collaboration with colleagues around the world.”

A leading infrastructure engineer for a social network company commented, “The one major way the internet has changed the world for the better is through access to a much broader range of thought. Since innovation and problem solving often happen best on the edges where people encounter people, mixed with the ability to disconnect for long periods of serious thought, the twin abilities to connect and disconnect have fueled an age of problem-solving unseen in the history.”

An anonymous respondent who works at a major global privacy initiative said, “Access to information and services with smartphones, a computer in your pocket or purse so you can answer any question.”

An anonymous respondent wrote, “The last 50 years have shown a clear set of enhancements for large interests – corporations, the military, government (though we are seeing some slippage now due to the uncontrollability of massive systems and apparatuses like Facebook and Google). But again, as some commentator whom I can’t recall this second once said, we’re finding that computer technology has most significantly benefited these large entities.”

An anonymous respondent wrote, “The internet has made communication much easier, even between far-flung corners of the world. Students can apply to universities in other countries even if they aren’t very wealthy, long-distance relationships have become easier and when people move to new countries they don’t become estranged from their families.”

An anonymous respondent commented, “It has given us more conveniences and provided more opportunities in some situations, such as enabling families who are separated by large geographical distances to feel closer to one another.”

The managing director of research in Europe for a major IT infrastructure company said, “It increased the quality of life in many aspects, from health, to education, cheaper production and better connections between people.”

Anonymous respondents also commented:

• “It democratized information and media.”
• “Enhanced feedback for immediate social change.”
• “Email to keep in touch with friends and family.”
• “Globalization!”
• “The internet has made tools of creativity cheap and widely available.”
• “Availability and access to knowledge.”
• “Access to information is democratizing the world, but it is disruptive.”
• “It allows us to keep in contact with friends and family who are distant.”
• “One of the most important ones is the ability to work anywhere the internet is available as well as staying in contact with family and friends everywhere in the world.”
• “It is now easier to find knowledge.”
• “Access to medical records and higher levels of medical diagnostic capability.”
• “Email has given me a way to be an effective social justice advocate.”
• “Much wider access to information on all kinds of things.”
• “It has become much easier to find information, thanks to the World Wide Web and search engines.”
• “Global connectivity, anytime, anywhere has largely been achieved through rapid deployment of cellular and internet technologies over the past 20 years.”
• “Information dissemination and therefore the sharing of ideas and new knowledge creation.”
• “Access to information.”
• “Access to information goods (e.g., Wikipedia, online courses, etc.).”
• “I can find nearly anything I want – from information to products – nearly instantaneously.”

Following are responses to the prompt:

Describe one major way the internet has changed things for the worse in the past 50 years

An Internet Hall of Fame member said, “Social media, for the most part, seems to have caused many individuals to make critical, often ugly, nasty comments about people and events, and about a vast range of topics. The notion that many people rely on social media for news is frightening and very disappointing.”

An assistant professor of information and management sciences commented, “It has increased mass surveillance, both by states and profit/rent-seeking entities.”

A senior statistician at a data science organization said, “The internet brought a massive erosion of privacy. Nobody really knows what other people, organizations and companies know about them as individuals, and what can be brought against them in automated ways.”

A leader at an international strategy and search firm commented, “Business models which reinforce online polarisation, invective, news bubbles, fake news and loss of privacy.”

An anonymous respondent commented, “It allowed the mass weaponization of criminal and government-sponsored mischief.”

An assistant professor at a Caribbean university said, “It created a whole new host of digital vulnerabilities, introduced issues with cyber security and made it more difficult to exercise social and democratic control.”

A professor who works with a human-computer interaction institute observed, “Social media has replaced direct human contact, and invited more extreme behaviors.”

A senior data analyst and expert in complex networks responded, “While the internet has increased access to ‘information,’ much of it is actually misinformation which is not correct.”

A researcher in human-computer interaction based in France said, “Threats to privacy, spreading of fake news and hoaxes, mass manipulation, widespread uncontrolled pornography and base attention-grabbing.”

A retired professor of computer science based in Taiwan responded, “Trolls and uncontrolled advertisements make it difficult to distinguish truth from non-truth.”

A principal at a media consultancy who has worked for several of Silicon Valley’s top technology companies responded, “Mass media’s misunderstanding of the internet.”

A professor of computer science expert in systems wrote, “The internet has effectively shrunk our world as we know it. However, despite the almost instantaneous information flow across the globe, we still face cultural and political barriers that were less visible in the past. For example, the refusal to accept global warming as a shared scientific fact illustrates the choice made by a significant fraction of the population (exploited by some prominent politicians) that defy the past attribution of such choices to ‘ignorance.’ We know, they know, and we know they know. It cannot be ignorance. It is now purely and simply political.”

An internet pioneer and executive director at a major global foundation wrote, “The focus on speech and actions without ownership or accountability has allowed the worst instincts of humanity to flourish.”

An information and communications technology policy adviser for a government in Africa responded, “It has and continues to erode privacy and protection of personal information.”

A professor of AI and soft computing based at a university in Italy said, “Social networks and internet contents are reducing contact of people with the real world.”

An internet pioneer, founder and president said, “Bad people are more easily connected.”

The executive director of a global digital policy project commented, “Efficiency of communication between people can take away some of the value and richness of communication between people.”

A digital-strategies professional commented, “Surveillance cultures, panoptic watching of all online activity, especially in the service of advertising and marketing.”

A journalist, author, blogger and leading internet activist wrote, “Along with lax antitrust, tech has pioneered profit-shifting for tax evasion (thanks to unique characteristics of tech that make it easy to maintain the fiction of profits realized in the Bahamas or Luxembourg), accelerating the pace of inequality.”

An assistant professor of communication studies based in Europe commented, “The design of social media apps has been driven by close surveillance of users and a constant experimentation to create addictive attachments to monetize user activity to the max.”

An associate professor of computer science at a U.S. university commented, “Targeted marketing using personal/private information.”

An associate professor of sociology at a major university in Japan responded, “The internet creates serious privacy issues.”

An associate professor of political science and international affairs said, “Organized crime.”

An assistant professor of social justice at a university in the U.S. Midwest wrote, “Since tech magnifies power, it increases both good and bad. There is simply more bad than good to magnify.”

A professor at a major university based in Turkey wrote, “There is a risk of losing in-person communications skills.”

A CEO and editor-in-chief wrote, “Narcissism.”

The executive director of a consultancy wrote, “More ability to interfere in people’s lives (spam, robocalls).”

A director of marketing for a major technology platform company commented, “It has become increasingly difficult to determine the validity and reliability of the source and true owner/author’s identity of information that is made available. This aspect of determining and verifying source confirmation is critical to prevent negative consequences and impact to users.”

A liberal arts professor at a major university based in India responded, “It has connected and disconnected people.”

An associate professor specializing in economic sociology and stratification commented, “The decline of journalism. Anonymous online communication is creating a society of trolls that all hate each other and delight in insult and antagonism.”

A lead QA engineer for a technology group said, “It enabled spam, phishing, identity theft. It allowed a global platform for those who choose to have a single view of the world that does not take into consideration other views. It expanded the reach of pornography.”

A researcher and teacher of digital literacies and technical communication responded, “We are engaged in more shallow thinking and shallow communication rather than deeper thought. People tend to respond quickly rather than thinking about the responses. That’s a big negative. That’s what has led to a lot of the problems we are facing right now.”

A co-director of an institute based in Switzerland wrote, “Always on.”

A technical evangelist based in Los Angeles commented, “We became more/too dependent on technology.”

A longtime telecommunications policy consultant based in Europe commented, “Lower meaningful contact with others. Too much rubbish.”

An expert on technology for strategic defense wrote, “The democratization of malicious information.”

A member of the editorial board of an ACM journal commented, “People, especially young ones, are addicted to social networks, video channels and online games with poor content (particularly multi-player shooting).”

A professor and director at a major university in the U.S. Southeast said, “The same communication technology that has removed barriers to information and communication has also enabled the rise of extremist voices online, conspiracy theories and fake news.”

A representative for a Middle Eastern nation’s telecommunications authority wrote, “It has created or enlarged the problems of human trafficking, hacking of information, drug trafficking, money laundering, cybercrime, cyber threats, etc.”

An expert in defense technologies responded, “Some of the information available is false, and some people take advantage of others.”

A principal consultant wrote, “The ability to polarize our views.”

An anonymous respondent said, “The internet has and social media have created an echo chamber for extreme views. Tailoring of content to a user’s apparent previous views limits informed debate. Trust in information has been eroded.”

A professor of law and author said, “The internet dramatically expanded the scale and scope of surveillance, intelligence-enabled control over people and tools for techno-social engineering humans.”

A data analyst for a digital technology company said, “The internet has allowed for like-minded people to find each other and that includes people with hateful and discriminatory views. It’s not the fault of the internet, but the people who opt to not draw the line on what is allowable.”

A director of strategy and foresight based in Spain commented, “Privacy has come under attack.”

An artificial intelligence researcher and author said, “It is now possible for huge numbers of strangers to attack an individual over a relatively minor offense, and potentially destroy their life.”

A senior lecturer in data science wrote, “Human interaction as mediated by devices and the internet has undergone significant change as compared to how humans used to interact 50 years ago.”

A professor with expertise in AI and software engineering based in France wrote, “It created a divide between regions with fast internet access and those that have no or very low bandwidth.”

A CEO based in Germany responded, “FinTech [new applications, processes, products or business models in the financial services industry provided as an end-to-end process via the internet].”

An internet researcher based in the U.S. wrote, “The internet is a conduit. This conduit has amplified the best and worst of humanity and human systems due to its free, instant, global reach. You can blame capitalism, corporations, governments, for all of the issues arising in the internet age, but the negative aspects in communication are due to the basest human survival instincts winning out over human compassion again and again. It is extremely disappointing.

An assistant professor of media studies at a major U.S. university commented, “The concept of ‘the internet’ is so all-encompassing that it can blot out alternative networks and paths-not-taken. In many technical contexts, the TCP/IP internet is so naturalized that it can seem like the only way to build communication networks.”

A senior researcher with a technology and society foresight unit based in the Middle East said, “Privacy violation, ability to manipulate information, fake news, polarization of opinions/ideas (in particular by social media).”

A general manager based in Africa wrote, “Invasion of privacy and the introduction of cybersecurity-related challenges.”

An ARPANET and internet pioneer wrote, “Inaccurate information can more easily be distributed and lead to confusion and reinforcement of racial and anti-intellectual ideas.”

A lecturer in media studies at a university based in New Zealand wrote, “It enhanced the capacities for states and corporations to conduct surveillance.”

An assistant professor of critical media and big data at a major university in Canada commented, “We have less rights over the information over the internet… and we have less understanding of how the system works.”

A fellow at Harvard University commented, “There is a higher concentration of media corporations.”

A professor emeritus expert on technology’s impacts on well-being wrote, “We are seeing a strong decrease in attention span at work, school, in relationships, etc. We are no longer able to focus our attention on a task without having to sneak a peek at our phone for some other purpose.”

A professor of computing sciences based in Mexico said, “Social networks have been damaging in many respects, no need for enumerating them.”

The scientific director of a cognitive engineering institute said, “The internet has fostered new types of crime and warfare.”

The co-founder of a digital rights organization wrote, “Surveillance and censorship.”

A leader who works at an internet registry responded, “It has facilitated globalization and corporate power at an increasing rate, faster than the evolving ability of societies and governments to cope and in particular to regulate in favor of essential individual rights.”

A postdoctoral associate at MIT said, “The reduction of privacy for billions of people.”

One of the world’s foremost researchers of humans and technology said, “Human relationships.”

A professor of public policy and political science at a U.S. university said, “There is an erosion of critical thinking and failure to authenticate information in the internet-raised generations of students. They are very good at finding information quickly, but very bad at parsing it. For them, all information is equal: journal article, media, Facebook, etc. There is no authenticity of source, or differentiation among them. This is very dangerous, as we see in Trump’s fake-media appeal and other ways.”

The director of a center for technology policy and society based in Silicon Valley responded, “Mass surveillance of all kinds of activities has become easier and more often accepted, hurting citizen privacy and chilling expression.”

A consultant active in internet governance activities and media-development ecosystems commented, “It’s given a platform for hate to spread in ways that were harder in the past.”

A professor of computing and digital media said, “False information can be spread by individuals who cannot be held accountable for the damage done. Many examples, but the plight of Rohingya comes to mind.”

A vice president for marketing and alliances commented, “Rampant hackers and government surveillance.”

An online communities researcher said, “The internet has allowed those who were socially isolated due to the repugnance of their views to find like-minded others.”

An associate professor of international business at a university based in London said, “We have to constantly engage with in many spheres of life in the developed world.”

A program director at the National Science Foundation wrote, “Reduced access to quality news is what hits me the most.”

A professor of international affairs at a Washington, D.C., university responded, “People seem less able to distinguish among facts.”

A longtime Silicon Valley research leader and futures strategist said, “People tend to trust internet information rather than using the internet to augment their knowledge by testing and verifying information. This will extend into the future, as people fail to recognize they are being watched constantly by AIs.”

A professor of data science and finance at a university based in Silicon Valley responded, “It has raised stress through information overload and attention has been destroyed.”

A fellow at a center for the future of intelligence commented, “It has enabled more anonymity, siloed communication and messages.”

A senior corporate strategy analyst said, “The internet connected those who were already going to connect. As easily as is connects, it can leave people feeling disconnected. Unlike in Plato’s cave allegory, seeing the light and knowing it’s there are not two different things. The ability to comprehend what you don’t know without ever experiencing it is crippling.”

A professor of computer science and engineering at a major U.S. university responded, “Increased voice and visibility to anti-social activities. It has become very easy to be anonymously very rude.”

An assistant professor of information science at a major university in Japan commented, “Anonymity showed the dark faces of many people: Trolling, cyberbullying, the dark net.”

A director of psychology and public health based in the U.K. responded, “The internet promotes the notion that instant gratification must always be available. That can lead to problems when it isn’t.”

A director emeritus of a center for information technology in the interest of society commented, “The interference with our democratic values due to misuse of social networks.”

A professor of applied computational linguistics based in Germany responded, “Low-quality information is available much faster, and spreads much more quickly.”

A program director at Harvard University said, “The rich are getting richer.”

An anonymous respondent said, “The 2016 election was internet-trolled and gave us Donald Trump.”

A pioneer internet sociologist wrote, “The opportunities for surveillance are vastly increasing.”

A professional technologist commented, “It’s not clear that, as a society, we’ve fully taken ahold of the responsibility that comes with quick and widespread access to information. Information technology can provide an enormous social good, while also enabling abusers, trolls, hackers and thieves. We can look up the location of a restaurant just as easily as we can look up someone’s home address, workplace and names of friends or family. We can use that information in both benign and abusive ways. By and large, technology companies have had a sort of agnostic ‘hands-off’ approach to these issues until something goes terribly wrong.”

An expert in statistical analysis who works with the U.S. government said, “People have become dependent on their devices for access to internet. They don’t talk to each other anymore.”

A distinguished engineer working for one of the world’s largest computing hardware companies commented, “There’s a tendency to rely on misinformation from the net which can lead to bad decisions, e.g. instead of asking question from a medical professional, many people depend on Google.”

A professor of electronic engineering and innovation studies who is based in Europe commented, “Humans are not as flexible as technology now requires. The pace of change overcomes human capability to control it. For example, enhanced processing capability over the internet has changed jobs so fast that many categories of citizens have been simply kicked off so quickly and have been unable to respond to these changes.”

An expert in knowledge, creativity and support systems said, “It is replacing offline human interactions.”

An anonymous respondent based in Turkey wrote, “The spread of manipulated information such as fake news, dataveillence.”

A professor of mathematics and statistics commented, “People can state inappropriate viewpoints and content behind a wall of anonymity.”

A lecturer in communications law based in Washington, D.C., wrote, “The loss of confidence that one’s personal life can be kept private.”

A research scientist said, “Insufficient security models have left many critical systems open for hacking (power grid, voting, etc.).”

An anonymous respondent wrote, “Spreading of fake news and misinformation on a global scale. In particular of political nature leading to manipulation.”

A principal architect for a leading technology company commented, “Fake news. Lost privacy.”

An anonymous respondent wrote, “People don’t read as many books, they think they know everything, the most gullible are easily manipulated and is it just me, or is there a herd of tenuously attached angry young men out there just about ready to burn down the whole republic?”

An anonymous information administration manager responded, “Our growing addiction to instant communications, whether it be texting, email, social media, news, etc., has come at the cost of undermining our ability to undertake critical analysis and focus on longer pieces of literature.”

An anonymous respondent said, “The internet has brought back the fires of totalitarianism, nationalism and authoritarianism in a way that we have not seen since the end of World War II. It has become a weapon for psychological warfare among nations whereby the freedoms of the West are being used as weapons against it.”

An anonymous respondent said, “For a lot of people, the world that the internet made is simply too unstable. How do you plan for your future when you are not sure if your job will exist in the future – from journalists to cab drivers. That uncertainty is too stressful for a lot of people.”

A policy adviser for the U.S. banking system said, “It has further Balkanized the population into competing factions that have the news (or often not true news) served up to their own factions’ taste.”

A professor of information science wrote, “The internet and, in particular, social media have allowed/encouraged the development of information silos that limit people’s exposure to ideas and information that differ from their own and which thereby support division and polarization.”

An anonymous respondent said, “The relative anonymity of the internet provides an environment where people can behave badly with almost no threat of recriminations.”

A technical information science professional commented, “The loss of privacy.”

An anonymous respondent wrote, “There is no guarantee of privacy, no guarantee of personal security.”

A British-American computer scientist commented, “The rewards for crime have increased, the ability of states to subvert each other has increased and the ability to detect and prevent these has decreased.”

A digital and interactive strategy manager commented, “President Trump, Cambridge Analytica and Russia used the internet to promote their own propaganda narrative of false news and facts, which led to Trump being elected.”

An anonymous respondent wrote, “On social networks, the internet has given a voice and a shield to bullies and people who fabricate information out of thin air.”

An anonymous respondent commented, “Spam. Junk telephone calls using voice over IP.”

An anonymous respondent said, “The easier spread/mobilization of misinformation and helping connect people with malintent toward others.”

A professional who helps set web standards wrote, “Considering the internet and the web: the increased reach of hate speech and hate groups.”

A top research director and technical fellow at a major global technology company said, “Connection has come with rich resources and services, but along with these come a loss of private, disconnected time, a reduction in focused sessions with family and work, and a reduction overall in privacy in daily life. We have become used to a new level of ‘disrupted living,’ which has reduced our ability as people and society to have deep focus of attention on important issues in our personal and professional lives. The networked platforms have also provided opportunities for new forms of persuasion, including via implicit, organic processes as well as through directed malevolent, politically motivated manipulation on a wide scale. The networked world is now more vulnerable to cyberattacks – and this will remain with us as a long-term ongoing challenge for which we need to remain vigilant.”

A member of the Internet Hall of Fame said, “The loss of privacy.”

A chief operating officer wrote, “Having not considered in its fundamental design the negative aspects of human tendencies, the internet has contributed to the dissemination of false information that distorts reality.”

An anonymous respondent wrote, “This connection has distracted people from being present in the world around them – being in the moment.”

An anonymous respondent said, “It has created a society where most people are more apt to be online than to connect in-person with others. It also continues to divide the haves and the have-nots.”

An anonymous respondent commented, “Society has become neurotic about always being entertained and having to always do something. There is value in sitting quietly.”

A director of e-business research at a large data-management firm said, “It’s enabled anonymous hate rhetoric to rise and proliferate.”

The founder of a technology research firm wrote, “Cell phones have made it impossible to call households and homes, only individuals. The internet has destroyed the golden age of survey research, and it enables the rapid spread of hatred and lies as well as truth.”

An anonymous respondent who worked for a pioneering internet company commented, “Election manipulation, using the full array of terrible tools.”

A professor of psychology for a human-computer interaction institute commented, “Social media, social media, social media. No more social people.”

An anonymous respondent wrote, “The internet has made people lazier and less physically active in general. New forms of bullying now exist. Before the internet, embarrassing pictures might only be circulated in a neighborhood, but now, they can be shared worldwide.”

A strategy consultant wrote, “The court of Twitter and public opinion is forcing mob rule rather than justice.”

A post-doctoral fellow studying data and society said, “The internet has facilitated a global financial market which has killed people.”

An engineer and chief operating officer for project automating code said, “It has provided a platform for the dissemination of corrupted information.”

A changemaker working for digital accessibility wrote, “Reduced privacy.”

An information science futurist commented, “Just one? The creation of a surveillance economy and the wholesale eradication of privacy, with little regard for consumer protection.”

An anonymous respondent who worked for a pioneering internet company said, “Texting and social media.”

A director of a center for digital health and behavior commented, “Reduced privacy.”

A well-known writer and editor who documented the early boom of the internet in the 1990s wrote, “Global distraction pushes people back into themselves.”

A longtime economist for a top global technology company said, “The collapse of individual privacy.”

A senior researcher in AI in a highly ranked university’s engineering program wrote, “Reduced face-to-face interaction with other human beings.”

A digital-rights activist commented, “Many people have no sense of what is real anymore, or what constitutes fake news.”

A research scientist based in North America wrote, “The internet has destroyed respect in authority and expertise. People assume that information is so widely available that they don’t need education or expertise to access, analyze or interpret that information. I cannot count the number of internet arguments I’ve gotten into where I ask for sources on someone’s claim, and they tell me simply, ‘I’m right. Google it.’ Then, when I do ‘Google it’ and they are proven wrong, they will insist I’m not looking in the right place, or that the ‘article they read’ proving them correct has been erased or cannot be found. The result of making unlimited information available for free to everyone is that fewer people realize the worth or value of that information, or what it takes to surface reliable and legitimate information.”

A leading infrastructure engineer for a social network company commented, “By needing to ‘show value,’ the internet, in particular, has taken over decision-making, and it has often been used to create addictive, tribal spaces. It has also fed a sense of ‘weightlessness’ in making us feel like we no longer to need to face reality.”

An anonymous respondent who works at a major global privacy initiative said, “The loss of privacy is getting worse. Firms think they are entitled to do whatever. This has always been the attitude in regard to marketing, but it’s worse because so much information is collected across platforms.”

An anonymous respondent wrote, “Digital technology gives and takes. It mostly takes when the final assessment comes in. There are losses of privacy, security, etc. The benefit for the person on the street, the average person so to speak, has been relatively trivial. I’d say very trivial in fact. I can see some benefits for the old and infirm, some benefits in terms of convenience, but it is often a zero-sum game (as with GPS/navigation tech, memory technologies, etc.).”

The managing director of research in Europe for a major IT infrastructure company said, “Life has become more hectic and more stressful for many people.”

Anonymous respondents also commented:

• “It seems to be playing a role in the increased reach of hate and incivility, particularly in recent years, and it also seems to be connected to decreases in empathy among digital natives.”
• “The de-facto advertising-based business model for internet services has led to a significant erosion of privacy, which can have severe consequences, for individuals and societies.”
• “The expansion of the availability of pornography is not a healthy development.”
• “Platforms that led to spread of fake news and misinformation and the rise of Donald Trump.”
• “Globalization in a way that eliminates all national and tribal cultural trends.”
• “Reduced privacy at the individual level.”
• “Online porn and violence are de-sensitizing a large proportion of the population to the role of women in society.”
• “We no longer talk to one another in-person, and a good deal of expression is misunderstood.”
• “Unethical use via fake or misleading content. Its all-consuming effect on the attention spans, especially among youth.”
• “It is now easier to centralize government.”
• “The loss of jobs for less-intelligent people.”
• “Making it easier to steal your information.”
• “Less thought, more sheep.”
• “Cyberattacks.”
• “Being ‘always-on’ in terms of communication.”
• “Disinformation and fake news.”
• “The loss of privacy and exploitation of personal data.”

Following are responses to the prompt:

What one thing has surprised or shocked you the most about the evolution and impact of the internet since 1969?

An online communities researcher said, “How quickly it went to hell.”

An anonymous respondent commented, “Nothing surprises me. It reflects the eternal virtues and vices of the human soul.”

A Ph.D. student researching human-machine symbiosis commented, “Its iteration, from a military tool, to a tool for freedom, to a tool for abuse, to a tool that actually acts as a Rorschach inkblot for people to project their highest hopes and anxieties.”

An anonymous respondent commented, “The willingness of people to use their free time to build a wonderful cathedral of information for all of us.”

A member of the editorial board of an ACM journal commented, “The fact that companies gather so much data about individuals that they know more about them than the individuals themselves. The ethics and the driving reasons behind that are shocking.”

An associate professor of computer science at a U.S. university commented, “Rate of improvement is super-linear in most areas, and exponential in many.”

A professor based in the United States said, “It all feels like the realization of really well-written 1960s sci-fi.”

A CEO at a foundation based in Germany responded, “Accessibility of information and the vanishing of trust.”

A senior foresight researcher at a university in the Middle East said, “Incitement, abuse, the spreading of conspiracy theories, shaming…”

A coordinator for digital communications at a U.S. university said, “The potential for misuse – I used to be a techno-optimist.”

A professor of theoretical physics responded, “The subversion of elections by anti-democratic forces.”

A lecturer in media studies based in New Zealand wrote, “The emergence of digital platforms that monopolise particular areas.”

An ARPANET and internet pioneer wrote, “The speed with which it was commercialized for product distribution.”

An Internet Hall of Fame member said, “I completely failed to anticipate that advertising would become the driving force supporting powerful search capabilities and vast quantities of ‘free’ internet content and services.”

A member of the Internet Hall of Fame said, “The intrusiveness of the internet into all facets of people’s lives.”

A professor of computer science expert in systems wrote, “Keeping the population ignorant appears to have been a successful control mechanism during the Dark Ages in an agrarian society. Universal access to education appears to have supported the industrial economy quite well. The internet and the information infrastructure based on the internet have enabled a thriving knowledge-based economy. However, the political decisions being made today (2018) appear to be rather remarkably uninfluenced by knowledge. With the continued advance of AI, we have smart apps and (allegedly) smart cities. Shockingly, we are as far from smart politics as ever. The most important decisions are somehow not very smart.”

An internet pioneer and executive director at a major global foundation wrote, “It was surprising to me how quickly it became an essential tool for modern living. I had a hunch in my 20s that it would be big. I didn’t think that by my 40s modern society would be unthinkable without it. Perhaps most shocking, though, was how quickly it turned from a force for good to a weapon of war.”

An assistant professor of media studies at a major U.S. university commented, “I am shocked that policy makers and industry leaders have been so willing to trade the vision of the internet as a public space in favor of something more like interactive television.”

A journalist, author, blogger and leading internet activist wrote, “The foot-dragging by artists and other creators when it comes to acknowledging the benefits of universal access to all human knowledge, because they are panicked over copyright.”

An adviser to a project to develop positive AI said, “I did not expect that social networking can significantly contribute to erosion of democratic societies.”

An associate professor of political science and international affairs at a Boston-area university said, “The use by terrorists and other fanatics.”

An assistant professor of social justice at a university in the U.S. wrote, “How few people use the internet for good, to better themselves, etc. Most use it for simple entertainment.”

A professor based in Turkey wrote, “Wikileaks.”

A professor and philosopher of sci-tech and media at a university based in New York commented, “That the free and open access to information would lead not to a new public open-mindedness, but instead to close-minded filter-bubbles and tribalism.”

A futurist and strategic consultant commented, “It is surprising how little strength truth and reality have.”

A fellow at Harvard commented, “The negative effects of political polarization.”

A senior technologist at a nonprofit organization responded, “How much we rely on intuition/assume people will just know how to act appropriately there. They don’t…”

A business futurist who earlier worked as a researcher at a Silicon Valley think tank said, “That it has made people more opinionated and over-confident, but actually less able to discern fact from fiction and to think for themselves.”

A senior data analyst and complex networks expert responded, “I saw the internet grow in Australia from its very first beginnings here. I would not have expected all the pornography.”

A retired professor of computer science based in Taiwan responded, “The internet has been able to be free from government control in many Western countries.”

An information and communications technology policy adviser for a government in Africa responded, “The manner in which people have used the internet for deviant behaviour such as stealing, pornography, drug dealing, etc.”

A professor of AI and soft computing based in Italy said, “Free access to information and the consequences in shaping the beliefs of masses.”

An associate professor in cognitive science and AI based in New Zealand wrote, “How fast we have become prisoners of our cellphones. That’s happened in the last 10 years.”

A fellow at a center for the future of intelligence commented, “How people still haven’t figured out how to make it safe, secure and reliable. That we still have massive shortcomings in cybersecurity and networked systems, and that the infrastructure isn’t that much different from then until today.”

An assistant professor of information science based in Japan commented, “How our knowledge sharing and gaining has changed and how the education systems are stubborn to ignore it widely.”

A director of psychology and public health at a university based in the U.K. responded, “The very rapid advances in the technology.”

A professor of applied computational linguistics at a university based in Germany responded, “How swiftly it has been misused by bad actors, and how badly prepared we were.”

A program director at Harvard University said, “The knowledge economy and the sharing economy is oppressing the masses into a globally debtors society who are powerless because the rich are getting richer.”

A professional technologist commented, “I’ve been surprised by our collective inability to moderate our social media use. Perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising; neuroscientists have conducted brain imaging studies, finding dopamine is constantly released when using Facebook.”

A pioneering internet sociologist based in Canada said, “The way the Google search has enhanced and shaped our lives.”

An internet cybercrime and security consultant based in the Netherlands wrote, “Surprise: The speed of adoption in the past 20 years. Shocked: How slow governments are able to respond to the (negative) effects of the internet and the unwillingness to settle jurisdictional challenges between them that come with and through the internet and leaving citizens mostly unprotected. The slowness/unwillingness of industry to protect its customers from harm coming with connectivity.”

A CEO and editor-in-chief wrote, “People’s comfort with online commerce.”

A director of marketing for a major technology platform company commented, “The behavior and value proposition of Facebook selling users’ information and not protecting citizens from bots and Russian fake users negatively influencing voters through propaganda.”

An executive director wrote, “The explosion of the web. I was on the internet early (circa 1970s), but was blasé about the web since I already knew Gopher, WAIS, Usenet, etc., and I was unprepared for the web.”

A teacher responded, “That it is as pervasive as it is. I was in my college years in the 1980s I would have never thought back then that, decades later, I could still be talking to this person, who now lives a world away, and we would stay in touch as consistently as possible.”

A lead QA engineer at a technology group said, “Surprises are the transformation of Ma Bell (AT&T); the ability to do all my work on the web/cloud; TV over the internet. I am shocked by how people use it for evil.”

An associate professor specializing in economic sociology and stratification commented, “The election of a game show host as our president.”

A professor of liberal arts based at a major university in India responded, “It has killed industries and created new ones.”

A technology evangelist based in Los Angeles commented, “There are things to be proud of, ashamed of, surprised at. Advances in some areas and stagnation in others.”

A telecommunications policy consultant based in Europe commented, “The speed of uptake of social media.”

An expert on technologies and national defense wrote, “How easily human beings have adapted to it.”

A professor and director at a U.S. university said, “The migration of the internet from fixed computer terminals to cellphones and other mobile devices.”

A representative for a Middle Eastern nation’s directorate of telecommunications wrote, “The considerable amount of information available with very rapid access.”

A leader of a Silicon Valley communications consultancy responded, “The pace of software development (built on top of internet growth). Twenty-five years ago we had new software versions once a year, sold in a box.”

An assistant professor of machine learning at a European technological university responded, “How humanity has come together to use the internet for public good, to help each other, to share what we know.”

An anonymous respondent said, “The bandwidth of the network and its capacity to broadcast vast quantities of audiovisual data.”

A data analyst said, “How hateful a portion of the population is. It’s always been a known quantity, but to see them without restraint is terrifying.”

A researcher in human-computer interaction based in France said, “The long time needed for people to understand the new world with internet. The fast progress of the internet and its services, mostly the World Wide Web.”

A professor of communications at a California university said, “Its commercialization.”

A principal engineer for a major networking company said, “How nasty we can be to one another.”

An executive director said, “The ease with which people have become reliant on AI and the internet in all aspects of their lives is really quite shocking for a tool that was not available until very recently. The speed at which these changes have occurred has made it hard to regulate and adjust appropriately.”

A director and futurist based in Spain said, “The speed of internet development.”

An artificial intelligence researcher said, “Facebook use by most individuals being so overtly about showing off, and that being considered socially OK although offline such behavior would be strange – to just start going on about yourself in a similar way.”

A director of digital humanities and social science at a university based in the U.K. said, “That I would now be calling for greater regulation. In 1987 I would have argued against it as the internet allowed us to go around state regulations to access knowledge and interact across boundaries. But now it is a tool of states, political actors and commercial organisations looking to limit and influence the sharing of knowledge.”

A senior statistician at a data science organization said, “The most surprising thing is that the protocol that was designed to keep about three dozen computers connected is still surviving.”

A professor emeritus expert in organizational communication and technology commented, “Tremendous innovation plus the mindless chatter and the gullibility of so many users.”

A professor of computing sciences based in Mexico said, “The rapid expansion of the internet itself. We (the baby boomers generation) didn’t see this coming; it wasn’t in any futuristic Hollywood movie, etc.”

A scientific director of an AI research institute said, “The fact that people mostly communicate trivialities among them.”

The director of an internet registry responded, “The concentration of control which has occurred in the past 10 years, into the hands of corporations with greater financial and political power than ever before. This is not the distributed, open and free internet that was imagined, even 20 years ago.”

The co-founder of a digital-rights organization based in Silicon Valley wrote, “No matter how quickly storage capabilities grow, our ability to save the entire history unfolding online remains an elusive objective.”

The director of a center for technology, society and policy located in Silicon Valley responded, “I’m genuinely surprised by how little government control/regulation has been exerted over the internet in many jurisdictions.”

A professor of public policy at a U.S. university responded, “Commercialization.”

An associate professor based in Israel wrote, “How fast it has spread worldwide – the clearest proof of its socio-economically positive effects, given how many people ‘want in.’”

An associate professor of international business based at a London university responded, “Our extreme modes of dependence on the internet as a form of public sphere and communion.”

An anonymous respondent commented, “Crime was kind of expected but the use of the internet for political manipulation particularly by right wing extremists and Russia/China was a surprise since it proved so effective in manipulating Trump’s election.”

A former program director at the National Science Foundation said, “IBM’s plans for Watson, as announced a few years ago.”

A professor of international affairs based in Washington, D.C., responded, “Its effects on democracy and government.”

An expert in statistical analysis who works with the U.S. government said, “The rise of social media.”

A distinguished engineer working for one of the world’s largest computing hardware companies commented, “The pervasiveness in the lives of even non-tech-savvy people.”

An expert in knowledge, creativity and support systems said, “Its explosive growth.”

An anonymous respondent based in Turkey wrote, “Governments’ shut-down policies.”

A professor of mathematics and statistics commented, “I’m surprised that it was not more tightly regulated or controlled. It is accessible to the masses.”

A lecturer in communications law based in Washington, D.C., wrote, “I didn’t expect that the internet would become such an effective tool for autocracies.”

A research scientist who works for Google said, “I never dreamed that Google would actually work out, or, more generally, that the systems and data structures and code required to build search engines would work out. That was a huge surprise.”

A principal architect for a “top-five” technology company and longtime contributor to the IETF and Internet Architecture Board commented, “Lack of enforcement against money launderers, miscreant CEOs, fake news creators and foreign-intelligence agents.”

An information administration manager responded, “Its ubiquity!”

A policy adviser for the U.S. banking system said, “Getting information (but not always fair and balanced information) has become much easier and cheaper.”

A professor of information science wrote, “I’ve been most surprised that the greater availability of information has led to the development of information silos rather than supporting our ability to see multiple sides to important issues.”

A technical information science professional commented, “How invasive the internet has become in our lives.”

A British-American computer scientist commented, “The extraordinary effect of increasing returns to scale in driving centralization.”

A digital and interactive strategy manager commented, “False news going unchecked by media agencies; the 2016 U.S. election result was a big wake-up call that even though we can post information online we need to make sure we are not spreading misinformation. Hate should also not be spread online.”

An anonymous respondent wrote, “The speed of change and evolution. For me it has been easy to evolve: I am a research engineer; I had email in 1978. I am surprised about how people outside the field have adjusted. I always think that had I been a lawyer I would not be so comfortable with the technology.”

An anonymous respondent commented, “The increase in the speed (bit rate) of internet access services such as cable modems, FiOS, wireless.”

An anonymous respondent said, “How similar it is in many respects to what preceded it – shopping and watching stuff. I think part of the reason why it has been so ‘disruptive’ is the general lack of imagination – it simply is a more-efficient delivery channel for retail and media consumption.”

A top research director and technical fellow at a major global technology company said, “The extent to which so much of the world has been changed by the internet. I have often imagined simply removing the advance of the internet and the world we’d have today versus what we do have, and the differences are extraordinary.”

A chief operating officer wrote, “I have been shocked by how easily people have given up their privacy to allow intrusions of commercial and governmental forces into their lives.”

An anonymous respondent wrote, “Technology took a rather long time to diffuse. Lots of impact is generational.”

An anonymous respondent commented, “The risks from identity theft and hacking. I am surprised that we are reactionary rather than pro-active about putting safeguards in place first.”

A director of e-business research at a large data management firm said, “The speed of evolution and technological development.”

An anonymous respondent who worked for a pioneering internet company commented, “I had expected that communication would lead to increased empathy.”

A professor of psychology for a human-computer interaction institute commented, “What has shocked me is what I hear about the dark internet, of which I actually know nothing.”

A strategy consultant wrote, “That it has taken this long to become a media tool of control.”

A post-doctoral fellow studying data and society said, “It is still not free yet.”

An engineer and chief operating officer for project automating code said, “The degree to which our identities have been commercially hacked.”

An information-science futurist commented, “The internet was a hopeful creation. I did not fully anticipate the magnitude of selfish and shortsighted forces that would so remarkably exploit it.”

An anonymous respondent who worked for a pioneering internet company said, “Shrinking of the world.”

A director of a center for digital health and behavior commented, “The simultaneous integration of technology into everyday life with minimal interest in the political economy of the tools and companies.”

A well-known writer and editor who documented the early boom of the internet in the 1990s wrote, “The destruction of politics.”

An economist for a top global technology company said, “Transformation of the internet into an advertising platform.”

A senior strategist in regulatory systems and economics for a top global telecommunications firm wrote, “That the main usage of bandwidth is actually consuming pornographic content.”

A digital rights activist commented, “That it was so quickly co-opted by corporations, and that users have proven so willing to concede their rights by signing insane end-user licensing agreements.”

An anonymous respondent wrote, “We are completely reliant on this technology to function. When you go to a new city and look for a restaurant, look at movie times, see where to shop in the area we use this new technology and it has replaced the old ways of doing things.”

The managing director of research in Europe for a major IT infrastructure company said, “First, the complexity of today’s internet is shocking. It is very difficult to manage. I believe it could and should be much easier. Second, the misuse of the internet by criminals in the darknet and by trolls in social networks.”

A research scientist based in North America wrote, “I’m always shocked by 1990s-era utopianism. The ‘Wealth of Networks’ always struck me as ridiculously naive and almost deliberately obtuse.”

A leading infrastructure engineer for a social network company commented, “The strong need to monetize everything, including people.”

A public affairs consultant based in Europe said, “Lack of understanding from regulators. The anti-trust structures have not been efficient in understanding and controlling the development of the internet.”

A respondent who works at a major global privacy initiative said, “The web and how dependent we are on it.”

An anonymous respondent wrote, “The emergence and role of companies like Google and Facebook has surprised me. Also, I did not expect that the internet would remain as unrestricted by political laws as it does, and I had expected its evolution to be much slower and controlled.”

An anonymous respondent wrote, “I can’t think of much in the way of significant positive impact/role played by/facilitated by computer technologies to enhance the lives of people in meaningful ways. Attention spans are shorter than ever, with the continued proliferation of screen/image-based culture. A short-term cultural memory seems to be the order of the day, and there is a lack of critical thinking. But you can order anything you want online and get it delivered to your door in a day or two. And you can look ‘anything’ up online now so you don’t need to read deeply to understand the ‘hows, whys, ifs, buts and becauses.’”

Anonymous respondents also commented:

• “Access to information.”
• “Always on.”
• “How quickly it has occurred and how new generations have sped this up.”
• “The sheer pace at which radically new technologies are introduced, which of course makes it VERY difficult to predict where we’ll be 50 years from now.”
• “The level of infiltration in the micro-level activity and surveillance of individual activity.”
• “That it has become so much a part of our lives, many people don’t know how to exist without it now.”
• “The surprise is how fast the internet took over the world and changed the economy, industry and everyday life.”
• “How it helps authoritarian governments.”
• “How early parents are addicting their children to the internet via using their phone as a toy to quiet them.”
• “Social manipulation.”
• “Its utter speed of progress and change as well as adaptation.”
• “Our complete dependence upon it as a society and a people.”
• “The vast amount of knowledge available at one’s fingertips.”
• “That it has remained so dominated up to now by the English language.”
• “The continued insistence that the internet should not be governed the way that everything else is governed, and/or should not be subject to existing laws.”
• “That accessibility has not been our right.”
• “The willingness of people to provide personal information for commercial exploitation.”
• “The speed at which the internet has gone from a research experiment to a critical resource to an avenue to spew vile messages.”
• “Shopping: How fast Amazon killed the mall, monopolistic local shops and even the specialty grocer.”
• “The extent and speed in which internet simply became an integral part of our lives.”
• “The rapidity with which social media has been adopted worldwide came as a surprise.”
• “Despite all this information, our ability to distinguish truth may have been retarded.”
• “The ability to change how we interact with each other (e.g., social networks).”

To read the full report on the Next 50 Years of Digital Life, click here:
https://www.elon.edu/u/imagining/surveys/x-2-internet-50th-2019/

To read the credited responses to the questions, click here:
https://www.elon.edu/u/imagining/surveys/x-2-internet-50th-2019/credit/