Credited responses:

This page holds full for-credit 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 better 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 anonymous responses to the questions, click here:
https://www.elon.edu/u/imagining/surveys/x-2-internet-50th-2019/anonymous/

“Technological Change will mostly be for the better”

Following, presented in random order, are the full responses by study participants who chose to 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. Workplaces listed were accurate at the time of subjects’ responses and are listed to show expertise; comments are personal and do not represent the views of respondents’ employers.

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.

Baratunde Thurston, futurist, former director of digital at The Onion and co-founder of the comedy/technology start-up Cultivated Wit, wrote, “It’s the year 2069, and it’s been 20 years since the conclusion of The Platform Wars and 30 years since Amazon bailed out and acquired the United States of America. Shareholders were initially dumbfounded by Chairman Jeff Bezos’s strategy, but it soon became clear that physical territory gave Amazon a significant competitive advantage over its one-time rivals, Alphabet, The People’s Republic of Baidu and 4Chan. With land and servers, Amazon was able to accelerate the merger of the space formerly referred to as ‘the internet’ and the realm once called ‘meatspace,’ or in real life such that there is no longer a distinction, and it is all referred to now as ‘The Prime Network.’  Once it was proven in 2045 that a hybrid human-networked intelligence could manage and draft legislation far better than inconsistent and infinitely corruptible humans, the U.S. Congress was replaced with a dynamic network model accounting for the concerns of citizens yet bound by resource constraints and established laws. This happened too late to save Miami, which is now only accessible by automated submarine historical tours or VR recreations, but it did help rally the resources required to halt The Ten-Year Burn in California and restore much of Lower Manhattan. Americans now spend roughly 30 percent of their waking hours in SR (simulated reality) environments. Many spend this time reliving revised personal histories which make them the most popular students in high school even though industrial school farms were abolished 25 years ago and replaced by personalized Mental Training Plenaries that dynamically adjusted to the learning styles and needs of each student. Another 20% of waking hours are spent passively consuming immersive narratives customized to each person. In order to maintain social cohesion, however, these personalized narratives have overlapping characters, plot points and themes so that people have something to talk about when they encounter their fellow humans. Americans split the rest of their time between eating, picking up litter and serving on the obligatory Algorithmic Oversight Committees. Advertising has been banned. Once we launched the 360 Accounting Project to measure the impact of nearly all human endeavors and score them on various elements, the practice of advertising was found to have a negative social, financial, emotional, ecological and moral return on investment. Any human or hybrid engaged in advertising is disconnected from The Prime Network for six hours on a first offense, one day for a second offense and permanently for a third offense. Amazon is exempt from the advertising ban per the Terms of Service that govern all Prime citizens. It’s a real challenge to think about all the things that will be different technologically in 50 years. In 1969, we had television, radio and automobiles, but our technological infrastructure was rudimentary compared to the computing power accessible in our pockets today. Scanning forward 50 years and assuming we aren’t all in a global Lord of the Flies situation over access to food and water due to climate change is a real challenge. I am most interested in how we incorporate insight into our decision-making as individuals and as a society. We engage in many behaviors that are measurably ineffective or counter to our interest. We incarcerate (in the U.S.) wildly and with extreme prejudice. Globally we contribute to our species’ suicide with each non-carbon-reducing day. But with the rise of new generations untethered to our assumptions and with glaringly clear evidence of what works and what doesn’t, I believe we could make a positive adjustment. Also given that so much of the destructive and disruptive tech we live with today is powered by ads, I like imagining a future in which advertising is a crime.”

Leonard Kleinrock, Internet Hall of Fame member and co-director of the first host-to-host online connection, professor of computer science, University of California – Los Angeles, said, “It is far easier to predict the likely infrastructure of the future internet than it is to predict its applications. We have been woefully inadequate in predicting the major and the explosive applications in the past (e.g., email, the World Wide Web, YouTube, peer-to-peer networking, search engines, shopping engines, blogs, social networks, etc.). Hence, I will limit my expectations to what the infrastructure is likely to be. In a sentence, I predict that the internet will evolve into a pervasive global nervous system. The internet will be everywhere available on a continuous basis and will be invisible in the sense that is will disappear into the infrastructure, just as electricity is, in many ways, invisible. The Internet of Things will be an embedded world of the Internet of Invisible Things. We will be able to interact with its capabilities via human-friendly interfaces such as speech, gestures, haptics, holograms, displays, etc. No more will we be forced to interface with tiny incompatible awkward keyboards, icons and clumsy hand-held and desktop devices. These interfaces will be highly customized to each individual and matched to their profile, preferences, privileges and specifications, in an adaptable fashion. Intelligent agents will constantly be available to provide customized service. My hope is that life will calm down and provide a more balanced physical/digital presence. Screens will diminish considerably, bringing us back to enriched human-human interaction, notwithstanding that a significant fraction of our interaction will be enhanced with software agents, avatars and AI devices (robots, embedded devices, etc.). We will no longer be adjusting to the awkward software and hardware interfaces we currently endure, but the customization of these interfaces will be better matched to what we desire and expect as individuals. Such interactions will enable humans and AI devices to participate in a joint exchange far more easily than is the case today where it is either human or AI device, but not easily both.”

Craig Partridge, chief scientist at Raytheon BBN Technologies for 35 years and Internet Hall of Famer, currently chair of the department of computer science at Colorado State University, wrote, “Here’s one example of things being better: I think we’re only just beginning to understand smart physical things. I’m thinking of better prosthetic limbs, load-bearing walls with embedded sensors and actuators that keep the building standing during an earthquake, and hiking shoe soles that better grip uneven ground.”

Clark Quinn, executive director at Quinnovation, wrote, “I believe (read: hope) that in 50 years, we will have mastered the art of augmentation. Our digital world will interact with our physical world seamlessly, so that our physical actions can have semantics, and vice-versa. Our senses will be amplified, the world will be annotated and there will be guidance and warnings on our actions. We’ll have engineered a new economy that rewards on contributions to the collective good. We’ll be tracked, but to our benefit, with control over what information of ours is shared. Systems will be ‘explorable,’ so that we can go as far down into operations as we want, taking ownership to the degree we care. We’ll have mixed initiative dialogs with our systems to collaboratively ensure accuracy and transparency. This will require transparency of organizations and their systems, but the upside will be more scrutable agency. We’ll have moved beyond ‘smart’ systems, to wise ones. Despite the hiccups, data tells us that overall our life has improved steadily through our history. I believe this trend will continue, and while there will still be problems, the possibilities enabled by greater information exchange will ultimately yield benefits.”

Susan Etlinger, an industry analyst for Altimeter Group expert in data, analytics and digital strategy, commented, “In 50 years, what we know as our internet will be largely obsolete. Rather than organizing information in the form of URLs, apps and websites, our digital interactions will be conversational, haptic and embedded in the world we live in (even, to some extent, in ourselves). As a result, the distinction between the physical and digital worlds will largely fall away. Prosthetics, imaging, disease and pathogen detection, and brain science (identifying, understanding and perhaps even modifying the workings of the brain) will all see advances far beyond what we can imagine today. Our ability to understand weather and the natural world at scale will be immensely powerful, driven by advances in machine intelligence and networking.  Yet all of these innovations will mean little if the algorithms and technology used to develop them are not applied with the same attention to human consequences as they are to innovation. Even today, the ‘Minority Report’ notion of ‘pre-crime’ is crudely possible using predictive policing technology, yet it is just one example of how embedded bias can perpetuate and actually intensify injustice. This is also true in education, health care, our financial system, politics and really every system that uses data to generate predictions about the world and the future. This is not at all to say that we should retreat, but rather that we should embrace the opportunity intelligent technologies give us – to see and better understand our biases so we can optimize for the world we want, rather than a more efficient version of the world we already have. We’ve already seen this capability weaponized in the political sphere; the decisions we make now will set a precedent for whether we are able to use intelligent technologies justly and ethically, or whether in 50 years we have consigned ourselves to a permanent state of information (and literal) warfare. Many of the technologies we see commercialized today began in government and university research labs. Fifty years ago, computers were the size of walk-in closets, and the notion of personal computers was laughable to most people. Today we’re facing another shift, from personal and mobile to ambient computing. We’re also seeing a huge amount of research in the areas of prosthetics, neuroscience and other technologies intended to translate brain activity into physical form. All discussion of transhumanism aside, there are very real current and future applications for technology ‘implants’ and prosthetics that will be able to aid mobility, memory, even intelligence, and other physical and neurological functions. And, as nearly always happens, the technology is far ahead of our understanding of the human implications. Will these technologies be available to all, or just to a privileged class? What happens to the data? Will it be protected during a person’s lifespan? What happens to it after death? Will it be ‘willed’ as a digital legacy to future generations? What are the ethical (and for some, religious and spiritual) implications of changing the human body with technology? In many ways, these are not new questions. We’ve used technology to augment the physical form since the first caveman picked up a walking stick. But the key here will be to focus as much (or more) on the way we use these technologies as we do on inventing them.”

Esther Dyson, entrepreneur, former journalist, founding chair at ICANN and founder of Wellville, wrote, “The impact of the internet is not entirely inherent in the technology; it depends on what we do with it. It’s so powerful that it has given us the opportunity to satisfy many of our short-term desires instantly; we need to learn how to think longer-term. So far we have mostly done a bad job of that: Individuals are addicted to short-term pleasures such as likes and other acknowledgements (to say nothing of drugs and instantly available, online-ordered pleasures), to finding friends rather than building friendships (and marriages); businesses to boosting quarterly profits and to recruiting ‘stars’ rather than investing in their own people; nonprofits to running programs rather than building institutions; and politicians to votes and power. Do we have the collective wisdom to educate the next generation to do better despite our own poor example?”

Vint Cerf, Internet Hall of Fame member and vice president and chief internet evangelist at Google, wrote, “The 1969 date is ARPANET connection, not internet which doesn’t exist until designed in 1973 and turned on in 1983. Connectivity will be ubiquitous. Much will be high-speed wireless. Optical fiber needed to link wireless termination points. IP address space might be replaced with something else in 50 years’ time or IP addresses may be re-interpreted as logical rather than physical addresses – just as telephone numbers have morphed as mobile communication and number portability have emerged as requirements to support. End points will nominally filter incoming traffic (or go through firewalls) to block unwanted connections. I still see the computing and communication environment as positive and constructive but it does create avenues for remotely initiated harmful behaviors, amplification through botnets, etc. International agreements and mechanisms for traceability of actors in the network will be needed to respond to harmful behavior. A law of the net will likely have to be enacted (international treaty) to cope with these challenges. I continue to see these technologies as constructive and augmenting.”

Lawrence Roberts, designer and manager of ARPANET, the precursor to the internet, and Internet Hall of Fame member, commented, “Within 50 years the technology for embedding internet transceivers into human brains. This could greatly speed up information transfer and allow great advances for a person. However, the flood of advertising would need to be controlled and security would need to have improved greatly for anyone to take the risk. The internet has evolved little in the last 50 years except to grow bigger. With so much invested in the current design, it is hard to see the underling transport changing fast. A great number of jobs will be able to be done totally over the internet. That could be from home or from the brain implant. Robots will do the majority of the physical jobs often with a remote person overseeing the activity, but largely managed with AI. Most commuting will cease, and roads will be used for driverless transport of goods or pleasure. AI will incorporate logic and rules to make it safe, not just deep learning neural networks. As our jobs will largely be done from our brain implant, and physical tasks done remotely by robots, people will be free from physical location requirements, greatly increasing their freedom. They can live where they want and interact with others freely.”

Fred Davis, mentor at Runway Incubator, San Francisco, responded, “The internet as we know it will be more invisible and incorporated into our daily routines. We’ve gone from an alphanumeric interface between humans and computers to the currently dominant graphical user interface. Fifty years from now the audio-graphical interface will be the norm and talking with computers and devices will be the most used form of interaction. Social engineering will become more important than mechanical or electrical engineering. User experience will be paramount to success. Strong ethical guidelines will need to be put in place that allow for freedom of expression while offering individualized protections and preferences. Digital technology is already having a profound effect on society and our lives. This pace is accelerating, and I expect in 50 years many of today’s social and technological artifacts will be almost unrecognizable. It will become the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced, but I think natural and social intelligence will also evolve and help the benefits outweigh the hazards.”

Wendy Hall, professor of computer science at the University of Southampton, U.K., and executive director of the Web Science Institute, said, “I really don’t think we will have an internet as we know it today in 2059. Think back to 1969 – most of the technologies we take for granted today (including a global information system such as the web) were just science fiction then. I believe the biggest factors that are leading to the fragmentation of the internet today are the geopolitical factors and the potential weaponisation of the internet. So, its future is by no means certain. But the development of technology continues apace. I believe that by 2059 the brain-machine interface will be fully developed and if we think the applications of AI might be terrifying for the future of humanity, then brain-computer interfaces are the stuff of nightmares if the legal and ethical frameworks under which they are used are not carefully considered from the outset. I am sure there will be other technologies, maybe developed by AI, that we don’t know about yet but will dominate the world in 2059 like the internet does in 2019. It is impossible to know what will happen. I am being optimistic and assuming that we are able to develop AI, and future technologies we don’t yet know about, so that they are used for the good of humanity and not for bad. This is huge leap of faith. On a different day and in a different mood I might have answered differently.”

Micah Altman, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and head scientist in the program on information science at MIT Libraries, wrote, “In 50 years human society might succumbed to climate change, or war – but we’ll assume, hopefully, that this does not happen, and that our technological and scientific progress continues. In that future, I conjecture that information, communication and AI technologies will become as ubiquitous and integrated into our lives as eyeglasses, or clothing. Moreover, they may become more integrated – literally embedded in our bodies, and metaphorically invisible to our minds, much of the time. These technologies can vastly increase human capability if we as a society establish the rights of users of ubiquitous technologies to inspect their operation, audit their results and exercise agency into how these systems interact with them and their data – and if we use effective regulation to ensure that these systems are both designed and operated to preserve these rights. In the absence of regulation – in a pure market system there is a significant threat that key platforms will become controlled by a small number of actors – because of the network economies of information, and because of the asymmetry of information about how these technologies work, and the consequences of different technology choices. How technology affects people and society depends in large part on what values we embed into the design of these technologies, and who controls them. With appropriate governance, information, communication and AI technologies can vastly increase human capability: If we as a society establish the rights of users of ubiquitous technologies to inspect their operation, audit their results and exercise agency into how these systems interact with them and their data. And if we use effective regulation to ensure that these systems are both designed and operated to preserve these rights. If not, it is likely that these increasingly powerful technologies will enable concentrations of power and influence over others – economically through using these technologies to amplify the advantage of wealth, through influence over beliefs and persuasion, and through surveillance and coercion. I choose to be hopeful.”

Bryan Johnson, founder and CEO of Kernel, a leading developer of advanced neural interfaces, and OS Fund, a venture capital firm, said, “The world is becoming increasingly more complex. There is more data generated and more information being transferred than our default cognitive configurations can handle at present, let alone predict. We can barely predict 10 years out, so 50 is unreasonable. Humans play prediction games, but the exercise is inherently unproductive. A more useful exercise would be to think about what deeply influential technology can we invest our current time in that will give us the tools we need to thrive in such a highly complex future. Forecasting to 2050 is thought junk food. It is what people most like to daydream about but is not what we should think about for the health of the species and planet.”

Jamais Cascio, research fellow at the Institute for the Future, wrote, “I imagine three broad scenarios for AI in 50 years. No. 1, EVERYWARE, is a crisis-management world trying to head off climate catastrophe. Autonomous systems under the direction of governance institutions (which may not be actual governments) will be adapting our physical spaces and behaviors to be able to deal with persistent heat waves, droughts, wildland fires, category 6 hurricanes, etc. Our routines will be shaped by a drive to a minimal footprint and a need to make better longer-term decisions. This may not be “green fascism” precisely, but that will be a common invective. The dominant design language here is *visible control* – of public spaces, of economic behavior, of personal interactions, etc. In brief: AI is a climate-protective Jiminy Cricket with an attitude. No. 2, ABANDONWARE, is also crisis-driven, but here various environmental, economic and political crises greatly limit the role of AI in our lives. There will be mistrust of AI-based systems, and strong pushback against any kinds of human-displacement. This likely results from political and economic disasters in the 2040s-ish linked to giving too much control to AI-based systems: institutional decisions driven by strategies to maximize profits and control, while minimizing uncertainty and risk. AIs messing around with elections, overriding community decisions and otherwise pushing aside fuzzy emotional thinking with algorithmic logic goes swiftly from being occasionally annoying to infuriatingly commonplace. The dominant design language for AI here is *submissive*. In brief: AI is still around, but generally whimpering in the corner. No. 3, SUPERWARE, is the world described in the first answer (AI common but largely invisible) turned up to 11. In this scenario, AI systems focus on helping people live well and with minimal harm to others. By 2069, the only jobs performed by humans in the post-industrial, post-information world require significant emotional labor, unique creative gifts or are simply done out of the pleasure of doing them. The newly developed world is still adapting, but what amounts to the end of 19th century industrial capitalism forces this change. AI-based systems are dealing with climate, global health, and the like, but in ways meant to increase human well-being over the long term. Most people born before 2020 *hate* this, seeing it as ‘robo-nanny state socialism’ and ‘undermining human dignity’ even as they take advantage of the benefits. The dominant design language for AI here is ‘caring.’ In brief: [We will partner with] ‘Machines of Loving Grace, ‘whether you like it or not. All three scenarios present worlds where the long-term arc is toward the improvement of lives, but in VERY different ways. The first focuses on fixing the planet. The second involves recapturing control of our lives. The third finally breaks us out of the political/economic traps we’ve been in since the 1870s.”

Amali De Silva-Mitchell, futurist, responded, “Mobile technology in the palm of everyone will result in the small minority without it living at a disadvantage although they may have a lot of privacy. When groups realise the implications of data collection profiling and tracking under various uses, people will group together to adjust to their value and comfort levels in this regard. This clustering will impact the quality of data and the quality of outcomes using algorithms. We will see tweaking of algorithms and data all the time, but poor ethics or low-quality updates are a real issue. Power for blockchain and other application bases will leave those regions without access to power at risk. I see a rise in solar power for ICT powering. Good listening to the citizens is key. Ability to understand the values of society is key. Willingness to adapt to needs is critical. Compassion for all is essential as noted at U.N. AI Good 2018. Lot of work to be done to ensure global standards in place to ensure compassion, understanding and development of best practices and ethical use. A method of using pure democracy application tools using AI-powered algorithms may be beneficial for policy makers to ensure inclusive opinions from a variety of sectors. Surveying society viewpoints is a very important aspect of policy development and should be extended to all. The opportunity for excellent benefit is marred by real development issues such as poor ethics, shoddy applications, too much profiling with poor algorithms, etc. Profit-only motivations will mean best outcomes will not be the first goal. There may three groups of development that occur giving different outcomes to individuals. Civil society, government and for-profit enterprises will each have a different vision for service with different outcomes. Important that all three have the ability to develop to ensure no cartel-type activity does not hold king.”

Michael Dyer, an emeritus professor of computer science at the University of California-Los Angeles, commented, “Networked virtual reality interfaces will become common. You will wear 3D glasses and devices that track body movements. In VR social environments you will have super-human capabilities. As an avatar you will be able to grow/shrink in size (relative to other avatars and virtual objects). You will be able to morph into other (non-human) body types. You will be able to fly, to become invisible, to teleport to other virtual locations, to move large objects, to penetrate walls, all the while invincible to harm. Children will play more with virtual toys than real ones. K-12 education could retain its social dimension, while eliminating bullies able to physically harm your child. Prisons could be transformed by VR. A prisoner could be in physical solitary confinement but, through VR, experience being on a beautiful island in which he/she interacts with flora/fauna and other non-criminal persons via VR, thus eliminating the negative socialization (toward more criminal behavior) that now happens in prisons. Instead of commuting to work, you will teleport to a virtual office. VR offices will start out looking like standard offices but rapidly change in appearance and function (just as early use of movie technology started out by filming stage productions before special effects, animation and other movie-making technologies developed). You could play virtual tennis, via the internet, with another distant player, by hitting a virtual ball with each player in their own half-court, but why bother when newer VR sports (involving flying and size/shape morphing, with objects being manipulated, that can also change appearance/size/function, have now become possible). Robots will become more advanced, able to carry boxes up/down stairs and understand a limited amount of human language, and so will appear, more and more, alongside humans to aid in performing tasks that, right now, only humans can perform. My own guess, however, is that it may take a bit more than 50 years before a robotic plumber can come to your house, listen to your complaints and then crawl under your home, spot the problem and repair your broken sewage pipe. Whether or not the next 50 years is socially beneficial or not will depend, not on AI technology but on how political and legal systems adapt to the change. If the control and benefits of AI are broadly shared then we could end up with a much shorter work week, greatly improved quality of life and more leisure time (most likely spent in virtual social environments. Consider music today – for every single live musical event you attend, you will listen to virtual music, via your earbuds, a thousand times). In contrast, if power and wealth become more and more concentrated (with increased wealth enabling more and more control of political/social systems, in order to concentrate yet more wealth and power) then future humans might end up in a dystopian society, in which everything we see and do is logged (trivial to achieve in any VR environment) and used against anyone who wants to broaden social control over AI technologies. Doberman Pinscher-shaped robotic police could terrify and destroy any group that protests against a social order defined by a completely hollowed-out middle class. Finally, even if dystopian futures can be avoided in the next 50 years, what happens to humanity, once GAI systems (that are faster learners, more creative, more knowledgeable than the smartest humans, who can meta-reason like humans, e.g. abandon and/or take up new goals and beliefs) are mass-produced? A human takes 25 years to obtain a Ph.D. and humans reproduce sexually. In contrast, GAI systems will reproduce via factory-based, mass reproduction (directed by GAIs themselves). Once one synthetic entity learns a task, other synthetic entities could download its software and instantly possess its knowledge and skills because computer-based intelligence is universal, in the sense that any computer can mimic any other computing device (be it statistical, neural or logic based). One of the greatest existential threats to humanity will be, not AI, but GAI. Our humanity is based in our bodies, not our minds (when comparing ourselves to synthetic entities with similar or greater mental capabilities). Synthetic GAI entities will not be born; they will not grow from children into adults; they will not grow old and die. They will not urinate or defecate. They will not have sex. Change the embodiment of mind and you change what it means to be human. GONE would be the following: Disney movies (since no children), romantic novels (since no sex) and all experiences based on bodily desires (recharge batteries vs. good meal at a restaurant). If GAI is allowed then elimination of humanity will occur, either via general spread of GAI entities or by development of a single, super-intelligence GAI.”

Judith Donath, author of “The Social Machine, Designs for Living Online” and faculty fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman-Klein Center for Internet and Society, commented, “Over the next half century the internet will become fully integrated with the physical world, including the human body. For the first 50 years the internet was ‘virtual.’ Data was abstract and intangible, glimpsed and awkwardly handled via the screen/ keyboard portal. Indeed, for first half of that period online communication was primarily text; it was not until the advent of the web that images and sound – more sensory media – were part of the experience. Over the next 50 years we’ll see the internet become fully integrated with the physical world. Input will come from sensors embedded everywhere: Cameras are already becoming ubiquitous and in the coming decades walls (and roads, furniture, toys, etc.) themselves will effectively be sense organs – hearing, seeing, smelling and generally gathering information about everything in their vicinity. The output will be the control of physical objects – cars, house doors, heart valves, hydro-power dams. Indeed, our entire environment with be part of the internet. For example, water will be an increasingly scarce and valuable resource – and every faucet, hose and pipe will be connected to the internet, its flow centrally controlled by algorithms that determine who receives how much water, when and where. Everything that changes – living things, machines, natural phenomena – produces information, and all that information will be monitored, and to the extent that it can be, it will be controlled.  People everywhere, rich and poor, will be integrated into this network. We will have implants (voluntarily adopted by the wealthy when introduced in guise of ‘wellness enhancement;’ involuntarily embedded in the poor and marginalized when they enter jail, refugee camps, detox centers) that both monitor and modify us. These implants will monitor our mood, our attention, our hunger for food, sex, admiration or shiny new goods. They’ll sedate the aggressive and sell to the vulnerable, optimally tuning our mood and energy for our current situation. Our senses, too, will be modified – we’ll perceive the world with an omnipresent augmentation, seeing and hearing our surroundings and the people around us through a lens and soundtrack that subtly but powerfully guide and shape our impressions and interactions. The big question is ‘optimal for whom?’ followed close behind by ‘what is optimal?’ Is a permanently sedated mass population plus an energized, cognitively over-clocked elite optimal? Is a nation of insatiable shoppers, its GDP ever growing, optimal? Embedded in the physical world, the internet of the next 50 years will enable unprecedented social control. In the next 50 years, the internet will be physically integrated with our bodies and environment; we will live under ceaseless surveillance and powerful control. This will produce significant change – that is mostly for the better for individuals’ lives. This answer is a bit of a provocation: That vision of the future will certainly not be good for individual liberty. But we are now facing unprecedented, life-changing and potentially life-ending environmental crises. Western civilization, pinnacle of individual liberty, has culminated in the reckless and wasteful consumption of the Earth’s natural resources: We’ve polluted the water, paved over the land, cut down the forests, strip mined the mountains. Confronted with the apocalyptic specter of human-induced mass extinctions and disastrous climate change, we as a species appear to have chosen to do nothing – to continue on the same path that got us here, buying, burning and birthing as if tomorrow simply did not exist. If we – and the myriad other species we share this planet with – are to survive into the next century, the billions of us humans will need to radically change our behavior. It will take extraordinary measures over the next 50 years to get us to eat less, buy less, reproduce less. I see few signs of us moving in that direction in a serious fashion left to our own devices. But now imagine an artificially intelligent government, programmed to re-balance humans and the natural world as painlessly as possible. Though there would be no privacy from the machine government’s ceaseless sensing, it would be a pleasant world. We would enjoy an apparent wealth of choice – the illusion of liberty. In reality, personal agency would be quite minimal, our desires redirected, and our behavior shaped by subtle, powerful nudges. It may be the only hope we have left.”

Frank Kaufmann, president of Filial Projects and founder and director of the Values in Knowledge Foundation, said, “Virtually nothing from today’s internet will be recognizable 50 years from now. Connectivity will become ever more ethereal and divorced from devices. Speeds will have exceeded what can any longer be sensed by the human organism. Storage will seem limitless, as it will exceed all possible need. Most connectivity will be integrated into the biological organism. Devices will exist only to serve motor and spatial needs for creativity, but they will not exist in any way limiting or binding human expression. Tech will enable creative people to create more. It will enable good people to do more good. It will enable lazy people to be more lazy. It will enable bad people to do more bad. It will enable family and social people to be closer and more loving. It will enable lonely and isolated people to become more isolated. It will enable radical advances in all things people do – sports, arts, medicine, science, literature, nature exploration, etc.”

Kyle Rose, principal architect, Akamai Technologies, responded, “As valuable as the internet is today, its potential as a conduit for human knowledge and collaboration has barely been tapped. As telepresence and VR become more than research projects or toys, the already small world will shrink further as remote collaboration becomes the norm, resulting in major social changes, among them allowing the recent concentration of expertise in major cities to relax and reducing the relevance of national borders. Furthermore, deep learning and AI-assisted technologies for software development and verification, combined with more abstract primitives for executing software in the cloud, will enable even those not trained as software engineers to precisely describe and solve complex problems. As telepresence and VR become more than research projects or toys, the already small world will shrink further as remote collaboration becomes the norm, resulting in major social changes, among them allowing the recent concentration of expertise in major cities to relax and reducing the relevance of national borders. Furthermore, deep learning- and AI-assisted technologies for software development and verification, combined with more abstract primitives for executing software in the cloud, will enable even those not trained as software engineers to precisely describe and solve complex problems. I strongly suspect there will be other, unpredictable disruptive social changes analogous to the freer movement of capital enabled by cryptocurrencies in the last decade.”

Ken Goldberg, distinguished chair in engineering, director of AUTOLAB and CITRIS at the University of California – Berkeley, said, “The internet and related Internet of Things networks will free robots and automation systems that are currently limited by onboard resources in computation, memory or software. ‘Cloud Robotics and Automation’ (CRA) will be a paradigm where robots and automation systems share data and code and perform computation via networks building on emerging research in cloud computing, deep learning, big data, open-source software and government/industry initiatives. CRA systems can be broadly defined as any robot or automation system that relies on data or code from a network to support its operation, i.e., where not all sensing, computation and memory is integrated into a single standalone system. Advantages to using the Cloud include: 1) Big data: access to updated libraries of images, maps and object/product data, 2) Cloud computing: access to parallel grid computing on demand for statistical analysis, learning and motion planning, 3) Collective learning: robots and systems sharing trajectories, control policies and outcomes, and 4) Human computation: use of crowdsourcing to tap human skills for analyzing images and video, classification, learning and error recovery. The Cloud can also provide access to a) datasets, publications, models, benchmarks and simulation tools, b) open competitions for designs and systems and c) open-source software. It is important to recognize that CRA raises critical new questions related to network latency, quality of service, privacy and security. I believe the question we’re facing is not, ‘When will machines surpass human intelligence?’ but instead ‘How can humans work together with machines in new ways?’ Rather than worrying about an impending Singularity, I propose the concept of Multiplicity: where diverse combinations of people and machines work together to solve problems and innovate. In analogy with the 1910 High School Movement that was spurred by advances in farm automation, I propose a ‘Multiplicity Movement’ to evolve the way we learn to emphasize the uniquely human skills that AI and robots cannot replicate: creativity, curiosity, imagination, empathy, human communication, diversity and innovation. AI systems can provide universal access to sophisticated adaptive testing and exercises to discover the unique strengths of each student and to help each student amplify his or her strengths. AI systems could support continuous learning for students of all ages and abilities. Rather than discouraging the human workers of the world with threats of an impending Singularity, let’s focus on Multiplicity where advances in AI and robots can inspire us to think deeply about the kind of work we really want to do, how we can change the way we learn and how we might embrace diversity to create a myriad of new partnerships.”

Joaquin Vanschoren, assistant professor of Machine Learning at Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands, responded, “I expect that we will be able to interact with each other and the world’s information more directly, without going through web interfaces, maybe using a brain-internet interface. A lot more content will be generated automatically, by AI systems that help us fill in the holes in our knowledge and make it more easily accessible. To answer by example, take today’s smartphones. They help us do things much more efficiently and give us quicker access to information. Some of us struggle with this capability (e.g., it makes us more distracted), but, overall, we learn how to use them meaningfully. In 50 years’ time, we will have devices (our brain interfaces?) that will allow us to do a lot more and access a lot more information much faster. We will need to learn how to use this well. We will need to teach our children how to use this well. We will need new ethics and rules to use it well. But overall, I believe we can do this. A prerequisite is that technology is heavily democratized, so that anyone has equal access to it, regardless of the place of conditions they grew up in.”

John Lazzaro, retired professor of electrical engineering and computer science, University of California – Berkeley, commented, “Fifty years from now, we will return to Steve Jobs’ original vision of computers as bicycles for the mind. As someone whose first job in technology was stocking shelves in a Radio Shack, years before the first personal computer appeared in the store, I am lucky enough to remember life before Steve articulated his vision. I then watched the vision’s ascent, and its current fall from grace. Today, as I walk down the street, and see people walking with their attention captured by their phone screen, I wonder how it all went so wrong. The only thing more depressing is the content that appears on their screen, and the cultural impact that the content has on us all. I believe the way forward starts with an acceptance of the human condition: We are an easily addicted species, and our evolutionary survival depended on prioritizing ‘thinking fast’ over ‘thinking slow’ in many contexts. Today, from the application user interface up to the economic ecosystem, platforms often exploit human foibles for profit, just as Marlboro Man and Virginia Slims billboards did in the 1970s. The first step in the journey of the next 50 years is reaching a consensus that an addictive approach to the digital world is not sustainable. And that the profit motive, like discipline, is a means to an end, and not an end to itself (to paraphrase Robert Fripp). Technology options can inform the journey’s second step. On the device level, Mark Weiser pointed us to the right direction with the concept of ubiquitous computing in 1988, and the many iterations of this concept in the decades since provide a good foundation for a world where a computer is not a cigarette. The mature mechanical devices (for example, venetian window blinds) and electro-mechanic devices (for example, electric shavers) in our lives do not foster addictive responses and have benign business models. If we rethink the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ of digital devices in our lives, we can remake them in the same positive way. I believe the greatest changes to a society happen as existing infrastructure adapts to a technology transition. For the 2019-2069 timeframe, I would say that self-driving electric-vehicle robo-taxi services replacing owner-operated gasoline-powered cars would be such a transition.  The land-use changes that this transition will transform the built environment, much in the same ways that the transition from horses to automobiles did over a century ago. A few refinery clusters will remain for chemicals and specialized fuels, but most will be shut down, along with most gas stations and fuel pipelines. Land use devoted to parking will be dramatically downscaled, and roadways will use ‘smart city’ technologies to leverage the fact that the vehicle drivers are networked computers, not humans. The concept of a drunk driver will fade from cultural memory. Human health will improve in many ways, from reduced auto accident trauma to reduced respiratory illness.”

Larry Lannom, internet pioneer and vice president at the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI), an expert in digital object architecture, said, “Fifty years from now is impossible to predict at any level of detail, especially when dealing with computing and network technologies. Helpful to look at the progress of other technologies, for which most people incorrectly predicted ‘better/faster/bigger’ for things like mail delivery (we would still have physical mail, but it will come faster via rockets) or the telephone (great technology – every town will want a phone). So, one easy prediction is plenty of unexpected and unintended consequences, some good some bad. It also seems clear that computing and network technologies will cease to be separate activities using separate devices and will be further integrated into our normal interactions with the world, e.g., augmented reality and constantly aware digital assistants serving and advising us throughout the day, ubiquitous and always on. I am an optimist and I hope all of these advances will, overall, be for the better. But I worry about the ownership and use of ubiquitous computing and network technologies – will they be used to control the masses for the benefit of the few or will the benefits apply to all? It will almost surely be a mix of the two and we should be working today to ensure that the balance of advances will go to improving the general welfare.”

Walid Al-Saqaf, senior lecturer at Sodertorn University, member of the board of trustees of the Internet Society (ISOC) and vice president of the ISOC Blockchain Special Interest Group, commented, “The biggest change in my lifetime will be in having the internet as the basis for the next digital decentralized economic revolution powered by distributed ledger technologies such as blockchain. With consolidation on the internet as an ongoing threat to democracy and fairness to citizens, there will be a greater tendency to move to alternative decentralized solutions that aim at empowering citizens more directly as bitcoin did. That being said, I expect a pushback by governments and conglomerates that will fight to remain in power, leading to an inevitable clash of wills. At the end of the day, it will be mass adoption of which technology that will determine who will win. I am hopeful in that the use of technology at large including AI will witness positive progress to add to what we do and improve it so it is done more efficiently and with lower cost. There will be challenges but we will overcome them.”

Andrew Tutt, an expert in law and author of “An FDA for Algorithms,” which called for “critical thought about how best to prevent, deter, and compensate for the harms that they cause,” said, “We are still only about to enter the era of complex automation. It will revolutionize the world and lead to groundbreaking changes in transportation, industry, communication, education, energy, health care, communication, entertainment, government, warfare and even basic research. Self-driving cars, trains, semi-trucks, ships and airplanes will mean that goods and people can be transported farther, faster and with less energy and with massively fewer vehicles. Automated mining and manufacturing will further reduce the need for human workers to engage in rote work. Machine language translation will finally close the language barrier, while digital tutors, teachers and personal assistants with human qualities will make everything from learning new subjects to booking salon appointments faster and easier. For businesses, automated secretaries, salespeople, waiters, waitress, baristas and customer support personnel will lead to cost savings, efficiency gains and improved customer experiences. Socially, individuals will be able to find AI pets, friends and even therapists who can provide the love and emotional support that many people so desperately want. Entertainment will become far more interactive, as immersive AI experiences come to supplement traditional passive forms of media. Energy generation and health care will vastly improve with the addition of powerful AI tools that can take a systems-level view of operations and locate opportunities to gain efficiencies in design and operation. AI-driven robotics (e.g., drones) will revolutionize warfare. Finally, intelligent AI will contribute immensely to basic research and likely begin to create scientific discoveries of its own. Because AI will be so pervasive, we will need to think carefully about how it is regulated. How our society decides to organize ownership, responsibility and control over powerful AI will importantly affect who benefits from it and how beneficial it proves to be. Much of the legacy infrastructure of the world will remain in 2069. There will still be analog ways of interacting with the world, and much of the world’s population will only benefit intermittently and haphazardly from the incredible changes AI will reap for the world’s industrialized economies. The basics of the internet – a worldwide web, essential services like Google and Wikipedia (even if not literally Google and Wikipedia) – will still be available to be accessed with a keyboard and a computer screen, even in 2069. But everything will be different. Those services will be the minimum. Perhaps they will be enough to allow a child with sufficient potential and gumption to rise out of poverty anywhere in the world. Whether the internet and AI will prove great levelers, however, is the greatest open question of our time. I am terrifically optimistic that advances in digital technology will vastly improve people’s lives over the next 50 years. Information will become more freely available. Everything will become cheaper. Miserable work – cleaning up after others, serving others, engaging in rote repeated thankless tasks – will continue its slow march to extinction. Our massively improved capacity to deal with suffering, both emotional and physical, is probably among the least appreciated advances we will make. Empathetic machines will go a long way toward making people feel less lonely and more important. They may also help to teach us to be more moral. Digital technology will also help to make the necessities of life available to more people, and in so doing, will lift billions of people further out of poverty. Barring some catastrophe – that would surely be due more to human hubris than AI – our lives will be remarkably better in a half century than they are today.”

Mark Crowley, an assistant professor expert in machine learning and core member of the Institute for Complexity and Innovation at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, wrote, “Predicting the development of the internet is a doomed pursuit in a way. Very few people could have predicted any, let alone all, of the advances we have today and how they’ve arranged themselves. The two most solid predictions I could make are that we would call the internet from our perspective 50 years from now will first, be very surprising to us now, and second, not be understood by people of the future as ‘the internet.’ Networking and communication will be so integrated and essential to modern life that they won’t be able to conceive of it as its own system, much like we can’t conceive of civilization without books or writing itself. I doubt any of the current internet companies will exist with the names they have now, having been swallowed up, collapsed or merged. At least two or three entire computer/communication/networking industries will emerge and fade away within that time. On the other hand, perhaps 50 such industries will emerge and fade.  If we are cautious and assume the world 50 years from now is at least intelligible to use now, I would predict the major differences we would notice would involve embedded chips and technology in human beings. This could be direct brain interfaces or even much simpler things like microphones and sensors in our teeth, ears, limbs and hands to allow seamless interaction with digital systems without people starting to actually look like the Borg. I expect that over the next 50 years, and hopefully much sooner, that society really grapples with and comes to some consensus about privacy and data and communication. I expect over that period there will essentially be digital civil wars as companies, governments and individuals fight for the digital rights and structure that they want, and hopefully some combination of individuals and responsible, representative government wins the day. The question should in fact have another response, which is that the change will have a huge impact but determining if it is positive or negative is very difficult or impossible to determine. Technology affects people asymmetrically. Diseases will be cured with machine learning, profits will rise with automation and artists, engineers and scientists will be able to do more with less time and resources than ever before. However, many people will lose the only jobs they’ve ever known, and many others will feel alienated and left behind. Will society take steps to adapt its social standards? Will education adapt to prepare each generation for the reality ahead rather than focusing on the past? Will we allow people to live, with dignity, their own life, even if rapid technological changes leave them without a job that we would traditionally call ‘useful’ or productive? That depends on politics.”

Dan Schultz, senior creative technologist at Internet Archive, responded, “The world is about to have a LOT more time on its hands, a culture-redefining level of newfound time. Governments will need to figure out how to ensure people are compensated for that time in ways that don’t correlate to capitalistic value, and people are going to need creative outlets for their free time. We’re going to need better mental health services; we’re going to need to finally redefine the public education system to shift away from the 19th century factory model. It will either be a golden age for invention, leisure, entertainment and civic involvement, or it will be a dystopia of boredom and unemployment. I’m choosing to be optimistic at the individual level, and pessimistic at the systemic level. Individuals are going to have a lot of time saved, the question is how that time will get reallocated!”

Peter Reiner, professor and co-founder of the National Core for Neuroethics at the University of British Columbia, Canada, commented, “First, let me say that it is quite difficult to imagine what happens in 50 years’ time to a technology that is as fluid as the internet. In part because of its distributed nature and in part because of the inventiveness of humans, I think that the internet will be barely recognizable in five decades’ time. One feature of the internet that I believe will continue to grow is that it will remain a conduit for information about us, as well as a tool for us to access information about the world. Whilst many commentators rightly worry about the degree to which apps can know about us today, I believe that we are only at the early stages of corporate and governmental surveillance of our inner lives. In 50 years’ time, apps will be remarkably more sophisticated in terms of their knowledge about us as agents – our wants and desires, our objectives and goals. Using that information, they will be able make decisions that align with our personal goals much better than they can do today, and as this happens they will become bona fide extensions of our minds – digital (or as seems likely, quantum-based) information processing interfaces that are always available and seamlessly integrate with the human cognitive toolkit. These cognitive prostheses will be so much a part of our everyday lives that we will barely notice their existence. Our reliance upon them will be both a strength and a weakness. Our cognitive prowess will substantially expand, but we will feel diminished in their absence. I am an optimist, and anticipate that a broad coalition of public watchdogs, corporate entities and government regulation will align to think deeply about how digital technologies can affect our wellness as humans. I think things may get a bit choppy for a while, and it may take a few incidents that rise to the level of crisis, but in the end I think we will respond as a collective to reign in the power of surveillance capitalism so that the harms are minimized and the benefits are maximized.”

Michael M. Roberts, internet pioneer, first president and CEO of ICANN and Internet Hall of Fame member, responded, “In early internet days, we focused on moving bits. Even then, the sociology of the net was as important as the technology – for example, overcoming the powerful lobbying of the telco monopolies that wished to continue a top-down, command and control approach to communications. With every successive expansion of use and functionality, the impact on broader aspects of human existence has grown, so much so that we now read apocalyptic scenarios in the press every day. Two big forces are at work and will essentially be gating factors going forward. The first is disintermediation of existing structures and processes as technological advancement opens new application niches. For example, body sensors to obviate the ‘more art than science’ approaches that medicine currently takes to assessing human health. The second is the rate of assimilation of digital technology into human existence, including not only the physical aspects of life, but the metaphysical – for example, the collision between many aspects of organized religion and the ever-expanding base of evidence-based knowledge about the universe and the place of homo sapiens in it. The current vernacular shorthand for conflicts over assimilation is ‘disruption,’ a phenomenon both welcomed and abhorred. For the next 50 years, welcome to ‘Life on the Edge.’ Struggles over the distribution of wealth and power, mediated by technology, will be more transparent (not totally transparent!), and vastly more distributed as technology enables more and more individual power. Whether all this degenerates into active warfare is not foreseeable, but certainly possible. The attention of leaders will be focused on the downsides of assimilation – empowering pathology, enabling abuse of wealth, etc. Away from the headlines, there is a reservoir of commitment to a humane existence that I believe will prevail as it has in the past. The history of our species is filled with desire for exploration. Human exploration today is approaching frontiers of knowledge not dreamed of until recently, especially those associated with what makes us tick as sentient beings. The algorithms that power AI are derived from our own intelligence, and the more we know about ourselves, the better the uses of AI will be as the role of AI is expanded in our lives. Thus far, the role of the internet and its applications in human society has been overwhelmingly positive. The good outweighs the bad by a large margin. Are there reasons for worry? Yes. Are they likely to deter healthy progress? A resounding NO!”

Dave Gusto, professor of political science and co-director of the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University, said, “Fifty years a is terrifically long time for forecasting. A lot might be riding on, for example, what happens with the current conflict around net neutrality and the way that public or private interests get to shape the net from now forward. But within either pathway – public-interest-dominated or private-interest-dominated – the ability of some actors to enjoy the highest-end benefits and many actors to use what they can access or can manage to learn is a likely contour to the overall system. I think that vast diversity of uses will characterize the system, focusing on experience, entertainment and education, enhanced by AR and VR. Experience, entertainment and education are good things in people’s lives, and those who have appropriate access to these goods will benefit and potentially flourish.”

Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy and author of “Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future,” said, “The promise of the internet was that it would create a world of more widely-shared information, knowledge, opportunity and power. In some ways, this has happened, but there has also been a significant increase in economic concentration, reflecting the economics of economics of scale (high fixed costs and low or zero marginal costs for information) and the economics of networks, including two-sided or multi-sided networks, which often tend to support winner-take-most or power law distributions and increased concentration. We need to be vigilant to maintain government’s traditional role in anti-trust, while also re-inventing the theory of anti-trust for this new landscape. I don’t think the right framing is ‘will the outcome be good, or bad?’ but rather it must be ‘how will we shape the outcome, which is currently indeterminate?’ I’m hopeful that we will make the right choices, but only if we realize that the good outcomes are not at all inevitable. They are completely contingent on our choices and a great deal of hard work.”

Doug Schepers, chief technologist at Fizz Studio, said, “We will need a government-recognized, decentralized form of identity (or identities) that includes pseudonymity and anonymity as well as accountability. How humans treat other humans, and the degree to which they can and will be held accountable, is the most crucial aspect of communications technology. At the same time, society will have to adapt to ‘digital forgiveness,’ so past recorded mistakes can either be purged or contextualized for later in a person’s life. Accountability and mutual understanding have already made a meaningful change in the lives of minorities, both for good and for ill. The technology is less important than the laws, policies and social norms that we as a society will adopt to adapt to it.”

Danil Mikhailov, head of data and innovation for Wellcome Trust, responded, “Fifty years is a long time but it is worth remembering that since 1968 far less has changed than we expected in some areas. In all the excitement about the Moon Landing, for example, many would have confidently predicted bases on the Moon and Mars by 2018. On the other hand, in the 1980s the predictions about space were all to do with the chance of real confrontation between the United States and the USSR. Neither the positive nor the apocalyptic vision of space proved accurate. On the other hand, it’s worth considering plastic: Back in the 1960s it was the magic new material. Now, 50 years on, although it has proved to be more useful and versatile than we ever imagined, we worry about plastic’s effects on our oceans and health. These two examples demonstrate a bias about technological predictions: We tend to over-estimate the transformative effects, whether good or bad, of the big ideas and under-estimate the potential effects of smaller-scale technologies like plastic, again, whether good or bad. Which category will the digital world and internet of the future fall into? My hunch is that it will prove to be both. There will be a lot of talk about big ideas like the Singularity and General Artificial Intelligence, which will not be borne out by the facts, largely because no way would be found to resolve the bootstrap paradox. On the other hand, we should expect enormous disruption to our society from narrower and ‘stupider’ AI and its combination with internet and mobile technology, whether in smart devices, vehicles or wearables. In health, the pervasiveness of powerful algorithms embedded in mobile tech doing things like monitoring our vitals and cross-referencing with our genetic information, will mean longer and healthier lives and disappearance of many diseases. However, if we do not manage things well, there might be huge inequalities in our societies in the ability of individuals to access such technologies. The dystopian future envisaged in the film ‘Gattaca’ (1997) is all too possible. One thing we should do now, to avoid this, is to invest much more in social and ethical analysis of the potential impacts of algorithms, software and devices we create. That means sociologists working side by side with software developers and data scientists, testing their ideas and informing the choices that they make. My view is that the internet and related digital tech such as AI 50 years from now will have mostly positive effects, but only if we manage its development wisely. In health, the pervasiveness of powerful algorithms embedded in mobile tech doing things like monitoring our vitals and cross-referencing with our genetic information, will mean longer and healthier lives and the disappearance of many diseases. Similarly, AI embedded in devices or wearables can be applied to predict and ameliorate many mental health illnesses. However, there is potential for there to be huge inequalities in our societies in the ability of individuals to access such technologies, causing both social disruption and new causes for mental health diseases, such as depression and anxiety. On balance, I am an optimist about the ability of human beings to adjust and develop new ethical norms for dealing with such issues. As discussed in my previous answer, the one thing we should do now is to invest much more in social and ethical analysis of the potential impacts of algorithms, software and devices we create. That means sociologists working side by side with software developers and data scientists, testing their ideas and informing the choices that they make.”

Geoff Arnold, CTO for the Verizon Smart Communities organization, said, “I see two complementary trends. In one, physical and virtual ‘spaces’ converge: Real time interpersonal interaction is all about being ‘in the sane space.’ Think shared AR/VR, virtual selfies. In the second, we delegate most asynchronous interactions to ‘personal agents.’ Nobody ‘answers the phone;’ instead our agents conduct policy-based negotiations which may lead to arranging an interaction in shared space (physical or virtual). One possible consequence: I may ask my agent to represent me at a physical/virtual event. How do I trust it to do so? Better health. Less freedom. Less loneliness. Less work.”

Yvette Wohn, director of the Social Interaction Lab and expert on human-computer interaction at New Jersey Institute of Technology, commented, “Despite the internet being a system that enables peer-to-peer interaction in the past 50 years we have seen it enable the corporate broker in scales unprecedented. Amazon, Facebook, Spotify and Uber are just few examples of these brokers. The roles of these brokers will slowly change so that they have less power and decentralization will bring back individual and small businesses. Technology always has and always will bring positive and negative consequences, but the positives will be so integral to our lives that going back will not be an option. Cars bring pollution, noise and congestion but that doesn’t mean we’re going back to the horse and buggy. We find newer solutions, innovation.”

Barry Chudakov, founder and principal of Sertain Research and author of “Metalifestream,” commented, “In 50 years the internet will not be a place to access through a device; it will be the all-surrounding ether of actions and intentions as machine intelligence and learning merge with human intelligence. This will be a natural evolution of adopting the logic of our tools and adjusting our lives accordingly. Pathways to digital life will be neural pathways inside our bodies and brains. We will eat our technology. What is now external mediated through devices will become neural, mediated through neural triggers along neural pathways. Having gone (and living) inside us, the merger with our tools and devices will continue to accelerate due to advances in machine learning. Human identity will morph into an open question, an ongoing discussion. Who am I when consciousness extends (extended mind) into our environment, into things, into others? By then the internet will be the Internet of Things with intelligence in everything, and with our own consciousness part of that intelligence. Moral quandaries will grow richer and deeper. We will ponder security as privacy and recognition, or lack thereof, as freedom. With all human movement and actions creating waves of response, the ability not to be recognized will assume greater importance and will be the identifier (and pride) of the wealthy. Those who can pay for a degree of anonymity will; those who cannot will be at the mercy of ever more sophisticated monitoring and recognition technologies. Today we have platform companies. This will morph along the following equitation: platform = brand = identity = person = persona. Due to monitoring, recognition and tracking technologies, knowledge of behavior will lead to behavior modification and enhancement routines. Boundaries of self will evolve and change. We will discover, and will be focused on, meta-awareness. Aware of our awareness, we will question our ‘path of least resistance’ practice of turning over functions of thinking and responding to AI and algorithmic tools. We will be obliged to raise our meta-awareness. We will have gotten too smart to be stupid about how our tools change us. Nonetheless, neuro-digital tools will be integrated into daily life – we will ingest them and then navigate the enlivened world with them. Changes in digital life will change individuals in the next 50 years by changing, moving and dissolving boundaries. Boundaries of the self will evolve and change. As we further extend ourselves and our identities into digital and virtual spaces, digital life will fundamentally alter all knowledge starting with self-knowledge. Metalife – showing up as a ‘me’ in digital spaces – will challenge, modify and undermine our sense of self-completeness. We will embody the V. S. Ramachandran insight: “Your body image, despite all its appearance of durability, is an entirely transitory internal construct.”  Digital environments will become more immersive and more addictive, as computer games are for young boys (especially) today. Chips, implants and neuro-platforms will increasingly define our digital lives, and this will set up an ongoing debate for humanity about what it means to be human. Sometime in the next 50 years, we will enter Life 3.0, in Max Tegmark’s phrase, and this will be an intelligence explosion, ‘recursive self-improvement rapidly leading to superintelligence.’  This intelligence explosion will generate a new meta-awareness. We will be aware of ourselves using tools to be and present ourselves in digital life. We will see ourselves in these new behaviors changing who and what we are as we go about the actions of sending texts, tweets, posts or participating in online forums. A Fitbit level of data will accompany this new awareness and help us to realize what we are doing and help put our behavior into a larger context.”

Evan Selinger, a professor of philosophy at the Rochester Institute of Technology, commented, “Half a century from now, one of the biggest challenges will be what, in our book ‘Re-Engineering Humanity,’ Brett Frischmann and I call the right to be ‘off.’ Currently, it’s extremely hard for many of us to unplug. Unplugging is simply a luxury that most of us can’t afford. As internet connectivity expands to more and more interconnected devices, a robust Internet of Things infrastructure will keep expanding. The expansion will be fueled by a desire to acquire more personal and collective data and the ideal of ubiquitous algorithms acting upon integrated and aggregated big data will become harder to de-couple from smart living. In such a world, where will people find protected spaces for thinking critically about whether they are being programmed to behave in ways that diminish their agency and capacity to determine whose interests the unshakable, augmented intelligences really serve? Without major changes in how technology is developed and deployed, the normalization process will continue through which people are habituated to expect that increasing internet-enabled surveillance is inevitable. As our capacities to imagine genuine alternatives continue to weaken, we’ll find ourselves stuck with infrastructures and governance systems that are configured with affordances that are at odds with deliberation – deliberative politics and deliberative lifestyles.”

Betsy Williams, a researcher at the Center for Digital Society and Data Studies at the University of Arizona, wrote, “Privacy will be largely a luxury of the rich, who will pay extra for internet service providers, services and perhaps separate networks that protect privacy and security. At the other extreme, free internet-connected devices will be available to the poor in exchange for carrying around a sensor that records traffic speed, environmental quality, detailed usage logs, and video and audio recordings (depending on state law). There will be secure vote-by-internet capabilities, through credit card or passport verification, with other secure kiosks available at public facilities (police stations, libraries, fire stations and post offices, should those continue to exist in their current form). There will be a movement online to require real name verification to comment on more reputable sites; however, this will skew participation tremendously toward men, and the requirements will be reversed after a woman is assaulted or killed based on what she typed in a public-interest discussion. While AI in the hands of the marketplace will at first create stark winners and losers, over 50 years companies will only continue to see gains if they provide benefits to more people. Further, over 50 years, nonprofit groups, social service providers and others working in the public interest will have a chance to harness some of the power of artificial intelligence. This later wave will bring the benefits and opportunities of AI to most people.”

Bob Metcalfe, Hall of Fame co-inventor of Ethernet, founder of 3Com, now a professor of innovation and entrepreneurship at the University of Texas-Austin, said, “Better. We might be immortal by then. Surely current trends will continue, and poverty will be erased. Let freedom ring! In 50 years, people will not have to type in IP numbers. That’s a low bar. Anyway, I’m sorry about that. The Internet is not merely a network of networks. It is a network of networks of networks. The ARPANET was a network. In 1973 at Stanford, Vint Cerf wanted to network ARPANETs around the world in a network of networks. Meanwhile, I wanted to use the ARPANET to network Ethernets inside buildings. Both of us were right, and we got a network of networks of networks. This simultaneous growing up and down will continue, beyond Mars and down to molecules, somehow.”

Bart Knijnenburg, assistant professor of computer science active in the Human Factors Institute at Clemson University, said, “Put the computational power, sensors and connectivity of a modern smartphone into every single object in your life. This is where I think the Internet of Things will go: You can ‘ping’ any object to learn its location (where is my thermos?), its status (is it full or empty?), past interactions (when did I last use it?) and connections with other devices (what brand of coffee did I fill it with and which device brewed that coffee?). It has very powerful applications, but also severe implications for our privacy. Note though, that privacy concerns will not stop this future from happening. Privacy concerns have never stopped anything from happening. Don’t look for a killer app for AI; the automated and connected world will make our lives more convenient in many small and unforeseeable ways. It is the small benefits that will eventually create a point of no return for the adoption of AI in our lives. Two preconditions need to be met for this future to be mostly positive. One is a careful consideration for privacy. I don’t think privacy is necessarily going to be a bigger problem, but it is going to be much more complicated to manage. I believe that AI can be used to support privacy management as well. The other issue is fairness, both at the level of decision-making (do the outcomes of AI-based decisions equally benefit all groups in society?) as well as fairness of distribution (will all people have equal access to these new technologies, or will they only make the lives of the upper-class more convenient?).”

Alf Rehn, a professor of innovation, design and management in the school of engineering at the University of Southern Denmark, commented, “The curious thing will in all likelihood be how unaware we’ll be of the internet in 50 years. Today, the only time we really reflect on electricity and plumbing is when they break down. At other times, they’re just there, as self-evident as air. I believe we will look to digital tools in much the same way. We walk into a room and turn on our digital streams much like we turn on a light. We wonder how much money is in our bank account, and just ask the air, and the wall replies (“You’re slightly overdrawn. Shouldn’t have bought those shoes. I told you.”). We start cooking, and our kitchen gently suggests we stop doing the Thai fish stew, because we forgot to tell the kitchen we wanted to do that, so it hasn’t ordered fresh lemongrass. We’ll do a Mediterranean trout dish instead. The only time we reflect over any of this is when the net, for whatever reason, cuts out. It usually lasts only a few minutes, but for those minutes we become like children, stumbling around unsure what to do when not surrounded by endlessly helpful technology. Although it would be a chump’s bet to bet against technology benefiting us in the future, or against progress at large, I still think we need to be aware that the speed of progress will likely peter out. We will see development, for the better, but less and less of it. As Tyler Cowen has pointed out, we’ve picked a lot of the low-hanging fruit, and serious leaps will be more and more difficult in the future. Still, to combat things like ecological challenges and inequality in society, we need to keep working, even when the improvements may be increasingly hard to come by.”

Peter Eachus, director of psychology and public health at the University of Salford, U.K., responded, “The most fundamental change will be the way in which we interact with this connected technology. There won’t be tablets or smartphones or screens. We will be able to just think of a question and the answer will immediately come to mind! The Mindternet is the future!”

Stavros Tripakis, an associate professor of computer science at Aalto University (Finland) and adjunct at the University of California – Berkeley, wrote, “Misinformation and lack of education will continue and increase. Policing will also increase. Humanity needs a quantum leap in education (in the broad sense) to escape from the current political and economic state. Fifty years is not enough for this to happen.”

Cliff Lynch, director of the Coalition for Networked Information, responded, “In 2069 connectivity for most people in the first world will be ambient and ubiquitous. We will see better integration of routine services. Over the next 20 to 30 years I expect to see enormous renegotiation of the social, cultural and political norms involving the digital environment (including personal digital archiving and what happens to digital possessions after you die). We may see very new user interfaces (neural or otherwise) in this time frame, though they will be controversial. I hope we will see new art forms that live in the new digital world. Finally, we will see a constant struggle with various entities that try to exploit the digital environment, fabricate or alter history and current events, defraud or harass people, and the like; we seem to be very ineffective in addressing these problems, based on current experience. In most cases, it is going to be a very mixed picture, and the exact balance is hard to predict and yet critical. Also, we need to ask better or worse for whom? I don’t feel I’m competent to speak beyond the U.S. and perhaps the U.K., and almost certainly not even for all the people of those countries. Having said this, technology will INEVITABELY change lives, things will happen faster, some things will become easier (but not always when you think: many consumers loathe many aspects of the current world). I fear that deep reflection will be very scarce for most.”

Bernie Hogan, senior research fellow at Oxford Internet Institute, wrote, “The future of technology will be unrecognizable to us at the moment. Language is rapidly becoming more audiovisual, artificial intelligence is getting a personality and capitalism is extracting every last ounce of value from a dying planet. We currently worry about algorithmic transparency. I suspect this will fail, and in its place will be a sustained arms race of corporate bots that either advocate for or manipulate humans. We will train them the way we train pets and think of them as helpers. We already do, to a limited extent, but I am confident that personality will become a major distinction. When we see bots that have personalised relationships and a personality, things will start to get unpredictable. We will see increasing concerns with ‘unreality’ from high resolution rendered immersive video games. We will have ever more intense moral panics about sex as teenagers continue to frustrate norms until we finally acknowledge the challenges with giving everyone from an extremely early age a video-broadcasting device they take with them everywhere. It is likely we suffer through a true tragedy the likes of which has not been witnessed since the middle of the 20th century (with either the great leap forward, Stalinism or the Holocaust). This will be used to federate the internet. States appear to be continuously concerned with how to control the internet. This will not change, but it will get more intense. Meanwhile, those who are keen on crypto and dark net will increase their influence on sovereign economies. We will have ever more digital tools to manage our identity and we will inevitably trust them. At present Europe appears to lead the way on digital policy. When they have some sort of inevitable GDPR-based fight with a major tech company we will discover how far this really extends and whether Europe will take a principled stand or fall in line with much of the rest of the world in steering technology toward more effective social control. I suspect there will be at least one major genre of communication we will invent and scrutinize in that time. It will probably have something to do with more silence, such as sublingual or brain-interfaces. It is less likely to be an intrusive medium like talking to a machine or giant hand-waving. The irony is that I think tech will make life better for individuals but not for societies. Life-saving drugs, genetic medicine, effective talk therapy, better recommender systems will all serve individuals in a satisfying way. I am concerned, however, that these will create increased dependency and passivity. We already have trends toward being better behaved, less experimental and less sexually active youth. The increased sense that one’s entire life is marked from cradle to grave will create a safer and more productive life, but perhaps one that is a little less low-risk and constrained.”

Garland McCoy, founder and chief development officer of the Technology Education Institute, wrote, “On the first day there was analog voice and, behold, it was good. On the second day there was human generated data/content, and it was pleasing to the people. On the third day machines began to talk directly to machines and this was seen as excellent indeed. On the fourth day, machines began to design their own network of networks (e.g., LoRaWAN, a device-to-device architecture), and behold great efficiency spread out upon the land. On the fifth day humans began to leave their homes and assemble at the town square to talk among themselves face-to-face and this brought great joy to the multitudes. On the sixth day, just as the wise men from the Semiconductor Industry Association had predicted, the world was unable to generate enough electricity to feed all of the chips/devices the wise men had created and darkness descended upon the land. On the seventh day the people rested because that was all they could do. And so endeth the lesson.”

Henry E. Brady, dean, Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California – Berkeley, wrote, “The biggest impact of the internet has been the creation of self-governing communities of interest that use ‘hashtags’ or ‘likes’ or other mechanisms to ‘govern’ themselves. It seems likely that these communities will grow and expand, creating powerful groups in cyberspace that may approach or exceed nations in their power in the world through their ability to express their needs and preferences and to find ways to reward those who help them. It also seems possible that their power will stem partly from their ownership of information and robots that are important aspects of the world’s economy. Their power will also stem from their ability to exercise political and social authority through the dissemination of information and through political acts such as voting. It is not clear how all of this will work out, but it is important to remember that basic human desires for income, status and authority will remain. But the ways in which those things are allocated may change dramatically depending upon the way economic rights (e.g., to information, to one’s genome and other characteristics, to robots, to ideas, etc.), social rights (e.g., to status, to equitable treatment, to fame, to expression, etc.) and political rights (e.g., the ability to choose or influence choices through voting or other means) are distributed. Will, for example, the right of expression be limited by the right of people to live in psychologically secure environments? Will property rights extend to information about people? Will ‘demonstrations’ or ‘protests’ in virtual reality be regulated? Will governments or private companies control vast amounts of information? Will privacy largely be gone or protected by laws? Where will information be kept and who will own it? Will there be periodic ‘purging’ of information about people (alive or deceased) that requires elaborate legal proceedings and/or social rituals akin to funerals? It seems to me that we are just at the beginning of a great deal of social invention that has to be undertaken to deal with the capabilities of the internet, AI, the cloud, robots, the Internet of Things and many other developments. There is also the dystopian possibility of authoritarian regimes that look like Stalin’s USSR but with much more effective methods of monitoring, manipulation and control. I am an optimist. We can find ways to deal with the difficult problems that we face. Just as new transportation methods led to vast changes in commerce, society and politics in the 19th century, I believe that the world will find ways to cope with the big changes that follow from AI. At the same time, I recognize that the story of the 20th century was largely the rise of terrible totalitarian regimes that committed awful crimes against humanity. Still, I believe that the promise of the new technologies is very exciting. We are finding ways to make the world more interesting, to equip individuals with tremendous powers of cognition and action, to replace backbreaking and mind-numbing jobs, and to develop new ways to enjoy being alive. The biggest challenge is to remember that we must also make sure that we continue to make life meaningful for people while protecting their basic autonomy and freedoms.”

Kenneth Grady, futurist, founding author of The Algorithmic Society blog and adjunct and adviser at the Michigan State University College of Law, responded, “Fifty years from now, digital life will have merged with the internet. Digital things will be connected to the internet all the time. We will be in ‘always connected, always on’ societies. The ramifications of this evolution are hard for us to imagine. Today’s notions of privacy will feel as out of date as horse and buggy transportation feels to us. Our homes, transportation, appliances, communication devices and even our clothes will be constantly communicating as part of a digital network. We have enough pieces of this today that we can somewhat imagine what it will be like. Through our clothes, doctors can monitor in real time our vital signs, metabolic condition and markers relevant to specific diseases. Parents will have real-time information about young children. The difference in the future will be the constant sharing of information, data updates and responses of all these interconnected devices. The things we create will interact with us to protect us. Our notions of privacy and even liability will be redefined. Lowering the cost and increasing the effectiveness of health care will require sharing information about how our bodies are functioning. Those who opt out may have to accept palliative hospice care over active treatment. Not keeping track of children real-time may be considered a form of child neglect. Digital will do more than connect our things to each other – it will invade our bodies. Advances in prosthetics, replacement organs and implants will turn our bodies into digital devices. This will create a host of new issues, including defining ‘human’ and where the line exists between that human and the digital universe (if you are ‘always connected, always on’ are humans now part of the internet?). These topics and questions barely touch on the biggest challenge of our future digital life. How will we govern ourselves and our societies in light of these momentous changes? Today, we are struggling to adapt to mild advances in areas such as robotics. We need to invest significantly more to develop how we want societies to work as the digital world advances. Whether we will be better off in 50 years as a result of digital advancements is a tricky question, not because of the technology but because we must predict human behavior. Unquestionably, advances in the digital world have the potential to improve the human condition. The questions are how humans will adapt to those advances and whether humans can effectively control digital advances. There are reasons to be optimistic that humans will adapt well to digital advances. We have a history of adapting to changes and using them to improve the human condition. We also have a long runway ahead of us. If we diligently examine the issues that digital advances will make, we can sort out what we want to do to respond to those issues and how we want to do it. The changes will not come all at once, so we have time to adapt. The second question –can we effectively control digital advances – is far more challenging. In the past, major threats such as nuclear war or biological agents required significant resources, both human and capital, to create. Threats from digital advances require neither. There is no question that having such resources can make a person or country a more powerful adversary. But major threats also can come from a few individuals with off-the-shelf hardware. This is where we need to concentrate more preventive efforts. How do we stop the rogue individuals?”

Bill Woodcock, executive director at Packet Clearing House, the research organization behind global network development, commented, “As the internet passes 50, we find that its momentum, the momentum of the billions of parallel investments which are making it happen, makes it less and less flexible and adaptable over time. The fundamental and necessary repairs to this airplane-in-flight, like IPv6, DNSSEC, DANE and BCP38, are taking longer and longer to deploy, and achieving less complete ubiquity. Eventually this process of ossification will complete, and the internet will be ready to be succeeded by the next big communications mechanism, whatever that may be – perhaps quantum networking, which is today at about the stage of growth that the internet had reached by 1971, or perhaps something else entirely. In another 50 years, the internet will still exist, as the rail transportation network does today, but like rail, its use will mainly be limited to legacy purposes, and there will be some new communications mechanism that will be the equivalent of today’s air travel network. By far the most significant change that technology has wrought in the last century is safe drinking water. The technological changes that matter are the ones that allow people to live safe and pleasant lives, pursuing intellectual challenge and pleasure, rather than simply trying to stay alive. The biggest future challenges apparent right now are the destruction of the natural environment that supports our need for sufficient and non-toxic food, air and water, and the increasingly unequal division of wealth and societal benefits. To the degree that AI and communications technologies can empower individuals without further aggravating those problems, they’re for the good. But that’s not how they’re being used right now. Right now they’re largely being used to exploit human psychological weaknesses for very short-term gains for a very few people, and any benefits the rest of the world derives along the way exist merely to sweeten the pot. This is a consequence of combining unbridled capitalism with technology in the absence of empathetic humanity or public responsibility.”

Steve Chenoweth, an associate professor of computer science at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, said, “The future of the internet will be as predictable and recognizable in 2069 as the internet of 2019 was in 1969. I do not think our general skills at forecasting paradigm shifts will improve much, because we tend to see the future as an extension, not a disruption. There will be greater integration because everything will, in theory, be able to interact with everything else. This also will cause chaos when accidents or bad actors cause ever more valued pieces of the system to crash. We’ve seen this with Internet of Things. The betterment is hard to measure, as in Kahneman’s ideas of how people sum up their experiences in retrospect, versus their reactions at the time. Overall betterment may come largely from more people having access to basic products and services, as we now see happening with cell phones and Bitcoin using the internet, in less prosperous parts of the world.”

Ken Birman, a professor in the department of computer science at Cornell University, responded, “Technology booms take the form of ‘S’ curves. For any technical area, we see a slow uptake, then a kind of exponential in which the limits seem infinite, but by then things are often already slowing down. For me, the current boom in cloud computing has created the illusion of unbounded technical expansion in certain domains, but in fact we may quickly reach a kind of steady state. By 2050, I think the focus will have shifted to robotics in agriculture and perhaps climate control, space engineering, revolutionary progress in brain science and other biological sciences. This is not to say that we will cease to see stunning progress in the internet and cloud, but rather that the revolutions we are experiencing today will have matured and yielded to other revolutions in new dimensions “ they will surely leverage the network, but may no longer be quite so network-centric. Bill Gates often points out that by any statistical metric you can define, global quality of life and also quality of life in the Western world have risen enormously for many decades now. I see no reason for this to change in the 2050 time period, with one major exception: Some countries, notably China, seem to be viewing the internet as a massive technology for spying on their own population and on much of the rest of the world. Russia seems to view the internet as a playground for disruption. North Korea has used it to extort money and to harass their enemies. So I do worry that research on strong ways to protect security and privacy, and to protect against intrusion, needs a great deal of additional emphasis and investment, to enable the bright future Bill Gates sees and also to protect against this sort of harassment and meddling.”

Devin Fidler, futurist and founder of Rethinkery Labs commented, “Over the last 50 years we have built a basic nervous system. Now, the challenge is to evolve it to best support human society. A great place to start is with the many positive and negative externalities that have been documented around network deployment. Simply amplifying the positive benefits to society for network activity and curbing network activities that impose an unfunded burden on society as a whole may be a great framework for creating a networked society that lives up to the enormous potential these tools unlock. Expect increased regulation worldwide as societies struggle to balance this equation in different ways. A 50-year timeframe could be a sufficient window to integrate emerging AI, platform and other technologies into the consciously-designed organizational frameworks that may improve the lives of individuals (historically we have seen this with, e.g., public health and shared infrastructure projects).”

Lee McKnight, associate professor, School of Information Studies, Syracuse University, commented, “The internet will reach close to 100% of humans, forests, fields and streams, as well as most non-human species, in 2069. The Internet of Things will grow to trillions of things – and all factories, cities and communities. As to how many of those things are artificially intelligent, which machines are dumb and which – for example, sensors included in that count –will still be just as dumb or even dumber in 50 years than those today, analytic metrics are still too underdeveloped and imprecise for me to harbor a guess. I do expect pop-up networks will permit people even in the most remote locations, or communities with limited means, to access and share services and internet bandwidth from literally anywhere on this planet, as well as from our Mars colonies and Moon bases. What, you thought there would be just one? The future for digital life is a murkier question, since the line between artificial life, and humans’ ‘digital life’ is unclear today, and will likely be far more complex in 50 years. To clarify ‘artificial life’ versus digital life, I quote from the mission statement of the MIT Press Journal of Artificial Life: ‘The Artificial Life Journal, launched in the fall of 1993, has become the unifying forum for the exchange of scientific information on the study of man-made systems that exhibit the behavioral characteristics of natural living systems, through the use of simulations with computer models (software), robotics (hardware) and biochemistry (wetware). Each issue features international research about artificial systems that exhibit behavior like the origin of life, self-assembly, growth and development, evolutionary and ecological dynamics, animal and robot behavior, social organization, and cultural evolution.’ https://www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/artl/current  Forecasting the way we interact with software and hardware is too limited a starting point, as we must assume biochemistry (wetware) will also increasingly take its place in human-machine interaction environments and platforms. While science fiction is comfortable imagining all kinds of scenarios, the future-realist in me can only see good, bad and ugly wetware interacting with all of us, at all times, in 2069. The good news however is I expect we humans will have new human rights, starting with No. 31, the right to our own inherent human data. With machine-managed smart contracts in blockchained supply chains, we humans can cost-effectively assert our own rights in this new, wet world, hopefully enshrined both in new national laws and regulations, and in an extended Universal Declaration of Human Rights by 2069. Let’s start with the bad news part of our generally good news future scenario: Badly designed and dangerous/ugly/evil artificially intelligent systems will kill some individuals, hopefully not large groups. That can come from changes in our digital life spawning and encouraging even more addictive, self-destructive behaviors, and by increasingly sophisticated and precise manipulation of individuals’ emotions and perceptions. Just as, for example, world leaders and illicit and legitimate businesses do today. Information ethics will be a required middle school course in 2069, because well isn’t it obvious? The reason for my expectation, and hope, that in aggregate the future for digital life will be better than the not-so-good present, comes from the readily forecastable expectation of continuous learning by both humans and machines. In 50 years, a smart machine will be very smart indeed, and the artificially intelligent systems of today will appear to be only quaint, dumb, machines. That is, we can expect that given the essence of artificially intelligent systems and platforms is that they can learn and evolve over time, those we rely on and interact with in 50 years should be far better than those we may encounter in our digital life today. While there are many scary worst-case scenarios we might paint, over time we are a learning species, able to create, and manage, and regulate, both our own digital life as well as the business processes and legal frameworks within which we humans and learning machines interact.”

Daniel Siewiorek, a professor with the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, observed, “We will achieve Mark Weiser’s vision of ubiquitous computing – computing and communications everywhere seamlessly integrated with human users. Sustainability will become a major challenge as these systems consume more resources (energy and raw materials) and acquire knowledge by applying machine learning to observations. How do we retire old technology and old knowledge without breaking systems? How do we disseminate knowledge so that everybody does not get the exact same insights at the exact same time, creating a stampede as everyone tries to do the same thing at the same time? We will all have virtual coaches that learn and grow with us. They will be in communication with the virtual coaches of others allowing us to learn from the experience of others. For example, my grandfather could teach me how to swing a baseball bat through his virtual coach even though my grandfather passed away before I was born.”

Andreas Kirsch, a fellow at Newspeak House, formerly with Google and DeepMind in Zurich and London, wrote, “Regulation will force open closed platforms. Information will flow more freely between services. Internet services will become more decentralized again as network bandwidths will not be sufficient for the data volumes that users will produce by then. Applications and services will not be coupled to devices anymore but will follow us freely between different contexts (shared car, home, work, mobile devices).”

Danny O’Brien, international director for a nonprofit digital rights group, commented, “At the level of 50 years, I think we cannot make firm predictions, only aspirations. The internet will be present, possibly matched with other networks dealing with faster speeds, shorter latencies and/or different security models. Again, my hope will be that these tools will be at the control of individual users, not hidden or concentrated in smaller, more powerful groups.”

Charles Ess, a professor expert in ethics with the Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo, Norway, said, “On the up side, there is some indication that engineers and computer scientists are coming to take their ethical responsibilities for the design of new systems ever more seriously. If they continue to do so, and if at least many of us continue to encourage the development of ethically informed design, then it’s conceivable that many of the emerging applications and technologies will indeed sustain or enhance good lives of flourishing. But my overall sense of the emerging Internet of Things and its subsequent evolutions is of an increasing array of technologies that are ever more enveloping but also ever more invisible (advanced technology is magic, to recall Arthur C. Clarke), thereby making it increasingly difficult for us to critically attend to such new developments and perhaps re-channel or obviate them when ethically/socially indicated. There are some encouraging signs and indications of a growing critical and ethical awareness regarding new technologies, beginning with the communities of technical professionals directly responsible for their design. And certainly, there is a growing community of scholars and researchers attending to the ethical, social, political dimensions, etc. But these are small and very privileged groups – i.e., people who enjoy considerable education, resources of time and income, etc. (Critical reflection and the exercise of autonomy depend on such necessary material conditions.) Especially as universities become increasingly shaped as ‘knowledge (vocational) factories’ and our focus on the humanities, Bildung, the liberal arts, becomes increasingly marginalized, my fear is that even these privileged groups may diminish in size and influence. And, very sorry to say, I don’t see that most of ‘the everyday consumer’ of new technologies has the time, inclination and needed resources to exercise needed critical reflection and autonomous redirection of the shiny new toys and tech we like to consume in the name of convenience, etc. Worst case, an unreflected consumerism simply enslaves most of us to systems beyond our comprehension and control. To paraphrase Neil Postman: We fall in love with the technologies of our enslavement.”

Chao-Lin Liu, a professor at National Chengchi University, Taiwan, commented, “If we can handle the income and work problems, lives will be easier for most due to automation.”

Ben Shneiderman, distinguished professor and founder of the Human Computer Interaction Lab at University of Maryland, said, “Just as the internet was a platform for the World Wide Web, and then mobile devices and social media were built on top of them, future systems will build on AI, social media and the Internet of Things. The continuous hierarchic integration of older technologies into more advanced services is the natural evolution of design that supports human needs. Human creativity working at the frontiers of knowledge is the force that incorporates existing technologies into new designs. The future will be shaped by those who understand how to support trust, empathy, responsibility and privacy. Ever richer layers of social systems will support community building, political action, and commercial opportunities. Medical systems that collect patient data will give richer portraits of individual health as well as data to develop new treatment protocols. Persuasion to improve patient wellness will enhance compliance with health regimes, as measured by quantified-self tools that allow patients to monitor their health. Yes, automation is disruptive, but human creative capabilities will create more new jobs, as it has during the agricultural, industrial, technology and medical revolutions. Gutenberg’s printing press reduced employment for scribes, but the explosion of publication, readers and writers brought many benefits. Similarly, weaving looms expanded the market and employment in the textile industry, while bank machines increased services and employment in banking. Increasing automation in medical care contributes to better health care and expanded employment. Overall, increasing levels of automation typically bring lower costs, which lead to expanded demand and improved services, thereby increasing employment. Our job as technology developers is to ensure that automation and robots are as safe as possible, while working to promote equitable sharing of the benefits. But even more importantly, we have to remember that human creative capabilities are in a different class from the modest but useful tools such as deep learning and artificial intelligence.”

Erik Huesca, president of the Knowledge and Digital Culture Foundation, based in Mexico City, said, “Given that the production of knowledge will continue to be concentrated in centers located from latitude 32N to 55N, we will have a subjection from the rest of the world to the cultural and therefore ethical forms of interaction of objects converted into subjects interacting with subjects converted into objects. The greatest point of tension between humans and intelligent entities (not necessarily robots) will be the values ​​of our current society, privacy and respect for democracy and the diversity of communities and cultures. With systems whose objective is efficiency interacting in the social field with humans, they can be seeds of totalitarianism that we are seeing today. The idea of ​​the individual in societies highly linked by networks can disappear. The technologies will be aimed at the development of superhumans with genetic modification. (It is cheaper to modify an organism than to produce entities from other materials that require an intensive capital expenditure.) Being highly communicated without our sphere of privacy and intimacy, the values ​​of human life will change. The new sciences of life will be the key point of knowledge development. The influence will be brutal if we do not take care of the ethical aspects with which technology develops especially in the areas of AI and the ‘engineering of life,’ applied in both artificial ways and improving human beings. It is evident the transformation of diffuse and culturally dependent concepts such as: intimacy, privacy, intelligence and free will. The latter will be the most affected in the face of the need to turn everyone into objects and be consumed in this voyeuristic and narcissistic tendency. If the production of knowledge is elite today, in the future its concentration will be greater and for the first time the production of knowledge will not be exclusive of the human being. We are facing the first cognitive revolution 1.0 and its products will take their own paths and perhaps alien to human decisions.”

David Wells, chief financial officer at Netflix, responded, “Continued ‘smart’ integration of the places we live, work and rest. Continued global connected-ness with our entertainment, music and news will mean global popularity of some media with a backdrop of local flavor that may be regional and/or hyper local. Deep learning systems will identify gaps in education, medical care and crime quickly and point resources to closing them. AI systems will program simpler systems but the more complex work will still be done by humans. 3D visual (virtual) rendering will evolve and become integrated into user interfaces, discovery interfaces along with AI assistants, and will heavily define learning and entertainment.

Daniel Obam, information and communications technology policy adviser for the Government of Kenya, responded, “In the next 50 years, none of the platform companies will exist as we know them today. Newer, more innovative companies will take their place. It is difficult to predict what apps and features will be there. Digital tools will be integrated into our everyday lives through virtual reality. Apps and platforms will be used through robots to do everything in the office and at home. Shopping will be done from the comfort of wherever we will be using virtual reality. Connectivity will remain one recognisable feature from today’s internet because if you do not have connectivity, you will not have internet. Many policy and regulatory laws will change to accommodate the new reality. Digital life will make people become more individualistic. Life will be more interactive and personalised than it is today. Implants will be commonplace in individuals as we move toward the connected individual.”

Paola Perez, vice president of the Internet Society chapter in Venezuela and chair of the LACNIC Public Policy Forum, responded, “Technology will make everything in our lives. We won’t drive, we won’t cook. Apps are going to be adapted to all our needs. But we won’t have privacy. All our data is going to be known by everybody, so we won’t have private lives. From the moment we wake up we are going to have technology that cooks for us, drives for us, works for us and suggests ideas for our work. Problems are going to be solved.”

Ed Lyell, longtime internet strategist and professor at Adams State University, responded, “I was one of the first to use ARAPNET as a graduate student at San Francisco State working with a Stanford professor. We received grants to test using terminal-based connections to tutor inner-city black youth in algebra and discovered that even the primitive terminal of ‘blue-screen’ DOS was a better tutor than the white female teacher or a black college student coming into the student’s home in the evening because the computer did not care how many mistakes were made but forced you to continue to work until you obtained that competency. I wrote a master’s thesis on the use of Computer Assisted Instruction in 1970 and predicted that they would transform learning in just a few years. Yet a lifetime later not much has changed. I remain optimistic, guided by some charter schools, DSST [credit-by-examination testing], and magnet schools using technology to more dramatically improve student learning. The politics of education (K-12 and higher education) shut down innovation. Thus, I could say that we might create the kind of learning that I wrote about in ‘Nickelodeon’ back in 1985 wherein going to school would be 24/7 with a wristwatch computer on your wrist and the internet at your fingertips. The technology is there but not the public’s desire or willingness to change. I was on a commission in the 1980s – Senator Al Gore was part of it – and we discussed and anticipated what later became the internet. We could not identify all that has emerged since that time. Thus, I answer this question with a short thought that technically we can be fully, and positively, transformed in all that we do, including education and medicine. Yet the power of the status quo to protect itself for its profit can also shut down transformative improvement. We see this in how technology companies and industries have become monopolies and monopoly-like. It may be that we must nationalize the cell phone and internet pipelines or turn them into regulated monopolies like we did decades ago when we first put in water, phone and electricity companies. The challenge to make AI and technology a powerful positive change versus a further subjugation of people depends upon the politics of government control versus monopoly control. Companies seek maximum short-term profit, whereas less profit, more investment and caring about positive uses requires more government and a focus on common good and not just private profit. If we can change the governance of technology to focus on common good growth and not a division of winner/loser, then we can see people having more control over their lives. Imagine that the tough, hard work, dangerous jobs are done by machines guided by computers and AI. We can see the prototype of these in how the U.S. is now fighting wars. The shooting is done by a drone guided by a smart guy/gal working a 9-to-5 job in an air-conditioned office in a nice town. Garbage could be picked up, sorted, recycled, all by robots with AI. Tedious surgery completed by robots and teaching via YouTube would leave the humans to the interesting and exciting cases, not the redoing of same lessons to yet more patients/students. Humans could live well on a 20-hour work week with many weeks of paid vacation. Having a job/career could become a positive not just a necessity. With 24/7 learning and just-in-time capacity, people could change areas or careers many times with ease whenever they become bored. This positive outcome is possible if we collectively manage the creation and distribution of the tools and access to the use of new emerging tools. Real capitalism – not crony capitalism – would enhance the process yet only if government at all levels is not corrupt or greedy self-serving people. Government could run these things, but it will be less efficient than having a healthy marketplace of for-profit, and not-for-profit organizations.”

Eileen Donahoe, executive director of the Global Digital Policy Incubator at Stanford University, commented, “I envision a dramatic change in terms of how we think about people’s ownership and control of their own data. People’s data will be seen as a valuable commodity and platforms will arise to facilitate data sovereignty for individuals, whereby people will have ability to choose when and where to exchange their data for services and products. If we move toward development and deployment of platforms and systems that allow individuals autonomy to choose when and where they exchange their data for goods and services, this will constitute an important positive step toward wider distribution of the benefits of a data-driven society.”

David Klann, consultant and software developer at Broadcast Tool & Die, responded, “We and our ‘stuff’ will become increasingly (and increasingly rapidly) connected over the next 50 years; tasks, including software development will become more automated and provably correct. It will take a more-or-less cataclysmic event to shake free the monied-interest grip on the current internet. By that, I mean either a ground-shaking revelation (e.g., Cambridge Analytica and Facebook), or a tipping-point number of users employing disruptive technology to move people from existing applications and networks to something that offers more freedom *with* the convenience they have come to expect. The pessimist in me has doubts of this ever happening, but the optimist can nearly see it on the horizon. I believe further integration of humans and machines is inevitable. That is, more devices will be implanted in us, and more of our minds will be ‘implanted’ in devices. The inevitable ‘Singularity’ will result in changes to humans and will increase the rate of our evolution toward hybrid ‘machines.’ I also believe that new and modified materials will become ‘smart.’ For instance, new materials will be ‘self-aware’ and will be able to communicate problems in order to avoid failure. Ultimately, these materials will become ‘self-healing’ and will be able to harness raw materials to manufacture replacement parts in situ. All these materials, and the things built with them will participate in the connected world. We will see continued blurring of the line between ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ life.”

Tomas Ohlin, longtime professor at Linköping and Stockholm universities in Sweden, responded, “AI is a way of programming, and will exist everywhere. The internet will after a few decades be replaced by a more value-added surface on top of our present system. Its governing will be truly decentral, with participation from many. Cultural differences will exist on this surface, with borders that will differ from the present. However, there will not be as many borders as today; information society is a society with flexible borders. In legal systems, security will be central, and this will always balance with consideration for personal integrity. Access to the surface will for everybody be via the personal connector, replacing today’s cell phone. Human beings are friendly, and the world we create reflects this. Communication and contact between everybody is a fundamental and positive resource, that will lead to fewer conflicts.”

Christopher Leslie, lecturer in media, science and technology studies at South China University of Technology, wrote, “The golden age of the internet seems to be over. In the same way that Tim Wu wrote about the golden age of independent radio being quickly overcome by existing businesses, so too has the internet lost its independence. This transformation was inevitable. Jon Postel saw it when he was forced to turn over the root to the Commerce department. There will be many opportunities for consumers and entrepreneurs in the internet of the future, but the technology will most enhance the businesses and countries that already are ahead. It seems likely that a different kind of networking technology, perhaps truly decentralized and certainly separated from telecom, will be developed to challenge the inequalities fostered by today’s use of internet technology. The general trend in the technological society has been that more people have received more benefits to their lives. This is in terms of any meaningful metric: health care, education, political participation, sense of self. This will continue into the next 50 years. However, the inequalities perpetrated by the modern use of digital technology will mean that not all people will benefit. The overall trend will be positive, but some ways of life and some categories of people will suffer a detriment that may be extreme.”

Denise Garcia, an associate professor of political science and international affairs at Northeastern University, said, “Companies will take more responsibility toward their customers. This will promote great breakthroughs. We have a map for humanity to improve in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. AI will help.”

David Zubrow, associate director of empirical research at the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute, said, “Networked devices, data collection and information on demand will become even more ubiquitous. I would hope that better curation of information along with its provenance occurs. The trend of digital assistants that learn your preferences and habits from all the devices that you interact with will become integrated with each other and take on a persona. They may even act on your behalf with a degree of independence in the digital and physical worlds. As AI advances and becomes more independent and the internet becomes the world in which people live and work, laws for responsibility and accountability of the actions of AI will need to be made. Can an AI entity be convicted of a crime?”

Anirban Sen, a lawyer and data privacy consultant, based in New Delhi, India, wrote, “The next 50 years will have both fights over big data and privacy as well as people desiring to use new apps. How data in different jurisdictions can be used/relied will be a problem and technology will be used to also fight technology. Integration would be holistic, but it would be tough to live un-networked. Facebook and Second Life will work together with new 3D interfaces not too different from the movies. However, tech challenged people would find it increasingly harder. Today’s internet would still remain, but humans would have to be re-taught their humanness apart from use of machines. Laws of nations would continue to clash, and some people will always exploit tech for their nefarious designs. Rules of anonymity must be preserved and yet mischief makers have to be identified. In this regard, the same challenges would remain. Behind every technology, there is a dream and as long as it is being used for purposes to preserve the Earth and the goodness of mankind and animals, it would be fine. However, the naysayers would continue to oppose in their own ways. Old challenges would not be completely overcome by tech, but new challenges posed by increasing population would continue to wreak havoc.”

Divina Frau-Meigs, professor of media sociology at Sorbonne Nouvelle University, France, and UNESCO chair for sustainable digital development, responded, “The most important trend to follow according to me is the way game/play will become the new work. At the moment the game industry is keeping apart from the platforms and the apps but with virtual reality and immersive devices, there is a going to be a convergence that will modify the rules of how we interact with each other and with knowledge and information in the future. These ‘alternative’ realities will enable more simulation of situations in real life and will be necessary in decision-making every step of our daily lives. We will need to be conscious of the distinction between game and play, to allow for leisure time away from rule-bound game-as-the-new-work. This will be particularly necessary for environmental issues to be solved creatively as they will be the primary emergency of everybody in the next 50 years and there is no Planet B. Technology is neither good, nor bad… nor neutral. It is what we decide to make it be. Currently there is no governance of the internet proper, with little contributions asked of the users. Yet cases like Cambridge Analytica are going to become more and more common. They will reveal that internet cannot be entrusted uniquely to some monopoly corporations and their leaders, who are not willing to consider the unintended consequences of their decisions (mostly market competition driven). So a global internet governance system needs to be devised, with multi-stakeholder mechanisms, including the voice of the users. It should incorporate agile consultations on many topics so that individuals can have an influence on how their digital presence can affect or not their real life.”

Rik Farrow, editor of “;login:” a publication of the USENIX Association, wrote, “It’s already been many years since the predicted exhaustion of IPv4 addresses, and only in China is IPv6 in wide use today. That suggests to me that we can expect the pace of changes for lower-level internet protocols for the next decade. Currently, advertising pays for digital content, but this model is failing as more people use ad-blockers. Instead, micropayments will support future digital content, instead of the ‘micropayments’ earned today by advertising click-throughs, and the company that leads this effort will become the next Google. Digital tools will become even more ubiquitous, as more people gain access to AIs that can answer questions, or even act as a friend, something the Chinese are already doing. What will be new are cyborg-like, embedded displays, so instead of looking at a smartphone or listening to earbuds, people can watch an overlay as the step into traffic (well, hopefully not step into traffic). Augmented reality will become the norm, requiring both greater bandwidth and faster response times. As for new laws, the trends will continue: More authoritarian governments will place limits on access to content (consider today’s FCC or the Chinese as examples), while more free societies will have much greater access to content and information. The problem of ‘fake news’ will be solved by news-providers providing digitally-signed content, such as photos, recordings and videos, so that news can be trusted. If we succumb to authoritarian rule, our lives will get worse, regardless of AI and the internet. Assuming this doesn’t happen, and that even the poor have access, life will improve, just as educating poor women allows them to take control of their lives.”

Ryan Sweeney, director of analytics at Ignite Social Media, commented, “In 50 years, the internet will be virtually (pun somewhat intended) unrecognizable. The Internet of Things will be more engrained into everyday life than it is currently. We will likely be unanchored from desktop or laptop computers as mobile devices further evolve into an extension of ourselves. I think the world imagined in the movie ‘Her’ is one of the best representations of a near-future where technology is as unobtrusive as electricity is for us now. You don’t really think about it. Electricity has been around for generations, and we just accept it. I would not be surprised if, as in ‘Her,’ we control our devices through conversation much like we do with Alexa, Google Home, Siri, etc., though the AI technology will be significantly more advanced in 50 years. Virtual reality is just starting to come into its own and I think we’ll start to see it become more mainstream, working its way beyond gaming and into everyday life. Technology has the potential to further divide humans on a class level. Those who can afford the technology will have significant benefits from wealth-maintenance to extension of life. Those who cannot afford the technology will likely remain disconnected or will not receive the same level of service as those who can.”

E. Ohlson, a respondent who provided no identifying details, commented, “Quantum computing qubits will allow for instantaneous communication across vast distances, likely interplanetary. Connectivity will be ubiquitous, in ways both unimaginable and trivial by current standards; e.g. Internet of Things paint that tracks temperatures across entire rooms. The bandwidth and data storage needs will be vast by today’s standards, and the compute power required/demanded for analysis of millions and billions of new data sources will grow exponentially. More data, turned into better knowledge, is going to create unknown benefits over the next five decades. The career I hold today didn’t exist 35 years ago when I was in grade school. The specialties I hold now didn’t exist 15 years ago. Despite the ease with which we can find legitimate worries, the past 40-50 years have been a massive good.”

Bryan Alexander, futurist and president of Bryan Anderson Consulting, responded, “We might live as well-controlled subjects within a cyberpunk dystopia, surveilled by a ruthless, deeply established and automated regime. It is also possible that we will be cyborgs in many ways, working closely with robots and software throughout our lives. We may also enjoy a fine life of leisure, contemplation and creativity, supported by advanced technology in the way Iain Banks depicted his science fiction ‘Culture’ novels. I’m convinced we’ll see individuals learn how to use technologies more effectively, and that collectively we’ll learn how to reduce harm. Thoughtful critics like Cathy O’Neil have had a positive influence, maturing the acculturation of and policy response to emerging technologies.”

Arthur Bushkin, an IT pioneer who worked with the precursors to ARPANET and Verizon, wrote, “Having been present at the creation, along with many others, I’ve been struck by the extent to which many new developments were extrapolations of past developments. Two major ‘new’ qualitative developments were wireless and miniaturization. Widespread application of ‘artificial intelligence’ has the potential be another such ‘new’ qualitative development in the years ahead. Technological development always has the potential to impact human development. In the end, I am an optimist.”

Charles Zheng, a researcher into machine learning and AI with the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health, commented, “It will be increasingly difficult to live ‘off the grid’ in the coming half-century. To live in the city and to have a decent job, citizens would have no choice but to maintain online profiles, since all the companies depend on these systems. Cash becomes increasingly rare as cashless payment systems become ubiquitous, and most stores no longer even accept cash. We will live in a truly ‘networked society’ as the internet becomes an obligatory part of life. Daily work in companies will involve more remote collaborations than they currently do; more people may work at home as the increasing urban density drives up real estate prices and increases traffic. Improved virtual reality software means that people can even socialize with each other, going to parties without physically commuting, not to mention shop using the internet. Driverless cars decrease shipping costs and make online shopping even easier. The character of the internet itself is changed by the increase in the number of AI programs that manage online content. Sites like Wikipedia may no longer get most of their content from human contributors, but rather automated content aggregators. There will be AI software for helping people create their personal or business websites, as well. However, a simple HTML page is old-fashioned since most companies, as well as many individuals, now host virtual interactive spaces on the internet. The boundary between website and app has also become blurred as sites became more and more complex and interactive on the one hand, and since increase in network coverage and speed means that most apps can be downloaded and installed as quickly as a HTML page loads today. The ubiquity of virtual reality and augmented reality interfaces has reached the point where the majority of people do not even know the nuts and bolts of the technology, they may not even recognize a physical computer keyboard or mouse if they saw one. The result of this increase in technological sophistication means that the definition of ‘tech-savvy’ has also changed. Knowing how to code is neither necessary nor particularly useful for the task of creating 3D interactive applications; instead, tech professionals have to keep up to date on how to work with a variety of AI-assisted systems for creating applications. New algorithms may still be designed from scratch by academics and corporate research scientists, but there will be AI programs that take the concepts and implement them in code. Life will not qualitatively change much for people in the middle and upper classes of society. The biggest impact will be to the lower classes and it will mostly be positive. The increase in information gathering in all levels of society will also improve the efficiency of social welfare programs. Access to information becomes democratized as cities start offering free, basic Wi-Fi and the government hosts AI educational programs which can teach young people how to find jobs and access public resources. The increase in networking also makes nonprofit social nonprofits more effective at helping the disadvantaged. Government accountability is also improved now that people at all levels of society can leave reviews about government services online.”

Bebo White, managing editor of the Journal of Web Engineering and emeritus associate of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, said, “The internet as we know it today will be ubiquitous and ‘disappear into the background’ as universal connectivity becomes the norm. So-called apps will be integrated seamlessly within our homes, transportation and wearable devices. Advancements in security and privacy technologies should make this possible. The ability to ‘work anywhere’ or ‘learn anywhere’ (education ‘on demand’) should be realized.”

Adam Powell, senior fellow at the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy, wrote, “Predicting 50 years out is inherently risky (see all of those flying cars overhead?). But, barring a catastrophe – epidemic, war – extrapolating from recent history suggests the internet will become more pervasive, more powerful and less expensive. Think of electricity, or electric motors: They are ubiquitous, noticed mainly when they cease to function. Pervasive and powerful seem safe predictions. Think of the impact of the smartphone in just a few years and the impact of smart speakers in just a year or two; 50 years out these and devices we can scarcely imagine will be routine features of the built environment.”

Anthony Picciano, a professor of education at the City of New York University Interactive Pedagogy and Technology program, responded, “The internet as we know it will have evolved if not replaced by new technologies that will depend upon the integration of artificial intelligence, supercloud computing, biosensing and robotics. The base for these applications will likely be nanotechnology and quantum computing although the latter has to move beyond demonstration to actual widespread application. I believe technology has generally made humankind’s existence better, but it has to be controlled to some extent because in the wrong hands it can problematic. Nuclear energy is an example that can benefit mankind but also destroy us. Digital technologies likewise can mostly benefit us but in the wrong hands can be problematic such as we saw in the interference in the 2016 presidential election.”

Dan Robitzski, a reporter covering science and technology for Futurism.com, commented, “It is impossible to think about how the internet behave and be used in a vacuum. Right now, we have data privacy scandals practically every day, with no sign that things are going to improve. The movement to restore net neutrality in the U.S. is fighting an uphill battle. For me, it looks like things will continue to get worse, where free systems like Google’s products or networks like Facebook are even more pervasive and all-encompassing in our lives to the point where personal privacy has all but vanished. The powers that be are not the powers that should be. Surveillance technology, especially that powered by AI algorithms, is becoming more powerful and all-present than ever before. But to look at that and say that technology won’t help people is absurd. Medical technology, technology to help people with disabilities, technology that will increase our comfort and abilities as humans will continue to appear and develop.”

Alex Smith, partner relationship manager at Monster Worldwide, said, “There will continue to be a large debate around this issue 50 years from now. Considering the fact that Generation X will be our oldest living generation and many of them would have grown up in the very early stages of the internet and many of them with primitive internet in their schools. A lot can change in 50 years with the internet. Will lawmakers continue to regulate the internet and what does net neutrality look like? I don’t expect that debate to go away and with competition getting so fierce among cable and streaming companies. I’m not that optimistic that there won’t be one of those sides that loses the ultimate battle there. And some of the major companies we know of today may either continue to merge, change models or fold completely. If the internet is let to grow, we could see an astonishing speed to the internet in 2050. Things like video lag, buffering, loading, crashing will all be ancient terms. The communications infrastructure around the internet across the world will be incredibly sophisticated. There may not be a region of the world that doesn’t have the capacity for Wi-Fi. The future of the internet should be open, but I would also expect an increasing investment by all countries in the area of cyber security. With so much of world ties to the internet it presents an incredible security risk along with the benefits. I would also expect more investment around teaching our children how to use the internet wisely. We’re already addressing things like internet disorders and treating them as addictions. Human interaction will always be timeless, but the internet is designed for attention and while it may connect us, it can never replace that human connection which has always bound us together throughout human history. The internet already makes a profound influence on our lives. In 50 years that will only continue. Maybe employers and job seekers will be automatically matched based on profiles. We could see presidential elections being fully automated online, no more waiting in line at the election booth. Or you could sit down and meet the candidates over a virtual reality headset? Everything will be centered around saving us time and giving us back more time in our days.”

Edson Prestes, a professor and director of robotics at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, responded, “It is very difficult to foresee what will happen in the future without being too speculative. I believe the internet will no longer exist in the way we see today. I do not even think it will be possible to see the internet as a huge network of connected devices, but as something unique that works in a pervasive and transparent way – something like air that exists everywhere and in several cases we forget about its existence. In my view, we will use the environment to transmit information, i.e., via plants, soil, water, etc. We will develop new elaborated processes to take advantage of all resources available in the environment, e.g., we might use biochemical processes of plants to give support to data processing. In this new world, humans will be naturally adaptable to this pervasive environment. With the advance in neuroscience, I guess some people will use prosthesis to get/transmit/visualize and process information, maybe plugged directly in the brain, and working in unison with the brain lobes. Toward this direction, the information received from the environment can be seen as a ‘new sensory input.’ Thus, all interfaces and tools will be totally reshaped: no mouse, no menus, no ‘blue screens of death.’ For others, from ‘old school,’ they will use plug and play wearable gadgets. In both scenarios, we will have strong legislations that will regulate data protection and privacy, since more sensitive and vital information will be used. Think about a situation where a person is looking at another one or a product. As all his/her vital signs and brain activities will be constantly monitored, without a strong regulation on data protection and privacy, he/she will be very vulnerable to a third party. In case of a prosthesis, its invasiveness is an open door for remote manipulation, much more dangerous, of course, than the manipulation that we are current and constantly exposed. I also believe new regulations on environmental sustainability will be created to protect the environment from severe degradation in this new model. Human relationships will be impacted. Maybe, we will change drastically the way we communicate, i.e., instead of using speech communication, we might use thought communications. In this case, how will our brain be impacted? Will Wernicke and Broca areas still exist? Probably, new regulations will exist to have a health society. I always believe in technology for good. We are witnessing several motions toward the development of responsible innovation. This tendency tends to increase with time. Thus, we will see in the future more people-centered technologies and services that target to improve quality and standard of life of everyone.”

Jennifer J. Snow, an innovation officer with U.S. Air Force USSOCOM Donovan Group and SOFWERX, wrote, “The internet will continue to evolve in surprising ways. New forms of governance, finance and religion will spring up that transcend physical Westphalian boundaries and will pose challenges to existing state-based governance structures. I think the internet will fracture again as those founders who seek to return it to its original positive uses establish and control their own ‘walled gardens’ inviting in only a select few to join them and controlling specific portions of the net separately from nation states. New policy and regulations will be required to address these changes and the challenges that come with them. New types of warfare will arise from internet evolutions but also new opportunities to move society forward together in a positive manner. States will no longer have the premium on power and non-state actors, corporations and groups will be able to wield power at the state, national and regional level in new and unexpected ways. It will be a disruptive time and dangerous if not navigated smartly but may also result in some of the greatest advances yet for humanity. While bad actors exist in this world and we should acknowledge and prepare for that, the majority of people are well intentioned and work toward a common good if for no other reason than it benefits themselves and their loved ones. The potential for dangerous events should not be disregarded, however I believe the creativity, kindness and compassion of people will drive more good effects within these technological evolutions than bad. Medical care, elder care, environmental preservation, public safety, improved workplace safety, disaster recovery and space exploration will all be areas that will advance in a positive fashion because people chose to do good with these technologies.”

Craig Burdett, a respondent who provided no identifying details, wrote, “The greatest challenge facing society is determining how much privacy and autonomy we are willing to cede in exchange for convenience and features. How much of our personal lives are we willing to share? Even in 2018 the internet is nearly ubiquitous in first world countries. Users happily allowed Uber to track them 24/7 in exchange for having a car nearby when they needed it. And we’ve learned that Uber is far from virtuous. New York’s LinkNYC kiosks make Wi-Fi available at no cost in exchange for ad displays. And New Yorkers happily agree to the terms, which include allowing select third parties to contact them ‘with…express…consent.’ What feature will CityBridge offer to entice that consent? By 2069 some form of the internet will be embedded in almost every aspect of modern life. Elon Musk is already showing us how our cars will be always connected and can be updated (or disabled) without notice. And Tesla owners are happily allowing that intrusion in exchange for his cars. Extend that concept to every appliance and device we touch, from our door locks to our refrigerators, and imagine what privacy we might be enticed to give up for a smidge more convenience or efficiency. What if your refrigerator could evaluate and pre-order items before they were depleted, communicating directly with the supplier using your online account? And your front door will automatically know which delivery person (or robot) to allow inside based on the products the refrigerator (or the washing machine) ordered. Imagine never running out of toilet paper, or never again scurrying to the market at 7 a.m. for eggs. Is that sufficient incentive to share that information? I imagine devices like tablets will cease to be primarily standalone appliances. Their functionality will be embedded in homes and offices. The wall of your entryway will have a tablet that automatically adjusts the home to match your individual preferences: from adjusting the temperature in your bedroom to turning the teapot on when you arrive. And your power company will know not only when, but specifically who, is home based on that information. Each of these affordances is available by virtue of making information about your habits available to the device manufacturers. The internet, in and of itself, is benign – like a handgun. But the companies and individuals behind the services are the greatest threat.”

David Bray, executive director for the People-Centered Internet Coalition, commented, “Predicting beyond 10 years is difficult given exponential changes. Hope: Human-machine/AI collaborations extend the abilities of humans while we (humans) intentionally strive to preserve values of respect, dignity and agency of choice for individuals. Machines bring together different groups of people and communities and help us work and live together by reflecting on our own biases and helping us come to understand the plurality of different perspectives of others. Big concern: Human-machine/AI collaborations turn out to not benefit everyone, only a few, and result in a form of ‘indentured servitude’ or ‘neo-feudalism’ that is not people-centered and not uplifting of people. Machines amplify existing confirmation biases and other human characteristics resulting in sensationalist, emotion-ridden news and other communications that gets page views and ad-clicks, yet lacks nuance of understanding, resulting in tribalism and a devolution of open societies and pluralities to the determent of the global human condition. Technology will undoubtedly impact people’s lives over the next 50 years. However how we choose to use these technologies – at the individual, community and global society levels – will determine whether the net impacts are good or bad. What we are seeing is an increasing affordability and availability of technologies that only were available to large nation states 20 years ago. The commercial sector now outpaces the technology development of nation states, which means groups can have advanced disruptive technologies that can be used for good or bad that can massively impact global events. This trend will continue and will challenge the absorptive capacity of societies to keep up with such technology developments. No longer do we have five to 10 years to assess the impact of a technology and then incorporate norms, laws, etc. Now we have to operate on a six-month or three-month time horizon which, when combined with the media’s tendency to dramatically over-simplify news articles and reduce complications in narratives about what is occurring, risk over-simplifying for the public the issues at hand, polarizing different groups, and creating an ever-increasing number of ‘wedge issues’ in societies. There will be a series of disruptions to our current way of living and whether we (as humans) navigate them successfully for the benefit of all – or unfortunately just a few – remains to be seen.”

Lindsey Andersen, an activist at the intersection of human rights and technology for Freedom House and Internews, now doing graduate research at Princeton University, said, “Fifty years ago, few, if any, of the top minds in computer science or artificial intelligence accurately predicted where we would be today, so I will refrain from saying that quantum computing will be a reality, or that we will have finally achieved artificial general intelligence. One thing that does seem likely is the complete digitization of our lives. A globally connected network of Internet of Things devices coupled with the data processing power of AI will fuel the smart cities of the future. Life, from commuting to shopping, will be vastly simpler and more efficient. We’ll work less and enjoy life more. The open question is how we will deal with the risks. Will we willingly give over to constant surveillance by governments and companies? Or will we devise legal and practical safeguards that protect our privacy, and help us maintain control over our lives and our identities, while still enabling the benefits of the mass data-driven future? Another question is whether the rising tide of technological advances will lift all boats, or whether it will serve to further exacerbate the divides between the rich and the poor, both within countries and between countries? AI has the power to bring education and opportunity to the underserved, but it also has the ability to oppress and entrench existing divisions. The best way to avoid this is to start putting policies in place now to protect privacy, address bias and proactively pursue initiatives to improve the lives of everyone. Despite the risks I’ve already mentioned, I am genuinely an optimist. I think the net benefits for people, in access to government services, information and quality of life, will outweigh the net losses. That said, as with any major advancement, there will be winners and losers. The losses will likely come in the form of jobs, autonomy and even freedom. But perhaps for the first time, we are in a position to mitigate these losses because we can predict them. And if we begin solving the problems we have with technology today, it will help address the problems of the future.”

David Cake, an active leader with Electronic Frontiers Australia and vice-chair of the ICANN GNSO Council, wrote, “The two biggest trends will be ubiquity and layers of intermediation, both long-term trends that will continue. The trends we now label Internet of Things and pervasive or ubiquitous computing are both likely to continue. Bandwidth levels acceptable for all internet use that does not involve rich media will become ‘too cheap to meter,’ and the cost of a ‘computer on a chip’ will fall to a level of a few cents, and many mundane day-to-day services (such as safety regulation, teaching and education, child care, food preparation, transport, etc) will be built on the assumption of full-powered computing devices integrated into every device, including cheap, disposable single-use items. We will increasingly rely on internet services that are built on other services, and our current notions of what constitute internet services will increasingly be seen more as infrastructure than interface (and become regulated similarly). This trend has been, in the last decade and a half, greatly hampered by siloization driven by vertical empire building, but regulatory efforts (and desires for service integration that goes beyond trivial) will drive some backlash (e.g. anti-trust, mandating open standards, etc.). Issues such as social disruption due to radically changed employment markets, and use of technology for surveillance against democratic process, transparency of complex technological (and technocratic) systems, poor governance due to long and complex global supply chains, etc., will continue to be difficult ongoing issues for decades. But significant, often highly communication and computation technologically-driven advances in day-to-day areas like health care, safety and human services, will continue to have a significant measurable improvement in many lives, often ‘invisible’ as an unnoticed reduction in bad outcomes, will continue to reduce the incidence of human scale disasters. Advances in opportunities for self-actualisation through education, community and creative work will continue (though monetisation will continue to be problematic).”

Alex Halavais, an associate professor of social technologies at Arizona State University, wrote, “Like most technologies, early creators and users of the internet did a poor job of predicting how it would be used. What they missed was the universal nature: Anything that could be digital could be stored and distributed via the internet, and as digitization became the norm, the internet came to be a kind of growing infrastructure for connection. So, to ask how the internet will be different in 50 years is really to ask how society will be different. The internet (like roads, for example, and buildings) may change in response to these pressures. Of course, part of this is that the internet infrastructure will make far more than our desktop and laptop computers (which are, incidentally, slowly disappearing) or our mobile devices addressable. The Internet of Things means that just about everything will be addressable, and as a result, things will begin to talk to one another, and think together. From a technical perspective, this potentially requires a huge leap in bandwidth over time. But given the potential flashpoints of social and economic structure, an unsustainable division between the haves and have-nots, and the exponential displacement of employment for the latter, is likely to have far-reaching and unpredictable effects on social structure and stability. Predicting five decades out is an enormously fraught exercise. That said, the development and diffusion of new technologies have had a net positive effect on our society over time. Certainly, there have been several near-cataclysmic events over the last two 50-year cycles, and we are currently undergoing the slow-moving technologically motivated disaster of the anthropocene. But over time, these technologies have helped to enable more freedom than oppression, more abundance than deprivation and more creation than destruction. I would bet on that future.”

Estee Beck, assistant professor at the University of Texas and author of “A Theory of Persuasive Computer Algorithms for Rhetorical Code Studies,” responded, “Society will shift toward educating the public on reading and writing code at an accelerated rate. Coding literacy will become part of K-12 curricula to prepare citizens for both STEM-related careers and consumer-oriented DIY solutions of tech problems. On the latter, because of the mass coding literacy spread in primary and secondary schooling, the ‘handyman’ will evolve into a tech tinkerer or handyman 2.0. Already acquainted with basic and intermediate home maintenance of basic lighting, plumbing and painting, the handyman 2.0 will fix code in home appliances, run software updates to modify and personalize processes in the home. The handyman 2.0 might run their own server and develop a self-contained smartphone and security system to protect against internet-related attacks. For those unable or uninterested in being a handyman 2.0, they can hire general and specialized contractors from a new industry of handymen 2.0. This industry – with public and private certifications – will employ hundreds of thousands of laborers and enjoy revenues in the billions.”

Alex Simonelis, computer science faculty member, Dawson College, Montreal, said, “The net will continue to spread, and the Internet of Things will get bigger and bigger.”

David J. Krieger, co-director of the Institute for Communication & Leadership in Lucerne, Switzerland, wrote, “Monopolistic tendencies of major platforms will have to be replaced by platform cooperatives and much more support for the sharing economy will be necessary. Everything will ‘ride’ on the internet since everything will generate and exchange data. New will be the way in which AI becomes the way in which this data is used and personalized. We will talk to our AIs and they will be our partners and companions in achieving almost everything from helping us choose what to learn and to learn effectively to finding a job, a home, deciding where to live and even with whom. The new rules will deal with algorithmic and network governance. Government will be replaced by governance and there will be no room left for non-participation in social issues and governance practices just as there will be no room left for purely private existence. All that happens will be evolution and anyone still alive will experience these developments as continuous, or perhaps even long overdue. The Internet of Everything will no longer be a ball thrown between regulatory government or exploitive free-market companies, since both are ineffective and will need to be replaced by network governance frameworks. Everything will be ‘personalized’ but not individualized. The European Western paradigm of the free and autonomous individual will no longer be a major cultural force. Network collectivism will be the form in which human existence, now no longer ‘humanist’ will play itself out. There is no other life than digital life and no one will really have the opportunity to live offline. And if so, then there will probably be a three-class society consisting of the cyborgs, the hybrids and the naturals. This will of course generate new forms of social inequality and conflict.”

Craig Mathias, principal at Farpoint Group, an advisory firm specializing in wireless networking and mobile computing, commented, “The internet will become truly ubiquitous to the point of default continuous connectivity. Many medical, municipal and security-related services, among others, will be integrated via the internet. Voice over IP will replace all other telephony. I do not see any issues with reliability, availability or capacity, but I do expect that security will require continuous innovation and privacy will require a definitive political solution. Civilization itself centers on and thus depends upon communication of all forms. The more we communicate, the better the opportunities for peace and prosperity, and on a global basis. It would be difficult to imagine communications without the internet, now and especially in the future.”

Emanuele Torti, a research professor in the computer science department at the University of Pavia, Italy, responded, “The internet will take an important role in our lives, providing interaction between Internet of Things and wearable devices. I think that internet will be in strong connection with Internet of Things, AI and wearable technologies, in order to improve the quality of life. The digital revolution will impact in our lives bringing benefits. In particular for health, providing personalized monitoring through Internet of Things and wearable devices. The AI will analyze those data in order to provide personalized medicine solutions.”

Gene Crick, director of the Metropolitan Austin Interactive Network and longtime U.S. community telecommunications expert, wrote, “This is not an easy question to answer, especially since I lost the USB power cord for my crystal ball :-). All I can offer is thoughts from years working for community broadband and public access. In one sense, the ‘what and how’ of technology is fairly simple: steady, careful work guided by insight. In my humble opinion, the more difficult challenge is ‘why.’ Who will benefit from our work? Who will not? Who will decide? Thus the next half-century of AI/IT will likely be determined more by social, economic and political priorities than by technology developments. Commercial enterprise is essential for development of technology resources. But healthy growth calls for inclusion of whole communities, not just service to areas with higher profit potential. No private investor can be responsible for overall public interest. Only valid local leadership can serve as stewards of social equity and community needs. I believe genuine universal technology access has become a vital issue for every community. AI/IT can make powerful tools, resources and opportunities available to anyone interested. To help rhetoric become reality, we could adopt and insist on a few fundamental principles, including standards for openness and accountability. How? Just a notion but perhaps a modernized version of the NSF Internet administration transfer two decades ago.  Though the outcome was far from pretty, those who participated felt we got the job done. Today’s improved communications tools could make possible a much simpler, more widespread ‘grassroots’ discussion and decision process.”

Juan Ortiz Freuler, a policy fellow and Nnenna Nwakanma, the interim policy director for Africa, at the Web Foundation, wrote, “The number of people connected to the internet is not the only thing that is increasing. The number of activities and services that can be accessed is increasing rapidly. This suggests we can expect a greater part of our lives to be spent online. Augmented reality seems to be picking up as handheld devices become more powerful, and virtual reality is allowing more seamless interactions with digital environments as lag time gets continuously shaved and tactile sensors become more available. Research on brain computer interfaces is also making slow progress. This points to a trend of greater immersion in non-material spaces. History has shown humans are bad at predicting the future beyond a five to 10-year window. In the same way the internet disrupted pre-existing communication technologies in ways that were unforeseen for the industry, it is reasonable to expect the internet will face a similar disruption at some point over the next decades. The key question is therefore which values will be embedded within the future internet, or in its disrupter. Perhaps the key characteristic and value of the internet as originally designed was a reliance on a decentralized architecture, with no central point of command or control. Over the past decade we have seen this model put under pressure by players inside the sector – who seek to centralize it as a means to capture more value for themselves – and by actors outside it, such as governments concerned with the potential disruptive effects of networked citizenry. As the internet’s role and reach increase so do the incentives to control the information travelling through it. Countries like China seem to favor the centralized model. The U.S., where the decentralized system was designed, does not seem willing to actively defend these design principles. Centralization is likely to outperform decentralized systems in the short term, but we believe that decentralized systems will survive the centralized ones in the long term. Centralization increases performance when things run as usual but is less resilient to unexpected changes or needs. Decentralized systems ensure there is no single point of failure, thus a plurality of possible solutions and escape valves are made available. Yet, it needs to find a champion capable of adopting this long-term perspective. Technology will increasingly release people from tedious and physically demanding tasks. As virtual reality allows for more seamless interaction between people in digitally designed environments, we should expect great benefits for those with physical disabilities and mobility constraints. This is particularly relevant as the proportion of elderly people increases. Yet these developments also increase the risks of inequality remaining an unresolved issue. Allowing people to increasingly spend time in digital environments can limit unexpected social encounters, which are key to the development of empathy and the strengthening of the social fibres. In a similar way that gentrification of physical neighborhoods often creates barriers for people to understand the needs and wants of others, digital environments can thicken the contours of these bubbles in which different social groups inhabit. In parallel, this process enables a great degree of power to be amassed by the actors that design and control these virtual environments. Whereas in the past there was concern with the power of media framing, in the future the new brokers of information will have more control over the information people receive, and they will receive a steady stream of data regarding how individuals react to these stimuli. It is becoming urgent to develop processes to ensure these actors operate in a transparent way. This includes that the values they promote are in line with those of the communities they serve, and enabling effective control by individuals over how these systems operate. Government needs to update the institutions of democracy if it wants to remain relevant.”

Hank Dearden, executive director at ForestPlanet Inc., said, “We’re just scratching the surface of the Internet of Things potential. My hope is that the more we explore the cosmos the more we appreciate our precious and fragile planet, and as such use the Internet of Things to monitor and regulate all manner of metrics: oxygen, carbon dioxide, temperature, bio mass (trees), trash levels in the oceans, etc.”

Hume Winzar, associate professor and director of the business analytics undergraduate program at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, wrote, “Working and study at a distance will be normalised, so lifestyle options will be wider. We won’t need to live/work/study in a major city to enjoy the best of what is available. Done right, it will expand opportunity for many too. A society won’t survive for 50 years if the technology that supports that society is dysfunctional. Countervailing forces will force systems to produce outcomes that are better, despite the attempts of opportunistic politicians, bureaucrats or corporations.”

Kenneth Cukier, author and data editor for The Economist, commented, “Two changes are regulation and interface. The main way we interact with our digital tools is passively, not overtly. It’s more like a thermostat than a light switch. That is, it’s always on and working, not something we explicitly ‘do.’ Apps tailor their activity around us, inferring what we want. But the gains of the winner-take-all system are so severe that the platforms are very regulated. Things are mostly for the better since algos and bots do a lot of work and health care is better, so human society is better off. However, the tools in the hands of the populists and authoritarians of 2018, in 50 years’ time, mean that if safeguards are meagre, a surveillance state is possible. Freedom might be winnowed even if most people feel better off. This could be a horrible irony.”

Geoff Livingston, author and futurist, commented, “Technology will become a seamless experience for most people. Only the very poor who cannot afford technology and the very rich who can choose to separate themselves from it will be free from connectedness. When I consider the current AI conversation, I often think the real evolution of sentient beings will be a hybrid connectedness between human and machine. Our very existence and day-to-day experience will be through an augmented experience that features faster thinking and more ethereal pleasures. This brings a question of what is human? Since most of us will be living in a machine-enhanced world, the perspective of human reality will always be in doubt. Most will simply move through their existence without a thought, able to change and alter it with new software packages and algorithms, accepting their reality as the new normal. Indeed, perception will become reality. There will be those who decry the movement forward and wish for yesteryear’s unplugged mind. The counter movement against the internet of 2070 will be significant, and yet much like today’s Luddite, it will find itself in the deep minority. For though the cultural implications will be significant, the internet of 2070 offers the world a much more prosperous and easier life. Most will choose comfort over independence from devices. Discord as we experience it online a la Twitter spats and hashtag fights will become less evident, too. I imagine i will be much easier to turn off the noise. Of course, this means more and more isolated groups of people, and in turn they will likely develop strange and sometimes harmful views and approaches to life. This may be the greatest danger of the new internet, the ability to develop micro cults of violent and destructive lifestyles. Those that fully embrace the movement will continue progressing in technology, perhaps blindly. They will lead us to new dimensions. When will the human soul become able to transcend the body and move into machines or truly virtual experiences? To me that is the real question of the future internet. Generally, I think people will be happier in life. They will hate their jobs less because they will be doing things they love. They will be able to pursue true interests more, because they don’t have jobs. Hunger and shelter will be easier to deal with because we will have used technology to better resolve those challenges.  Instead pain will become an existential matter rather than a Maslowian pursuit for physiological needs and safety. That’s not to say that poverty and strife won’t exist, but I do believe climate change represents the biggest physical danger the world’s cultures will face. Wars will be fought over whom can access safety in the form of shelter and food. Those that wage war will not have technology. My great hope is the haves will see that is better for everyone if there is less suffering. Perhaps a base level of technological and yes hierarchical support on the physiological and safety levels will be provided. The zero-sum game of win or lose as determined by bank accounts cannot help the globe long term. In the future, greed is the greatest danger. For greed can only manifest itself in technological power. Forcing others into technological poverty will become an act of cruelty.”

Lou Gross, professor of mathematical ecology and expert in grid computing, spatial optimization and modeling of ecological systems at the University of Tennessee – Knoxville, said, “I see entirely new options for theft and an ongoing battle across linked systems to maintain orderly operations. Because of the linkage of systems this ‘warfare’ has the potential to be highly destructive and I see major opportunities for insurance companies to enter the fray and provide services to those willing to pay to allow them to maintain an interfaced lifestyle while having a measure of safety. Despite my statement that there are going to be major challenges to individuals through linkages of technology and the rise of entities that will be hired to ‘insure’ safety, overall I see tech as driving the betterment of individuals across the world. I see this particularly of those in areas that are now highly impoverished, and I see the trend for inexpensive tech leading to broad opportunities for ‘niche’ markets that will open opportunities.”

João Pedro Taveira, embedded systems researcher and smart grids architect for INOV INESC Inovação, Portugal, wrote, “First things first. Fifty years is a long time. Forget digital. Think biological. A respected professor at my university teaches that in computer science everything is a server. There are silicon servers (computers) and carbon servers (humans). For several reasons, I believe we will abandon the usage of hardware as we do today due to lack of resources on Earth and because we will innovate material technologies, which materials will be more energy efficient, sustainable and where ‘ecology’ will no longer be used. Fifty years from now, today’s digital technologies benefits will be part of all of us in the future. As today, the future of ‘old digital’ world’s platform companies will be focused on experiences. Every part of our body has a purpose and serves one and only one part – the brain. The brain demands several services to other organs, and we will keep trying to comply with these demands using external services: mobility, energy, maintenance, comfort, part replacement, stimuli and positive rewards. Speech is one of the most noticeable reasons why humans evolved better than other animals. Linked to speech, we must think about language, voice and everything required to communication. For years we tried to innovate our communication technologies from music, fire, smoke, electric signals, radio waves, to everything anyone might recall on what we do today with internet. In fact, what humans actually do with speech, therefore with the internet, is to increase the chances of getting what our brain demands from our body, but in a distributed way. Internet of today will be in the future what we call now telepathy. Our brain processes huge amounts of information using electric stimuli and chemical reactions. The domain and spectrum of these are so multi-dimensional that today’s communications will, soon or later, evolve to this ‘physical links.’ In my humble opinion, what I described is highly probable to be possible in a scientific point of view, but I cannot imagine how society will be in this ‘50 years from now’ world. The most noticeable change for better in the next 50 years is in health and average life expectancy. At this pace, and, taking into account the developments in digital technologies, I hope that several discoveries will reduce the risk of death, such as cancer or even death by road accident. New drugs could be developed, increasing the active work age and possibility maintaining the sustainability of countries’ social health care and retirement funds.”

Jeff Jarvis, director of the Tow-Knight Center at City University of New York’s Craig Newmark School of Journalism, commented, “Think back 50 years to our state in 1968 to see how much our technological landscape has changed and that will underline the impossibility of looking forward 50 years with, some argue, an even more rapid pace of change. As a rule, as technologies become more and more invisible they become more accepted. I’m sorry that I don’t remember who said it, but technologies have real impact at about the time they get boring. Physical technologies – printing, plumbing, steam and then internal-combustion engines, jet engines, the telegraph and telephone, air conditioning – are easier to track because they are visible in atoms. Computer intelligence will be harder to identify as an ingredient of much of life because it cannot be seen. On the one hand, that will only ‘creep out’ the worrisome more; this technology’s power will be amplified in imagination. On the other hand, the ability of AI to, for example, help diagnose disease or fight cybercrime or drive our cars will make sufficient positive impact on our lives that the worries will subside. I don’t know which if any of the platform companies will still exist (which is why I think it’s foolish to regulate to the idea that they are too big and too powerful today). I don’t know what new uses of AI will imagined and invented. I won’t know any of that because I’m already too old to have any hope of being here then. This is why I teach, because I tell my students that it is their responsibility to identify the opportunities these new technologies present and I want to watch and help them. One need be fairly cynical about one’s fellow humans and somewhat hubristic about one’s own exceptional abilities to argue that most people will act against their own self-interest to adopt technologies that will be harmful to them. This is why I am driven nuts by the contentions that we have all become addicted to our devices against our will, that the internet has made us stupid in spite of our education, that social media has made us uncivil no matter our parenting, as if these technologies could, in a mere matter of a few years, change our very nature as human beings. Bull. This dystopian worldview gives people no credit for their agency, their good will, their common sense, their intelligence and their willingness to explore and experiment. We will figure out how to adopt technologies of benefit and reject technologies that harm. Of course, there will be exceptions to that rule – witness America’s inability to come to terms with an invention made a millennium ago: gunpowder. But much of the rest of the civilized world has figured that one out.”

John Willinsky, professor and director of the Public Knowledge Project at Stanford Graduate School of Education, said, “I see the connectivity only increasing in both positive ways, by enhancing people’s abilities to connect with and contribute to the lives of others, and negative ways, by enhancing people’s ability to manipulate and exploit others. Regulatory efforts through democratic processes will continue, if largely in response to great abuses of this connectivity, just as such efforts will feel the lobbying force of wealthy sectors of the economy. So rather than sweeping changes ahead, it makes more sense to me to imagine particular areas where a convergence of technologies promises change, such as in areas of health care (e.g., precision medicine), transportation (e.g., driverless cars and airplanes) and education (e.g., open access to research). I say mostly for the better as both praise and critique, because the ‘mostly’ speaks to the continuing inequities in the distribution of the ‘better’ and while ‘mostly’ suggests a majority of benefits, it will take a great deal of concern and effort to ensure that that those benefits are distributed with some lesser degree of inequality than previously to more people and by the same token more people need to participate in the processes behind that distribution.”

Joseph Potvin, executive director at the Xalgorithms Foundation, creating specifications and components for an ‘Internet of Rules,’ responded, “I’ll restrict my response here to the new future internet capability that my colleagues and I are working to create. An ‘Internet of Rules’ (IoR) is a new general method for anyone to express and to publish computational algorithms to the internet, and for any transaction solution to dynamically fetch them. Until now, publishing and fetching computational algorithms over the internet required particular rules to be separately programmed and maintained for each of the multiple competing rule automation platforms. Such redundancy fractures the market, drains productivity, and when rules are complicated or vague, it adds risk for rule users in commerce, finance, payroll and other contexts. With an IoR, a law or contract can have every computational clause, deduction and entitlement, and every priority notification that depends upon transaction data, expressed in a transparent computable form to supplement what is expressed in natural language. Each computable clause can then be automatically and accurately discoverable online for use with applicable transactions. This has transformative potential for diverse use case contexts: fiscal and trade rules automation, smart contracting, machine control systems and others. Algorithmic Legislation: All the computational clauses of legislation in any jurisdiction can be published to and fetched from the internet in a standard, efficient and flexible way for any transaction on any platform. This will enable order-of-magnitude reductions in administrative costs of updating, notification, compliance and enforcement (e.g. taxes, tariffs, rules-of-origin). Algorithmic Contracts: ‘Smart contracts’ can be situated within incomplete framework agreements (‘standing offers’) capable of using partial information to dynamically obtain applicable rules from elsewhere in order to complete contract terms when needed. For example, this will enable dynamic pricing linked to verifiable benchmarks so that buyers and sellers can buffer long-term supply arrangements from known sources of volatility. I replied in relation to our work to create the specifications and functional components for the standardized publication and fetching of algorithms via the internet. Rule systems and methods are situated at the meso-level. A core proposition is that meso-level interventions which enhance micro-level performance tend to proliferate, and upon reaching critical mass, can result in transformative macro-level emergent effects. This creates a new channel for homeorrhetic feedback loops. See David Hull’s ‘Science as a Process: An Evolutionary Account of the Social and Conceptual Development of Science.’”

Luis German Rodriguez Leal, teacher and researcher at the Universidad Central de Venezuela and consultant on technology for development, said, “The new internet will be blended with human-machine interfaces, AI, blockchain, big data, mobile platforms and data visualization as main-driven technologies. They will set up a robust and widely accessible Internet of Things. On the other hand, these will imply a disruptive way of facing everyday activities such as education, government, health, business or entertainment, among many others. Therefore, innovative regulation frameworks are urgently required for each of them.”

Kostas Alexandridis, author of “Exploring Complex Dynamics in Multi-agent-Based Intelligent Systems,” a research assistant professor at the University of the Virgin Islands, said, “In the next 50 years digital integration will become closely integrated with almost every aspect of our lives, from our simple household infrastructure to our transportation systems to our economic infrastructure to our social systems. Digital integration will change norms and institutions the same way that industrialization and electricity was integrated to our societies and global infrastructure in the beginning of the 20th century. From smart devices to smart cars to smart wallets to digital commerce to digital democracies, it is very likely that newer generations of citizens will develop a strong and tightly integrated dependency with networked infrastructure. In the next 50 years I also see the rise of digitally-aware political institutions, legal and normative structures, and a different type of globalization based not on institutions and economic or trade norms, but instead of digitally-dependent and interdependent groups and social interests. Perhaps I can see the potential rise of the movement toward proliferation of both global and national digital democracy, which can challenge and maybe transcend national, regional and global traditional institutions. For most of the developed regions of our world, digital change in the next 50 years will improve the well-being and the general livelihoods of the citizens. It has the potential of improving transparency, availability and quality of knowledge, while providing tools and resources with which citizens, communities and societies can enhance and improve our quality of life. On the other hand, I can see the rise of sharp divisions among nations, regions and among citizens (including cross-generational divisions). Our educational, economic, social and political systems will certainly be affected by digital technological advancements – I believe toward the best.”

Manoj Kumar, manager at Mitsui Orient Lines, responded, “Digital life will need to be curtailed for advancement of human enterprise. Advancement of knowledge/information availability has not only empowered humanity; it has also bewildered it. Rights are being abused which needs to be controlled. Commercial aspects are being hijacked by few strong companies depriving the rest of fair opportunities. At some point of time, government and public will have to rethink the options and ways of limiting its reach. Amazon and Alibaba will need to become more decentralised, less encompassing and less pervasive than what they are today. Google will need to scale back its analytical reaches to provide the freedom of choices. On the other hand the capital free nature of digital economy makes it vulnerable to over evaluations and shocks. The proliferation of services sector is leading to erosion of the infrastructural economy, which is not sustainable in the next 50 years of downtime. Security will be enhanced in the digital world, which will involve losing of rights and anonymity. Apps will be more localised with human interface increased. The coming years will change correction to the uncontrolled advancements in the digital world. The excesses of free access, unchained commerce and the capital free digitalisation will be checked and human element enhanced to provide the balance to the digital and human growth so that they are sustainable in the coming century.”

Gary Kreps, distinguished professor of communication and director of the Center for Health and Risk Communication at George Mason University, wrote, “Future computing systems will be fully integrated into everyday life, easy to access and use, and adaptable to meeting individual preferences and needs. These devices will serve as integrated personal assistants that can intuitively provide users with relevant information and support. There will be no need for typing in requests, since systems will be voice (and perhaps even thought) activated. These systems will adapt to user communication styles and competencies, using familiar and easy to understand messages to users. These messages will be presented both verbally and visually, with the ability to incorporate vivid examples and relevant interesting stories for users. Information content will build upon user preferences, experiences and needs. These personal computing systems will learn about users and adapt to changing user needs, assisting users in accomplishing important tasks and making important decisions. These systems will also automatically network users to relevant personal and professional contacts to facilitate communication as desired by users. The systems will also help users control other forms of technology, such as transportation, communication, health care, educational, occupational, financial, recreational and commercial applications. Care must be taken to program these systems to be responsive to user preferences and needs, easy to use, adaptive to changing conditions and easy for users to control. I am optimistic that new personal computing systems can be designed with AI to increasingly adapt to meeting user needs and preferences. This will necessitate careful planning and user-centered design. Engineering and technology experts will have to work closely with social scientists, experts in professional fields (health care, education, transportation, recreation, commerce, etc.), as well as with users to design smart, adaptive and satisfying personal computing systems.”

Frank Feather, futurist and consultant with StratEDGY, commented, “For starters, I think we should stop talking about the internet as a human-made piece of technology. The concept is as old-fashioned as the postage system. What we are using is an astro-physical cosmic intelligence system of energy waves. As to those social media platforms that presently prevail in this Copsmic system, they will either be utterly transformed or will disappear as far-superior applications develop. At one time, for example, AOL was the internet (in essence). It basically now has no relevance. Thinking ahead 50 years, it is highly likely that DigiTransHumanoids, who will replace humans as a species, will be able to network and communicate directly with each other on a brain-to-brain basis, via the cosmic wavelengths that carry today’s platforms. As such, no platforms will be needed. There may well be a Google-like cosmic platform, which prevails, if Google itself transforms itself into that platform. We need to understand that each and every technology is an extension of the human species and its abilities – abilities that are vastly underdeveloped. DigiTransHumans will be vastly more advanced as our next evolution, and they will unify this planet and reach out into the cosmos from where they first originated. (No, I am not crazy.) :-) Human Life in 50 Years … As explained in the previous response, human life as we know it will be utterly transformed during this century, and we will evolve into DigiTransHumans as part of our natural evolution. This species will finally find the ability to live together peacefully and collaboratively on a naturally-restored planet. Those are all positive developments. Any ignorant human who resists or opposes this progressive evolution will be destroyed.”

James Gannon, global head of eCompliance for emerging technology, cloud and cybersecurity at Novartis, responded, “Machine-to-machine communication has reduced a lot of menial decision-making for the average person. Smart home technology manages the basic functions of the household, negating the need for many manual labour roles such as cleaners and gardeners. Many services are now delivered remotely such as telehealth and digital therapeutics. The internet has become a critical international asset but still struggles with the governance challenges we see today. Technology and the internet have dramatically increased the standard of living for billions of people; this trend will not cease.”

Glenn Grossman, principal consultant for Fair Issac Corporation (FICO), wrote, “The internet is conduit for data. Data will drive most of our lives more so than today. It will connect more and more things and we may see it like a safety net if it was not there. It can be scary that everything is connected. So that part could be used for harm or good. So, we will see. It is just going to happen. Digital will be life for humans. Thus, it demands power/electricity. The world of nature may be impacted but our daily lives will have the chance to be better. However, if the wrong intentions are placed with the data and resulting decisions it can be really bad. I see more positive than bad.”

John Leslie King, computer science professor, University of Michigan, and a consultant on Cyberinfrastructure for the NSF CISE and SBE directorates for several years, commented, “There will be more powerful technologies and connections between them. People will marvel at what is possible. However, AI will not be capable of ‘taking over’ anything important. Future people will look back on this time and wonder how anyone could have believed the nonsense being said and written about the AI future. It will be like now when people laugh about the 1950 visions of commuting with personal helicopters and such. Deep path dependencies – many of which are buried so deep we don’t see them – will be far more powerful in shaping the future than anyone now imagines. Simple technology determinism gives way to combinatoric explosions of possibilities as soon as you let in other factors, especially those having to do with human intention and preference. There are risks as with many technologies. Nuclear weapons come to mind. The ‘inevitable’ nuclear war has not happened (yet). Ditto for chemical and biological weapons. Maybe people are smarter than some imagine. Maybe people are smart enough to avoid the horrible downsides predicted for AI. But maybe people are not smart enough to avoid the likeliest downsides such as hassle factors that people must worry about to keep technology in the ‘right place’ in their lives. Those who mess with ‘inbound logistics’ by buying online better be ready to change their ‘outbound logistics’ for managing cardboard boxes used for delivery. It will be the little things that people notice. Enslavement by machines is unlikely to be a big concern because it won’t happen, any more than people are concerned now with air traffic control because of all the personal helicopters in use. All that aside, there are likely to be significant effects from technology. Most of these will not correspond to what futurists predict but will emerge from the influence of manifold forces that cannot be enumerated in advance, much less ‘weighted’ by the influence they will have. People In 2050 are likely to talk about things that people in 2018 wouldn’t recognize, just like people in 1970 wouldn’t know what internet search engines (or for that matter, the internet) are. There have been huge changes due to technology in the past 50 years; the next 50 years are likely to bring more such changes. For most people, the changes will be positive because most technological affordances are created by a capitalist system that tends to give people what they want. They want positive things. Overall, however, there could be changes that create real dilemmas because of other forces. For example, it is hard to know exactly what will happen with power-reinforcing technologies in a climate that is tending to exacerbate wealth and income inequalities, given the proven influence of wealth and income on the social order. It is not crazy to imagine IT reinforcing the power of an elite that already has a lot of power, especially if that elite tends to be aggrandizing power to begin with. Many IT proponents think that some version of libertarian utopianism will arise to save the day by taking power from ‘the man’ and giving it to ‘the people.’ In my experience, ‘the man’ doesn’t want to lose power to ‘the people’ or anyone else. It is a mistake to think of technology as changing anything. Technology is, at most, one of several powerful forces that shape things.”

Julian Jones, a respondent who provided no identifying details, said, “In the next 50 years it is likely that the Internet of Things and autonomous vehicles will be widespread in closed environments and urban areas. There may be an increasing gulf between implementation in urban and rural locations. Individuals are likely to adopt wearable devices as well as carrying mobile phones. As a result, it will be simpler to find an individual than the address of a physical location. Individuals will be able to monitor their physical state. They will also be able to interrogate and interact with devices in the home or business environments: thermostats, lighting, blinds, windows/vents, doorbells, CCTV, movement sensors, white goods, solar panels, battery charging levels, power usage, TVs. These devices will also be controlled by algorithms and by threshold levels. I would expect more integration between broadcast media and voice communication for person to person and conference call and internet sites and apps in home and business. There will be some constrains on implementation due to the need for new legislation to govern responsibility for actions and the consequences of alternatives. My answer is the result of optimism that legislators will limit the autonomous actions of AI algorithms, but this may not be the case if the influence of international organisations, like the United Nations, are eroded. Data security will be vital as is privacy. It is essential that individuals can have more control over the context in which their data is used. In the absence of this legislation the consequences for society could be catastrophic.”

Brad Templeton, chair for computing at Singularity University, software architect and former president of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, responded, “Most of today’s companies will be gone, but other than that 50 years is simply too far. I expect AI technology to match or exceed human capability by then. We’re not capable of predicting what that means. My reason is boring – it’s been the long-term arc of history to be better. There is the potential for nightmares, of course, as well as huge backlashes against the change, including violent ones. But for the past 10,000 years, improvement has been the way to bet.”

K. Stout, a respondent who provided no identifying details, said, “The integration of digital tools will become much more seamless in many ways. The ability to identify individuals by voice, face, etc., means that fewer personal devices are required – you can speak to any public device and be recognized. Some level of physical integration, like implants, may also exist. The downside is that the digital divide widens, as not all can afford or can access tools to do this. The notion of anonymity is disappearing – you must ‘sign’ all your interactions, including simple things like buying a beverage with a digital signature. I selected ‘for the better,’ but I don’t know if that’s true. Technology innovation has so many consequences; it can be hard to assess the outcomes.”

Randy Goebel, professor of computing science and developer of the University of Alberta’s partnership with DeepMind, wrote, “A challenge for an increasingly connected and informed world is that of distinguishing aggregate from individual. ‘For the greater good’ requires an ever-evolving notion and consensus about what the ‘greater’ is. Just like seat belt laws are motivated by a complex balance of public good (property and human costs) we will have to evolve a planet-wide consensus on what is appropriate for ‘great’ good. Mostly improvements in health, including improved general mental health, and more uniform distribution of ‘greater good’ prosperity.”

Greg Lloyd, president and co-founder at Traction Software, responded, “The next 50 years will see performance of hardware, storage and bandwidth increase and cost decrease at a rate no less than the past 50 years. This means that the resources available to any person – at the cost of a current smartphone and network subscription – will be close to the resources supporting a Google regional center. This will turn the advertising supported and privacy invasive economic model of the current internet on its head, making it possible for anyone to afford dedicated, private and secure resources to support a Prospero and Ariel-like world of certified and secure services. That people agreed to grant access to their most private resources and actions to platform companies in order to support use of subsidized internet services will become as oddly amusing as the fact that people once earned their living as flagpole sitters. Your smartphone and its personal AI services will be exactly that: your property, which you pay for and use with confidence. When you use certified agents or services, you’ll have choices ranging from free (routine commerce, public library or government services) to fabulously expensive (the best legal minds, most famous pop stars, bespoke design and manufacturing of any artifacts, membership in the most exclusive ‘places’). In all cases your personal smartphone (or whatever it turns into) will help you negotiate enforceable contracts for these services, monitor performance, and provide evidence any case of dispute. Think Apple with a smart lawyer, accountant, friend and advisor in your smartphone, not Facebook becoming Silicon Valley’s version of Terry Gilliam’s ‘Brazil.’”

José Estabil, director of entrepreneurship and innovation at MIT’s Skoltech Initiative, commented, “We are at the beginning of building tools, standards and frameworks with AI. The biggest innovations (and productivity) are ahead of us, when we use AI engines not to substitute for automation or pattern recognition, but when we redesign the frameworks AI is constrained by. MacAfee and Brynjolfsson note that it took a generation for the modern factory to be born after the creation of the electric engine (because electric engines were initially designed to replace centrally located steam engines). I expect to see AI constructs liberally placed inside companies (beyond marketing, customer experience and support) to identify and architect business models, enable construction of new business entities (think of enterprise analogs to derivatives, CDOs). My point is that there’s a lot that consultants, lawyers and (MBA) businesspeople do that could be done better through AI. AI, like the electric engine, will affect society in ways that are not linearly forecastable. (For example, the unification of villages through electric engines in subways has created what we know as Paris, London, Moscow and Manhattan). Another area AI can have impact is in creating the framework within genomics, epigenomics and metabolomics can be used to keep people healthy and to intervene when we start to deviate from health. Indeed, with AI we may be able to hack the brain and other secreting cells so that we can auto-generate lifesaving medicines, block unwanted biological processes (e.g., cancer), and coupled to understanding the brain, be able to hack at neurological disorders.”

Jan Schaffer, founder and executive director of J-Lab, The Institute for Interactive Journalism, responded, “Fifty years from now retail shops, as we now know them, will have disappeared. Clothing will be custom made digitally to fit you. Electronic appliances will likely be custom made as well and smarter than ever before. 3-D printing will make significant inroads in medicine, making transplant organs more available, and in construction, making affordable housing easy to supply. I think driverless cars, unfortunately, will be the norm. However, all of this will lead to a more automated society devoid of a lot of human interaction needed to accomplish daily life today. I don’t think the impact of digital changes on people’s lives have binary outcomes. I think some things will make life go much better. I think others will have unintended consequences that will be costly to individual liberties. And I think developments will lead to the disappearance of thousands of jobs, that will not be offset by the creation of digital jobs.”

Jean-Daniel Fekete, researcher in information visualization, visual analytics and human-computer interaction at INRIA, France, said, “The connected world will become even more integrated in our life and appliances, as a virtual extension of our physical world. Physical location become less important, blurring the notion of workplace, home, vacation, traveling. In that world, humans will have easy access to mostly all intellectual resources, but companies will be fighting for human attention. Advertising is already too efficient; games are diverting children’s attention already. Mitigating these threats will become essential to maintain a healthy humanity. Digital life will provide more opportunities for people to live a fulfilling life, in good health, and connected with their friends and families. There are threats to private life that should be addressed by politicians (wishing they were more literate about the digital world), but this seems feasible if the world limits its trust for crooks and liars.”

Fred Baker, independent networking technologies consultant, longtime leader in the Internet Engineering Task Force and engineering fellow with Cisco, commented, “I suspect that the expansion of telephone technology and law will inform this discussion. The United States’ 1934 Communications Act was designed to tame a regulated monopoly carrier and prevent the worst of what that carrier might do with the technology at its disposal. Over the past few decades, the Federal Communications Commission has tried to interpret the internet through the lens of that regulation. That has failed, for the most part, for at least two reasons. First, the internet is not a regulated monopoly. It *is* a set of companies trying to accomplish various things, some of which (notably Google, Facebook and their kin) have become very powerful and may require appropriate regulation or regulatory action to steer in the public interest. A law designed to regulate a monopoly, and experience with it, may inform a future law, but is not a substitute for it. Second, the FCC tries desperately to understand the internet to be one two things: a way to carry messages from ingress to egress without inspecting or changing them (a telecom service), or a way to access an application (an information service). It is neither, and it is both. If I use the ‘traceroute’ command in unix/linux/macos or its Windows counterpart trace route to determine the route between where I am and some distant node. I find that my service starts in the IETF meeting network (which is where I am as I write), transits the Telus network, enters tfbnw (‘The Facebook Network’), and communicates with a service at Facebook. The first three of those are essentially telecom services, which accept packets at ingress and deliver them to the indicated egress uninterpreted and unchanged (a ‘telecom’ service); the last is an application (an ‘information’ service). Until we have a law that can follow that difference in service model in the internet, we will find differences between the internet as implemented and the internet as regulated. My observation of the development of AI technologies over the past 50 years differs markedly from its depiction in science fiction. I see it as a technology for investigating data to identify and understand fact that the data supports, as opposed to technology becoming self-aware and at issue. The Amish bring a relevant consideration to this: As we develop technologies, we must put them into an ethical framework and assess their value to humanity. That is not, however, a reason to shun or fear them, as science fiction might suggest, but more a means to guide their development and use.”

Liz Rykert, president at Meta Strategies, a consultancy that works with technology and complex organizational change, responded, “We will see more and more integration of tools that support accountability. An early example of this is the use of body cams by police. The internet will let us both monitor and share data and images about what is happening whether it is a devastating impact of climate change or an eventful incident of racism. Continued access to tools of accountability and access to knowledge and collaborative opportunities will continue to support people to be both bold and collaborative as they seek new solutions. The internet will be the base to support these efforts as well as the platform that will continue to serve as the means for how we will work together to respond to problems either urgent (like a flood or fire) or longer term like solving problems like affordable housing.”

Guy Levi, chief innovation officer for the Center for Educational Technology, based in Israel, wrote, “In half a century one cannot predict nothing; considering that we are in an era of accelerators, it is even harder. However, digital tools will be part of our body inside and remotely, and will assist us in decision making constantly, so it will become second nature. Nonetheless, physical feelings will still be exclusively ‘physical,’ i.e., there will be a significant difference between the ‘sensor-based feelings’ and real body feelings, so human beings will still have some advantages over technology. This, I believe will last forever. Considering this, physical encounters among people will become more and more important and thus relationships, especially between couples, will prosper. It will be the return of LOVE. Having said that, the internet will manage the physical life – home maintenance, food delivery, commuting, etc. – and will leave much more space for our mental and physical feelings and emotions. The idea is simple – technology will solve all physical challenges of human lives and people will have time and mental space for delectable activities, for the good of human beings.”

Eliot Lear, principal engineer at Cisco, said, “With another 50 years under our belts, hopefully we will have by then models for resiliency, privacy and security that are tied to societal norms such that people can rely on technology to have saved the planet. We will use the internet to predict environmental costs of human activity such that they can be minimized and perhaps even offset. The internet will be the means by which we are known, such that whatever we want, including health care, food and other goodies, will be accessible wherever we are. In 50 years, perhaps we will have learned how to better communicate with one another, such that the shouting at one another will have stopped. Social networking, now in its infancy and not very social, will be augmented reality with people we can see and with whom we can interact. The term ‘firewall’ will have a completely different meaning, more to do with protecting our private thoughts. Fifty years is a good period of time for our thinking to mature. No more will we see hacked elections. Perhaps we won’t see hacked anything, except perhaps our own heads.”

Ashok Goel, director of the Human-Centered Computing Ph.D. program at Georgia Tech, wrote, “In 50 years, the internet will become omnipresent, omniscient and almost omnipotent. Everyone in the world will have access to the internet and the internet will have access to everyone and almost everything. The internet will become the repository of all data about the whole world as well as human knowledge. Of course, there will be both cooperation and competition among individuals, institutions, corporations and countries on the use of this data and knowledge. A new set of values and law may be needed to enhance collaboration and manage confrontation. The interne 2069 will not only enable new kinds of commerce but also enable humans to collectively address seemingly intractable problems such as climate change and global warming.”

Kristin Jenkins, executive director of BioQUEST Curriculum Consortium, said, “Access to information is enormously powerful and the internet has provided access to people in a way we have never before experienced. This means that people can learn new skills (how to patch your roof or make bread), assess situations and make informed decisions (learn about a political candidate’s voting record, plan a trip), and teach themselves whatever they want to know from knowledgeable sources. Information that was once accessed through print materials that were not available to everyone and often out of date is now much more readily available to many more people. Ensuring access is another huge issue with internet 2.0/AI. Access to these tools is not guaranteed even within the U.S. – presumably one of the best places in the world to be wired. In many cases, access to current technology in developing areas of the world allows populations to skip expensive intermediate steps and use tools in a way that improves their quality of life. Ensuring that people all over the world have access to tools that can improve their lives is an important social justice issue.  Globally, we will need to develop cultural expectations of AI/human interactions and enforce those legislatively. Internet providers and developers need to be aware of the social implications of their tools. People need to assume personal responsibility for how they use these tools and how they allow these tools to be used. AI can free up time for more important things in our lives, but it cannot be taken for granted.”

John Sniadowski, a director for a technology company, wrote, “To the vast majority of internet users, the internet is akin to making a cup of tea. You simply want to fill the kettle from the tap, switch on the kettle, boil the water and pour it onto the tea. They don’t ever think about the infrastructure that makes that possible. This means that people will adopt internet that makes life easier without thinking of the consequences. If we don’t achieve making the internet valuable to everyone then it is likely that none or few of us will see anything 50 years from now. The internet has to be inclusive to everyone to help address the urgent global issues we all face.”

Gianluca Demartini, a senior lecturer in data science at the University of Queensland, Australia, wrote, “The internet will be more ubiquitous and embedded with all objects in our daily life. This will allow for better coordination and control but also coming with strong privacy and security risks.”

Fernando Barrio, director of the law program at the Universidad Nacional de Rio Negro, Argentina, commented, “The scope and depths of changes in technology that society has seen in the last 50 years makes any exercise of prediction a work for witches and wizards. If we continue with today’s trends, it could be argued that we will have a 100% full-time connected time, with more and more decisions being taken by autonomous machines. This trend will not take into account humans’ needs but is driven by researchers and technology companies wanting to monetize the finding of that research. There are many technologies that are in use today that don’t add any value to the human experience and only allow those using them to be entertained and, arguably, spend less time in more fruitful endeavours. There is nothing suggesting that this will change any time soon. In that full-time hyperconnected society the law should guarantee access and transparency, taking into account that privacy will become almost non-existent. Since it will be mostly autonomous, the network design should embed norms establishing what is the extent of autonomous decisions and when the user can intervene in the process. Steps to avoid the not digital-divide but the coming hyper-connected access divide have to be taken from these days to ensure that most of the community can be part of the coming ubiquitous-tech society. The ubiquitous-tech society will imply a better, more enjoyable life for those being part of it. Wearable technology, tech implants, AI-medicine, autonomous robot workers and companions and many other coming technologies will allow humans to reach new limits of what to do and expect. However, the question is, with an ever-increasing income concentration at global scale in almost every country, how many members of the society will be able to be part of the enjoyment of that ubiquitous, hyper-connected, AI-tech society.”

Paul Jones, professor of information science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, responded, “While the internet was built from the beginning to be open and extensible, it relies on communities of trust. As we are seeing this reliance has strong downsides – phishing, fake news, over-customization and tribalism for starters. Adding systems of trust, beginning with the promises of blockchain, will and must address this failing. Will the next internet strengthen the positives of individualism, of equality and of cooperation or will we become no more than Morlocks and Eloi? I remain optimistic as we address not only the engineering challenges, but also the human and social challenges arising. All tools, including media, are extensions of man. ‘We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us,’ as McLuhan is credited for noticing. Nothing could be more true of the next internet and our lives in relation to information access. Can we create in ways now unknown once less reliant on memorization and calculation? Will we be better at solving the problems we create for ourselves? I answer with an enormous ‘Yes!’ but then I’m still waiting for the personal jetpack I was promised as a child.”

Jean-Claude Heudin, a professor with expertise in AI and software engineering at the Devinci Research Center at Pole Universitaire Leonard de Vinci, France, wrote, “Internet will be everywhere like the air: a cybersphere connecting all people, machines and objects. AI everywhere: embedded intelligence and ambient intelligence. The context will be a global degradation of human life due to environmental problems, lack of resources, increased difference between rich and poor regions. AI and technology could minimize the impact of these problems.”

Gabor Melli, senior director of engineering for AI and machine learning for Sony PlayStation, responded, “My prediction for what the internet and digital life will resemble in 30 years, by 2050, is that it will be extraordinary and partially extraplanetary. Innovations that will dramatically amplify this trajectory are unsupervised machine learning, fusion power and the wildcard of quantum computing. I believe that in the next 50 years, by 2070, most people will willingly spend most of their lives in an augmented virtual reality.”

Timothy Leffel, research scientist, National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, said, “There will be scarcely a moment that we are not interacting with an internet-connected device, and increasingly they will have touch-free interfaces powered by specialized AI systems. This will be a mixed bag. Many inconveniences will be eliminated. But increased reliance on a system that no individual understands end-to-end has potentially dangerous consequences.”

John Verdon, retired futurist and consultant, wrote, “The digital environment represents a change in conditions of change. The boundary conditions that include traditional transaction costs enacted hierarchy as an attractor of governance and efficiency. The collapse of these boundary conditions is shifting toward a new attractor of governance and efficiency that will require complex ways of self-organization. One example is how no other organization can compete with Wikipedia in creating a comprehensive knowledge commons. Currently old business models and concepts are engaged in a colonizing and enclosure movement of the digital environment – reaping the benefits of network effects. But these business models are not able to truly reap the human opportunities – the wealth of people – that the digital environment can unleash. Thus, I see the wisdom of Jeremy Rifken’s anticipation of the displacement/disruption of capitalism by the rise of an increasing necessity for self-organizing collaborative commons. Stuart Kauffman talks about the ontologically real possibles – like a field of affordances that surround every actual. The more stuff there is, the more new ways each thing can be used, the more opportunities arise. The key ‘cost’ that displaces the traditional transaction costs in the digital environment are the costs related to generating, perceiving and seizing opportunity. To be able to continue to explore an exponentially expanding opportunity (and problem) space, self-organizing humans have to be enabled, empowered and informed. The quality of a nation is not found in its leaders, but rather in the quality of its citizens.”

Charlie Firestone, communications and society program executive director and vice president at The Aspen Institute, commented, “Fifty years from now is science fiction. There really is no telling with quantum computing, AI, blockchain, virtual reality, broadband (10G?), genetic engineering, robotics and other interesting developments affecting our lives and environments. What will be weaponized? Almost any of the above could be and perhaps will be. It’s just too far ahead to imagine whether we will be in a digital feudal system or highly democratic. But I do imagine that we could be on our way to re-speciation with genetics, robotics and AI combined to make us, in today’s image, superhuman. I understand that there are many ways that the technologies will lead to worse lives, particularly with the ability of entities to weaponize virtually any of the technologies and displace jobs. However, the advances in medicine extending lives, the ability to reduce consumption of energy, and the use of robotics and AI to solve our problems are evident. And we have to believe that our successors will opt for ways to improve and extend the human species rather than annihilate it or re-speciate.”

James Scofield O’Rourke, a professor of management at the University of Notre Dame specializing in reputation management, commented, “I foresee two large applications of digital connections such as the internet over the next half century. First, I see access to information, processes and expertise that would either be delayed or inaccessible today. Second, I see a much larger degree of autonomy for the individual. This could mean everything from driverless trucks, automobiles and other vehicles to individual control over our immediate environment, our assets and possessions, and our ability to choose. In exchange, of course, the notion of privacy will virtually disappear. People will be ‘mostly better off’ in 50 years’ time, largely because of our ability to apply things we already know, i.e., the decoding of the human genome, our understanding of the fragility of our planetary environment and more. The singular exception will be that group of people who have no assets, no education, no opportunity, and as a result, no hope. They will be reduced to dependence on the kindness of neighbors, strangers and the government.”

Laurie Orlov, principal analyst at Aging in Place Technology Watch, wrote, “The internet is now basic infrastructure – the abuse of access, through advertising-only business models, endless spam, trolls, social media sites, fake news, and the dearth of quality news media, paid and prioritized search results, pop-up ads and auto-play videos combine to make the internet an increasingly unpleasant place – one that isolates people from others and has made some unstable people commit suicide. Worse, it is not self-policing, despite vendor assertions to the contrary. The EU model will eventually be replicated in the U.S. and new (fee-based) business models will be required. Technology change historically has been mostly for the better, once the worst aspects are shaken out through controls, market forces or exposure of abuse. Signals are there already – it would not be surprising if Facebook, for example, an organization that has failed at self-policing, eventually declines and is replaced by a next generation of social tools that reinforce groups and connections, rather than isolate, confuse and alienate.”

Jay Sanders, president and CEO of the Global Telemedicine Group, responded, “Haptics will afford the ability to touch/feel at a distance so that in the medical space a physician at one location will literally be able to examine a patient at a distance.”

Mike Meyer, chief information officer at Honolulu Community College, commented, “Unless we experience major failure in human adaption to the technology changes we are now facing, the world in 50 years will be very difficult to imagine or understand in today’s language. The options available will be contingent on many layers of both technology and human adaption that will occur over the next 50 years. This will be true as the steady acceleration of the rate of change continues based loosely on Moore’s Law leading to true quantum computing. Genetic engineering combined with nano components that may also be bioelectronic in nature will allow planetary network communication with implants or, perhaps, full neural lace. The primary distinction will be between those people with full communication plus memory and sensor augmentation versus those who choose not to use artificial components in their bodies. Everyone will use a planet-wide network for all communication and process activity whether through augmentation or very small headbands or other options that are not implanted. Communities as political units will be much smaller than the current concept of nation state. This will be based on community member modeling by AI administration to control day-to-day management as well as general allocation of resources. This allocation will be expansion or contraction of specific facilities and/or services based on an array of member models. The members themselves will have the option to override the algorithmic decision if they choose. The role of political representatives will have been replaced by algorithmic models and direct democratic decisions. This will be focused, I expect, on diversity and the need to prevent the blurring of all into very standardized culture. The largest question will be integration of virtual communities. It is becoming clear that, as our numbers increase to t10 billion and beyond in the next 50 years, diversity will be more and more valuable. The very nature of the technology that will become part of our bodies and will shape the very nature of our communities the natural result will be homogenization of the species. As previously described, the nature of planet will become predominantly urban with constant instantaneous communication. We are already well on the way to a planetary culture based on current metropolitan areas. This is a tremendous benefit allowing the move to AI-based management based on, finally, universally defined and expanded rights. The desire will be for change and difference, innovation and originality to counter the growing sameness. This may, finally, eliminate the problem of irrational bigotry, racism and xenophobia. But that will lead to personal augmentation and, probably, genetic engineering to regain diversity under our individual control. A major challenge that I see is the management of virtual worlds for people with specific ideas or ideals who wish to and could live in the world as they want it to be. How will this be handled physically (Matrix model) and morally? Living as master of a slave plantation may be desired by some. Should that be an option with no ‘real’ people involved? Overall the tremendous expansion of options will be good. But more questions will come from this and answers may be difficult.”

Barrack Otieno, general manager at the Africa Top-Level Internet Domains Organization, wrote, “I see advancements in user experience and user interface. I don’t expect major changes that will affect the major characteristics of the internet (invariants as defined by the Internet Society). Focus will be on getting more people and things online. I expect technology to enhance the work environment. The internet will mostly be used to enhance communication, coordination and collaboration.”

Robert Bell, co-founder of Intelligent Community Forum, wrote, “I expect ubiquitous high-capacity connectivity in the rich and semi-rich worlds, and vast increases in it for the rest of the world’s people. Riding that connectivity will be learning algorithms that we integrate into our lives without a thought and deliver a vast range of services and information. Our interface with the network will evolve in ways that seem almost fantasy now. How well this turns out for us depends on getting a few things right. We must have a near bulletproof solution for security and identity online, and individual control over online privacy. Otherwise, the ‘pollution’ of cyberthreat, fraud and misinformation will choke off all progress. It is typically a crisis that forces us to confront the damage of such third-party effects as pollution. I have no idea what the crisis or crises will be, but as the network grows toward ubiquity, the potential damage of such a crisis grows with it. The great challenge that will come with all of this is to avoid being overwhelmed by the digital overlay of the physical world. We already see the early stages of it in daily life. I hope that humanity’s ability to adapt its environment to its own needs, rather than letting the digital environment control it, will continue to shield us from the worst effects. If we give people individual choice and the power to evolve rules to guide those choices in the right direction, we will manage to extract more benefit than harm from what we do. To paraphrase Churchill, however, it will be after exhausting every other possibility.”

Monica Murero, director of the E-Life International Institute and associate professor in sociology of new technology at the University of Naples Federico II, Italy, commented, “I foresee more and more media convergence on mobile devices, wearable, inter-connected. I tend to think in positive terms, especially for those who will be able to access new opportunities safely, but again this will not be for all, in my opinion.”

Nigel Hickson, an expert on technology policy development for ICANN based in Brussels, responded, “I do not think we will be talking about the internet in 50 years’ time. As the internet becomes ubiquitous it is simply an enabling force like air or water; it’s what we do with it that becomes more important – is the power used for good, to improve society, enhance freedom and choice, or is it used to enslave? The internet, and the effect it will be having in 50 years, cannot be divorced from the progress of society itself. In an enlightened democracy the effect of the internet will have been positive, enhancing freedom and choice, but in a dictatorship the opposite could well be true.”

Ross Stapleton-Gray, principal at Stapleton-Gray and Associates, an information technology and policy consulting firm, commented, “I suspect that the internet will evolve toward greater robustness and reliability through, in some ways, becoming more opaque, more like a ‘system of (system of systems)’ than the current ‘system of systems,’ and partly through increased demand (for some of this infrastructure) for authentication. I would not be surprised to see it genericize from ‘the Net’ or ‘cyberspace’ or ‘being online’ to just ‘connected,’ with an assumption that unless you were actively seeking to be ‘unconnected by choice,’ you’d always be connected/have connection. Like we plug things into any electrical socket without much caring how the electrons get there, we’ll assume connectivity. I’ve written some on how humans might relate to the Internet of Things (http://www.iotjournal.com/articles/view?16661), and that vision, that humans, like cars, or buildings, or any other object, will be seamlessly interacting with all of the other things, seems likely. How humans will be better or worse off due to digital technologies will be hugely dependent on social and economic policies we still need to develop and implement, but it feels like we’re on the cusp of addressing huge inequities, and that, should we do that, we’ll be much more willing to share the benefits that digital advances could bring.”

Andrew Odlyzko, professor at the University of Minnesota and former head of its Digital Technology Center and the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute, said, “Expect continuation of the trend of digital technologies becoming ever more deeply entrenched in our lives. The improved communication capability, together with techniques such as virtual reality, are likely to lead to greater distancing from physical reality, and creation of dream worlds (by individuals as well as groups). Assuming we avoid giant disasters, such as runaway climate change or huge pandemics, we should be able to overcome many of the problems that plague humanity, in health and freedom from physical wants, and from backbreaking or utterly boring jobs. This will bring in other problems, or course.”

Michael R. Nelson, a technology policy expert for a leading network services provider who worked as a technology policy aide in the Clinton Administration, commented, “This is an almost unanswerable question. We will see more change and disruption in the next 10 years than we have seen in the last 20. If governments and incumbents allow it, we could see twice as much!! All we know about 2069 is that data storage, network capacity and tools to turn data into knowledge will be basically unlimited and cost almost nothing. But, we also know that the wisdom needed to use the power of technology will not be available to everyone. And we also know that political forces will try to create scarcity and favor some groups over others. Let us hope that the engineers innovate so fast that consumers have the tools and choices they need to overcome such constraints. The only way to answer this is by looking at the last 50 years of internet development and multiplying by 10, 20,or 50. When 50 or 100 BILLION devices interact in some way with the internet and the Cloud, we will see applications that will be at least as powerful as the web and social media.”

Mary Chayko, author of “Superconnected: The Internet, Digital Media, and Techno-Social Life” and professor in the Rutgers School of Communication and Information, said, “The internet’s first 50 years have been tech-driven, as a host of technological innovations have become integrated into nearly every aspect of everyday life. The next 50 years will be knowledge-driven, as our understandings ‘catch up’ with the technology. Both technology and knowledge will continue to advance, of course, but it is a deeper engagement with the internet’s most critical qualities and impacts – understandings that can only come with time, experience and reflection – that will truly come to characterize the next 50 years. We will become a ‘smarter’ populace in all kinds of ways.”

Jim Spohrer, director of the Cognitive Opentech Group at IBM Research-Almaden, commented, “Everyone has a hundred digital workers working for them. Smartphones are part of your smart suit that has exoskeleton capabilities especially helpful to elderly. Our cognitive mediators know us in some ways better than we know ourselves. Better episodic memories and large numbers of digital workers allow expanded entrepreneurship, lifelong learning and focus on transformation.”

Lee Smolin, a professor at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and Edge.org contributor, responded, “Many technologies evolve fast until they reach functional maturity after which how they function for us evolves slowly. I suspect the internet has already reached, or will shortly reach, that state. Your question was about technology in general. I look to still-emergent technologies in medicine, biology and energy to have a big effect in the medium future.”

Mícheál Ó Foghlú, engineering director and DevOps Code Pillar at Google, Munich, said, “Looking forward 50 years is almost impossible. I think the biggest trend we can anticipate from today’s frame is that the huge increase in machine-to-machine inter-communication, the Internet of Things, will transform the landscape. This will mean all electronic devices will have some form of built-in intelligence and many systems will layer on top of this massively interconnected intelligent mesh. All technological change creates anxiety, and many developments have negative as well as positive potential uses. As a rule, the past 200 years have demonstrated that such changes on balance improve the lives of the majority of the people on the planet. I would predict that this momentum would continue, though not ruling out many individual examples of misuse (e.g. authoritarian governments abusing innovations in surveillance technologies to repress their populations).”

Wangari Kabiru, author of the MitandaoAfrika blog, based in Nairobi, commented, “Digital platforms will be significant over the next 50 years with the application of a mix of technologies and talent providing superiority. More people will develop and drive their own innovations and inventions with a few pace-setting conglomerates. Humanity and society challenges will metamorphosize with the times and the opportunity will be there for the best of technology platforms – those that bring solutions. The divide between solutions over technology hype will become clearer and greater with a demand for solutions over technology hype. As the web becomes darker, people will expect as a standard practice for safety first of platforms. As we have more owners of democracy through the net, a lift of offline experiences to the online, an increase to closed circuits some even secretive, and platform wars, this will result in new super-powers being created – now not nations but individuals and corporations. Wow, digital life will impact the entire future of LIFE – future of how they live, future of how they work, future of how their relationships interact and overall how they experience life.”

Michael Veale, co-author of “Fairness and Accountability Designs Needs for Algorithmic Support in High-Stakes Public Sector Decision-Making” and a technology policy researcher at University College London, responded, “The internet will become even more political. As more and more tasks and interactions move online, political battles will become increasingly about the governance of the internet. The interconnectedness of this policy area means that new democratic institutions will be needed that are more global in nature. Some old-style, exclusive, powerful networks will find new forms online, as a new political elite are ‘digital-first.’ A consistent battle between centralisation and decentralisation is likely to continue, with AI tools enabling individuals and small firms to make and connect compelling services, and the value-add of a large design and management bureaucracy like Facebook will decrease. Competition rules might be in place to force services to work with each other, and the failure of the ad-supported funding model will mean that individuals are often paying a premium for enhanced access to exclusive networks of people and activities. Technological change will improve some of the lowest standards of living in the world today, but beyond a certain point (e.g. provision of basic needs), it is unclear who will benefit. It is likely that technological change will force countries to reconsider how they measure welfare, progress and societal benefit, and this is likely to differ strongly across different countries and cultures.”

Greg Shannon, chief scientist for the CERT Division at Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, said, “Fifty years ago I also watched the moon landing; some things change slowly, too. Pervasive/complete/competing memories. Capture/network/storage tech will allow complete digital records of each life, with fast recall for discussion, disagreements and manipulation. What will it mean to not have to remember, but you can recall (the video) with higher fidelity than one could ever remember? This will disrupt social norms. Communities specified by degrees of anonymity and other variable social norms. With pervasive sensing/monitoring, communities can define and enforce norms. From everyone wears green on April 20 to verbal violence is OK (or not) to which laws are well-defined and must be followed 100% of the time (what does it mean to really stop at a stop sign?). AI and IT (information technology) can define, enforce and update norms at scale and quickly. Trust will be a critical social asset. Those communities that value and promote trust will have more life, liberty and happiness. AI and IT will allow communities to ensure varying degrees of security, privacy, resiliency and accountability in building trust. Being trustworthy ALL THE TIME is stressful given that trust is based on competency, dependability, honesty, loyalty, boundaries and sincerity. No one is perfect and social norms in communities will vary with AI/IT helping ensure/permit the varied norms. Non-locality of communities. We already see this today with the various groups – mailing lists, conference calls, website, hashtags, etc. – that define communities that can be very tight/lose small/large local/global. This might impact happiness; if EVERYONE physically around you is a stranger (not in one of your communities) what will that mean for the physiological aspects of happiness – touch, smell, tastes, complex sounds and sights? At a technical level, the RF (radio frequency) signature of individual will become increasingly important as the wired last mile disappears. Social norms will include RF – peaceful or aggressive/harmful. And you won’t be able to hide it no more than you can hide walking down the street. I want to be an optimist but I’m much less certain about 50 years (vs. 12). As technology-driven change continues to accelerate it will continue to challenge communities to adapt and survive. Technologies might define communities more than historical culture, location, politics, etc., as new generations invent whole new constructs to deal with new tech and norms. Life: Yes AI/IT/computing will help us extend natural productive lifetimes into the 100’s and 110’s. Liberty: Will be some major upheavals, failures, revolts and conflicts that cause technology-induced social disruptions. On their own they will be mild, but, combined with expected climate-change migrations and conflicts, the internet could really amplify some disasters, e.g., mass movements initiated in days instead of years, violent local responses that propagate at internet speed while mitigations cross physical distance. Happiness: If we measure it, we’ll be OK….”

Patrick Lambe, a partner at Straits Knowledge and president of the Singapore Chapter of the International Society for Knowledge Organization, wrote, “Fifty years ahead is extremely difficult to project! Most crises, once reached, produce a level of stability and recovery. Again, this will not be a pure technology-related situation. I find it hard to visualise how technology will be affecting human lives that far ahead. However, technology maladjustment leading to widespread crisis normally leads to recovery and consolidation, and that’s why I thought technology and digital life will have a net positive effect over the next 50 years.”

Bob Frankston, software innovation pioneer and technologist based in North America, wrote, “This question confuses the internet with the early networks. We had commercial host-to-host connections by the mid 1960s. The ARPANET built on prior experience. Far more important is that the internet has transcended the traditional idea of networking as a service and is really about relationships independent of what is in the middle. This is the face of a fundamental philosophical shift. A URL doesn’t just refer to a web page – it can refer to a physical object as when Amazon ships from the nearest warehouse. We exchange references, ideas, and, in doing so, operate on the physical world. This is a profound shift from a world in which we treated messages such as telegrams as physical objects. The internet did indeed start out as an internetworking effort, but it has become something entirely different, just as Copernicus did more than merely make Ptolemy’s calculations more efficient. The use of generic words like ‘network’ allow us to talk without being aware of how profound this change is, and our public policies are still shaped by the 19th century view of networking. Machine learning (also known as AI) is just one example of what happens when we connect concepts. For many people any change will be for the worse because it is unfamiliar. On the positive side the new capabilities offer the opportunity to empower people and provide solutions for societal problems as long as we don’t succumb to magical thinking.”

William Dutton, Oxford Martin Fellow at the Global Cyber Security Capacity Centre and founding director of the Oxford Internet Institute, commented, “The network of networks will be ever more significant and central to everyday life and work, but also more embedded in our activities, as illustrated by visions of an Internet of Things. We are still in a transitional period, when so much of our time and effort is focused on getting connected and using technical advances. I could imagine so many devices that complicate contemporary life, such as the mobile smartphone, disappearing as they become unnecessary for accomplishing their functions. That said, the future will depend heavily on wise policy responses, even more so than technical advances.”

Matt Belge, founder and president of Vision & Logic, said, “Humanity has always strived to be connected to other humans, and writing, publishing, art and education were all efforts to serve this desire. This desire is so deeply seated, this desire for connection, that it will drive everything we do. I believe privacy will become less of a concern, and that transparency will become more of the norm in the next 50 years. Therefore, I expect technology to enable deeper and more personal connections with fewer secrets and greater openness. Specifically, AI will help people with like interests work together, form deeper relationships and collaborate on advancing our entire species. I believe humans are always striving for more and more connection with other humans and technology is evolving in ways to facilitated this.”

Scott Burleigh, software engineer and intergalactic internet pioneer, wrote, “Machine-to-machine network communications will become ubiquitous, and computing hardware will have access to all human information; to the extent that hardware becomes intelligent and volitional it will replace humans in essentially all spheres. Humans’ ability to benefit from this advance will be limited mainly by our inability to come up with adequate interfaces – graphical user interfaces are a dead end, voice is simply annoying and nobody types fast enough. The hardware will know everything and won’t be able to convey it to us. The most important resulting dislocation will be economic: Most work will be automated, so most people won’t have jobs, so either most people will be desperately poor or a different model for allocating wealth will emerge; either will be unsettling. I am guardedly optimistic. I think the eventual resolution of this question will be an improvement in people’s lives.”

Randy Marchany, chief information security officer at Virginia Tech and director of Virginia Tech’s IT Security Laboratory, said, “The human-machine interface will be where I think we’ll see the biggest change. In the beginning, keyboard-based devices were the primary way of communicating with a computer. Today, natural language devices (Watson, Alexa, Siri) are becoming the norm. The younger generations are using more and more conversational methods to communicate with their devices. Descendants of the Google Glass-style devices displaying info using augmented reality techniques will become the normal way of accessing and inputting information. I suspect that governments will find themselves at odds with the corporations that collect this data. For example, if Facebook can influence an election, does a government fear it, partner with it or take it over completely? Technology will make tremendous strides in finding cures for a wide variety of diseases ranging from cancer to Alzheimer’s. It will help unify people by improving communication, transportation and general industry. It will create societal disruptions a la previous ‘industrial revolutions’ as older technologies and their jobs disappear, and the workforce needs to be trained in the new technologies. This disruption will cause fundamental changes in governments, attitudes and way of life. There will be a polarization of views between the new tech and old tech worlds. How we deal with this polarization will determine whether the transition is peaceful or not.”

Peng Hwa Ang, professor of communications at Nanyang Technological University and author of “Ordering Chaos: Regulating the Internet,” commented, “We know that the future is not linear, which means that to be accurate I will be meeting with broad brush strokes. 1. Laws – It is finally being recognised that laws are essential for the smooth functioning of the internet. This is a sea change from the time when the internet was introduced to the public more than 20 years ago. In the future, governments will be increasingly feeling empowered to regulate the laws to their own political, cultural, social and economic ends. That is, countries will regulate the internet in ways that express their own sovereignty. There will be a large area of commonality. But there will also be a sizeable area where the laws diverge across borders. 2. Within 50 years, there should be one common trade agreement for the digital economy. It is difficult to see China carrying on on its own terms. Instead, it is more likely that China will allow foreign companies to operate with little censorship provided that these companies do not ‘intrude’ into the political arena. 3. It is difficult to see Facebook continuing to exist in 50 years. 4. The harm from being always on will be recognized, and so users will spend less time online. Some of the time currently spent by users will be taken over by AI bots. The various harms from the online space – cyber addiction, being cyber-bullied, Facebook-envy, fear of missing out, etc. – will be better understood, so I expect people will in fact spend less time online.”

Steve Crocker, CEO and co-founder of Shinkuro, Inc., internet pioneer and Internet Hall of Fame member, responded, “It was evident at the very beginning of the ARPANET that network connections would become commonplace. Everyone would want their computer connected. With the creation of the internet and the opening to commercial connections in the 1990s, the pace of interconnection accelerated. Today, half or more of the world’s population is continuously connected. I think the internet will start to be built into devices and systems, more or less below the surface. People will stop referring to the internet and take it for granted, much as the developed world takes electric power for granted. This will take a fair amount of engineering, standards development and improved operational practices, of course, but that’s just a continuation of the path we’ve been on for 50 years. Laws and regulations will be under pressure to keep up. The existing boundaries between countries and between states in the U.S. will be hurdles. Cooperation across these jurisdictions will evolve, partly through multi-lateral agreements and partly through the increased use of multi-stakeholder organizations. Life will improve in multiple ways. One in particular I think worth mentioning will be improvements in health care in three distinct ways. One is significantly better medical technology related to cancer and other major diseases. The second is significantly reduced cost of health care. The third is much higher and broader availability of high-quality health care, thereby reducing the differences in outcomes between wealthy and poor citizens.”

Sam Ladner, a former UX researcher for Amazon and Microsoft, now an adjunct professor at Ontario College of Art & Design, wrote, “We will continue to see a melding of digital and analog ‘selves,’ in which humans will now consider their digital experiences less and less divorced from their face-to-face experiences. Face-to-face social connections will become ever more precious, and ever more elusive. Having an ‘in real life’ relationship will be a commodity to be exploited, and a challenge to keep. Physical experiences will increasingly be infused with digital ‘backchannel’ experiences, such as an ongoing digital conversation either in text, images or VR, while the physical event carries on. Likewise, IRL events will become even more exclusive, expensive and a source of cultural capital. Isolated people will fail to see their isolation before it reaches a desperate point, because collectively, we will fail to see physical connections as a key ingredient to ward off loneliness. Loneliness will take on a new meaning; digital friends will assist some isolated people, but loneliness will focus more on lack of human touch, and face-to-face eye contact. New medical disorders will emerge, based on this social withdrawal, and given the aging demographic, a public policy crisis will overwhelm nation states’ budgets and capabilities. Lonely, aging, physically infirm people may find relief in online forums of all sorts, but we will be surprised to learn what a total absence of IRL interaction will yield. I reject the false dichotomy. There will be better and worse in unexpected ways. Digital interactions will save some from loneliness while it will exacerbate it for others.”

Theodore Gordon, futurist, management consultant and co-founder of the Millennium Project, responded, “We will have Watson-like capabilities for data and analytic reasoning in our pockets. False or suspect news will be rejected or marked with a skull and bones. Internet seems likely to splinter into specialized networks that communicate with each other. Big data will be a given and important in determining epidemics in health and in ideas.”

Matt Mason, a roboticist and the former director of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, wrote, “Augmentation of cognitive abilities will likely be possible through neural interfaces. That means we might have easy and natural access to the world’s knowledge. Would skills also be augmented? Physical or cognitive? Possibly. We could also use such a capability for direct neural interfaces to each other. Would that go as far as choosing to merge two identities? It might be fun to merge identities with one’s pet dog for a while. The new technology will present opportunities for dramatic changes in the way we live. While it is possible that human society will collectively behave irrationally and choose a path detrimental to its welfare, I see no reason to think that is the more likely outcome.”

Marshall Kirkpatrick, the product director at Influencer Marketing, responded, “In 50 years, the network’s message that ‘the Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao’ will become much more commonplace knowledge. Hopefully, assuming we do the work to change the world side-by-side with whatever technological changes that happen, the majority of humans will use technologies to understand deeply that they are no more atomistic than a toddler is the center of the universe. People who demand a certain, deterministic universe will seem as barbaric to us then as ISIS soldiers drowning apostates in cages, on videotape, seem to the rest of the world today. I can imagine 50 more years of internet getting us there. It may go the opposite direction if we’re lazy or too short on courage. Or the elite are too exploitive. Or climate change could make it all a hellish wash.”

Ian O’Byrne, an assistant professor at the College of Charleston whose focus is literacy and technology, said, “We’ve recognized over the last couple of years that we’ve created this false dichotomy between our online and offline selves. In the next 50 years, these lines will continue to be blurred, and we may move to a place where people prefer to exist and engage with others in solely digital contexts. To a certain extent, we may reverse our histories and narratives as we move to digital-first realms. The main challenge is whether or not we have the social, political and educational imagination to adapt and effectively use these technologies. If we do not (and history has shown this again and again), then a relative few will be able to leverage these new powers and tools, while the remainder may be worse off for it.”

Philip J. Salem, professor emeritus at Texas State University, expert in organizational communication and technology, commented, “My hope is that there are enough voices encouraging greater depth and more mindful use of out information and communication technologies. These are tremendous tools that have the potential for greater depth of thinking and communicating instead of the skimming and performing that consumes too much time for too many. The interaction between our use of the technologies and the nature of the technologies will be more important than either of them alone.”

Michael Wollowski, associate professor of computer science and software engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, expert in the Internet of Things, diagrammatic systems and artificial intelligence, wrote, “Much of our lives will be automated. Better yet, we will be in control of the degree of automation. Technology will assume the role of a polite personal assistant who will seamlessly bow in and out. Technology based on learned patterns of behavior will arrange many things in our lives and suggest additional options. I am actually mostly hopeful that our lives are changed to the better. I am hoping that industry and governmental regulators realize that we only have one chance to get this right and that in that context, they decide to place the customer in control.”

Susan Mernit, executive director, The Crucible, co-founder and board member of Hack the Hood, responded, “I am interested in how wearable, embedded and always-on personal devices and apps will evolve. Tech will become a greater helping and health management tool, as well as take new forms in terms of training and educating humans. But I wonder how much humans’ passivity will increase in an increasingly monitored and always-on universe, and I wonder how much the owners and overlords of this tech will use it to segment and restrict people’s knowledge, mobility and choices. I want to believe tech’s expansion and evolution will continue to add value to peoples’ lives, but I am afraid of how it can be used to segment and restrict groups of people, and how predictive modeling can become a negative force.”

Shannon Ellis, a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, said, “Technologies will become increasingly integrated both with one another and in our lives. Remembering passwords will be a thing of the past. So too will carrying credit cards or passports. I fear, but expect, that there will be controls over the internet similar to what we see with cable. Paid access will be the norm, limiting the current democratized internet that we have in the States.”

Tom Worthington, Australian internet pioneer and adjunct senior lecturer in the Research School of Computer Science at Australian National University, said, “Networking will be ubiquitous. See ‘Electronic Futures in the 21st Century: An Unreliable Guide’ http://www.tomw.net.au/2000/iim2000.html.”

Richard Forno, of the Center for Cybersecurity and Cybersecurity Graduate Program at the University of Maryland – Baltimore County, wrote, “A few thoughts: 1) I see the future internet as more commercialized and locked-down in response to corporate/government interests over IP controls, cybersecurity and perhaps public discourse – to include enacting national borders in cyberspace. 2) Continued balkanization of the future internet as people embrace various new tech – which Internet of Things platform will they use? Which ‘smart’-whatever platform will become dominant? Will we have many separate ecosystems with as-yet undefined lifespans and/or vendor support cycles that lead to forced upgrades? What problems will that pose? 3) Current questions raised over how internet tech like social media, mobile devices, everything-on-demand impacts society may well set the stage for radical rethinking about what the future internet will look like – and I suspect it’ll be far removed from the romantic ‘informational equality’ of the 1990s and early 2000s. The bottom line: The future internet will reflect future humankind. Humans are a chaotic and fallible species – so how we will develop/embrace future tech within our global society is not something easily predicted other than to say it will reflect contemporary views, mores and interests. I’ll use AI as an example since the future of the internet and society will be shaped quite broadly by advances in AI and machine learning. For the better, at the minimum, advances in AI will foster smarter personal assistants and routine automation for individuals, families and society. AI/ML will allow for significant data analysis to improve the human condition in areas like medicine, climate change and resource utilization. For the worse, advances in AI can allow nefarious entities to create more effective and targeted tools to disrupt the fabric of society through cyber-oriented attacks for war or criminal purposes. AI/ML misapplied can allow adversaries to analyse significant data to create more targeted hostile bioweapons instead of beneficial medicine.”

Pamela Rutledge, director of the Media Psychology Center, responded, “Starting with Generation Z and going forward, internet and 24/7 real time connectivity will no longer be viewed as a ‘thing’ independent from daily life, but integral, like electricity. This has profound psychological implications about what people assume as normal and establishes baseline expectations for access, response times and personalization of functions and information. Contrary to many concerns, as technology becomes more sophisticated, it will ultimately support the primary human drives of social connectedness and agency. As we have seen with social media, first adoption is noncritical – it is a shiny penny for exploration. Then people start making judgments about the value-add based on their own goals and technology companies adapt by designing for more value to the user – we see that now in privacy settings and the concerns about information quality. The roadblocks will be entirely human – our inability to accept new mental models and institutional systems about where technology does a better job than the systems we have now. Changes that add value – smart houses, better diagnostic equipment, virtual connectivity across distances and safer, more innovative transport – will flourish. Technology is going to change whether we like it or not – expecting it to be worse for individuals means that we look for what’s wrong. Expecting it to be better means we look for the strengths and what works and work toward that goal. Technology gives individuals more control – a fundamental human need and a prerequisite to participatory citizenship and collective agency. The danger is that we are so distracted by technology that we forget that digital life is an extension of the offline world and demands the same critical, moral and ethical thinking.”

Raimundo Beca, partner at Imaginacción, formerly a member of the ICANN board, said, “The Internet of Things will be universally deployed, without any intervention of unskilled users. The digital divide will exist no more.”

Stuart A. Umpleby, a professor and director of the research program in social and organizational learning at George Washington University, wrote, “In 2030 there will be more knowledge of and interest in cybernetics, which offers a general theory of control and communication, a general theory of management, a general theory of the social and design sciences. The science was largely created in the U.S. but is currently more well known abroad, particularly in Europe, than in the U.S. Americans are less interested in theories and philosophies than Europeans. Europeans, unlike Americans, spend two years in high school studying the history of philosophy. This means Europeans approach problem-solving with a larger set of conceptual possibilities than Americans. In the future, people will live increasingly in the world of ideas, concepts, impressions and interpretations. The world of matter and energy will be mediated by information and context. Already our experiences with food are mediated by thoughts about calories, safety, origins, the lives of workers, etc. Imagine all of life having these additional dimensions. Methods will be needed to cope with the additional complexity.”

Joly MacFie, president of the Internet Society New York Chapter, commented, “1) Advances in decentralization and crypto will revolutionize the distribution of content and revenue for creators. 2) Extremely high bandwidth arriving with 6G will bring entirely new applications based on super-sensory capabilities. We are still in digital society’s adolescence. Maturity will bring ubiquity, understanding, utility, security and robustness.”

John Markoff, fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University and author of “Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots,” wrote, “Speculation on the nature of society over time spans of half a century falls completely into the realm of science fiction. And my bet is that science fiction writers will do the best job of speculating about society a half century from now. As someone who has written about Silicon Valley for more than four decades, I have two rules of thumb: technologies aren’t real until they show up at Fry’s Electronics and the visionaries are (almost) always wrong. I am completely torn by your question. I actually feel like the answer might as well be a coin toss. I chose to be optimistic simply because over the past century technology has improved the quality of human life.”

Peggy Lahammer, director of health/life sciences at Robins Kaplan LLP and legal market analyst, commented, “Historically access to natural resources, with limited intelligence on how to best use those resources, provided the means to survive and prosper. As we continue to become more specialized in our expertise and less skilled in many tasks required to survive, we are more dependent on others with specialized talents. I believe the internet and a connected world have fueled this transformation and will continue to do so in the next 50 years. The internet will continue to connect people around the globe and cause instability in areas where people have limited resources, information or specialized skills necessary to thrive.”

Oscar Gandy, emeritus professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania, responded, “This question is quite a reach… who knows, or even has a basis for guessing, where communication and information technology will be in 50 years? I certainly don’t. The whole notion of connectivity is bound to be redefined in this not too distant future. When we extend the processes through which miniaturization married with processing speed, and divorce from personal device-based memory, the possibilities for connectivity/interactivity/control, and what we mean by intelligence are beyond the ability of any but authors of science fiction novels (I guess that excludes those among us who consider themselves to be ‘futurists’). I think the most interesting possibilities are those that actually eliminate (or seem to eliminate) the need to possess devices to make use of what we currently refer to as connectivity. This means that all we need is access to the intelligent network – a level of access that will not require manual action of any kind; I can even imagine that use of this network will not even depend upon requests made vocally – thought will be enough. So, I don’t know what the requisite ‘interface’ will be, but I believe that something akin to sensors interacting with implanted chips will be commonplace, without the chips, with sensing of the brain from what we would characterize as a reasonable conversational distance from the sensor(s) would be sufficient. Of course, for a privacy scholar, this is quite a leap from our present thinking about access to and control over our private thoughts. This will, therefore be an area of much work with regard to law, regulation and control of these developments and their use by others for specified legitimate purposes. Due to the difficulty, if not impossibility, of predicting the future of technology 50 years down the road, the best I can do is to indicate what I wish the future to bring. Hence, I hope we are better off. That answer, in part depends upon the accuracy of my assumptions about the nature of the moral/ethical guidance resources that will be incorporated within these future environmental control systems in which we will live. In the same way that I can imagine AI systems developing strategies to improve my well-being, including the provision of guidance and recommendations (and perhaps incentives) to motivate my adoption of personal and interpersonal practices and strategies that will enhance the quality of my life, and that of those I come into contact with, I also assume that similar systems will be developed to motivate and enable other options that are beneficial to me and to others to an extent that we are all better off (in ways that we recognize and can articulate our reasoning to others who might, or might not benefit from the same kind of guidance and support). At the heart of this speculation is the assumption (wish) that intelligent systems become especially skilled at education/enlightenment rather than persuasion or manipulation.”

Ian Rumbles, a quality-assurance specialist at North Carolina State University, said, “Fifty years from now the internet will be available to us through us thinking, versus using a keyboard or speaking. The display of data will be visible only to the user and how that display is shown will be totally customized for that user. The ability to obtain answers to questions and look up information in a format that is defined by the user will greatly improve the lives of people.”

Perry Hewitt, a marketing, content and technology executive, wrote, “A half century from now seems a lifetime away; almost impossible to imagine what the base conditions of the world will be let alone what the internet will layer upon it. Taking a big swing at the question, I’d divide my answer into individual and larger societal trends. On an individual basis, we will think about our digital assets as much as our physical ones. Ideally, we will have more transparent control over our data, and the ability to understand where it resides and exchange it for value – negotiating with the platform companies that are now in a winner-take-all position. Some children born today are named with SEO in mind; we’ll be thinking more comprehensively about a set of rights and responsibilities of personal data that children are born with. Governments will have a higher level of regulation and protection of individual data. On an individual level, I do think there will be greater integration of technology with our physical selves. For example, I can see devices that augment hearing and vision, and that enable greater access to data through our physical selves. Hard for me to picture what that looks like, but 50 years is a lot of time to figure it out. On a societal level, AI will have affected many jobs. Not only the truck drivers and the factory workers, but professions that have been largely unassailable – law, medicine – will have gone through a painful transformation. Overall I am bullish in our ingenuity to find a higher and better use for those humans, but it seems inevitable that we’ll struggle through a murky dip before we get there. By 2069, we’ll likely be out the other end. My biggest concern about the world 50 years out is the physical condition of the planet. It seems entirely reasonable that a great deal of our digital lives will be focused on habitable environments: identifying them, improving them, expanding them. So much of this technology is still in its infancy: Our ability to incorporate it into our lives sensibly and fathom its impact as individuals is still so limited. More significantly, the structural lag of governments to understand what’s at stake and regulate technology is a real risk to individuals and societies. For individuals there will be better mastery of personal data, more knowledge delivered at the right time through AI-powered systems that can learn and customize and perhaps even augmented physical capabilities through technology. Health will be the most significant application – internet-enabled health monitoring and remediation – and my hope is that the advances will be spread more evenly across the planet.  Progress will not be linear – after every major gain for individuals there will be a Slough of Despond during which we struggle with use/misuse of tech. But overall there will be progress.”

Frank Tipler, a mathematical physicist at Tulane University, commented, “We may see human-level AI within 50 years. Once the human level is reached, AI will automatically take off to superhuman levels. Humans will cease to be the dominant life form in the universe. If humans accept their loss of being the dominant life form, then AI technology can raise human standards of living. If humans join AIs as downloads, this will also be good. But if humans decide to make war or enslave the AIs, it will be very bad. I’m optimistic, hence my answer.”

John McNutt, a professor in the school of public policy and administration at the University of Delaware, responded, “In the next 50 years we won’t be talking about this. Technology is almost part of the background and will be more so in the future. Not every technology is a good idea and every advance should be carefully considered in terms of its consequence. On balance, technology has made much human progress possible. This is likely to continue. We will always have false starts and bad ideas. People will misuse technology, sometimes in horrific ways. In the end, human progress is based on creating a future underpinned by knowledge, not ignorance.”

Randall Mayes, a technology analyst and author, wrote, “I envision a hybrid blockchain/internet system that will address cybersecurity and privacy issues as well as compensation and ownership of data, so citizens will be compensated and minimize the widening class structure. Less manual labor, more leisure time, new educational systems, new economy, new business models.”

Thomas Streeter, a professor of sociology at the University of Vermont, said, “Human social and political choices will determine how network technologies relate to everyday life in the future, not the technology itself. I think in the future the word ‘internet’ will (or should) fall into disuse. Instead we will talk about specific business models, political strategies and the like which will use networking technologies as part of larger political economic systems. Wikipedia and Facebook are hardly more alike than NASA and General Motors, which both make metal transportation machines but otherwise are completely different. The next 50 years will be shaped by human social and political choices, in the context of limited global resources. Whether life in 50 years is better or worse (and for whom) will not be determined by technology.”

Miguel Moreno-Muñoz, a professor of philosophy specializing in ethics, epistemology and technology at the University of Granada, Spain, said, “It is difficult and risky to make any attempt at such a long-term prospect. Any development in some key aspect (new energy storage technologies, miniaturization and integration of electronic components, advances in communications protocols and networks, etc.) can completely change the scenario of possibilities. Even a setback in current multilateral governance systems, or in the rules for the exchange of goods and services, can lead to fragmentation in communication networks and platforms for access to basic services. I believe that mobility and easy access to affordable databases and service platforms for most citizens will become more important; e-government systems, transparency and accountability will be improved. The development of certain applications, if paralleled by the development of new types of intellectual property licensing and management systems, can revolutionize education and access to knowledge and culture. But this requires an open framework for international cooperation, which in many ways is now under threat. Probably, a more sophisticated culture of privacy will emerge. In the next decades, I think that every daily action will have some kind of digital dimension, in its origin or as a consequence. It’s already an ongoing trend in countries with some technological and cultural development. Many sectors of today’s mass employment are likely to be deeply affected, forcing millions of workers to retrain. People will have more opportunities to learn throughout life, and to enjoy new forms of leisure, social and cultural interaction – certainly also to live new aesthetic experiences, where elements of the physical world are combined or harmonized with other products mediated by technology (VR, etc.). Under undemocratic states or systems without a robust legal framework to protect individual rights, the risk of hypervigilance over individuals and institutions could anticipate dystopian scenarios – for which we already have evidence.”

Michael Zimmer, associate professor and privacy and information ethics scholar at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, commented, “I fear that 50 years from now the ‘internet’ will be largely unrecognizable, and instead we will be operating within various walled gardens controlled by only a few organizations (Google, Facebook, etc.).”

Nancy Greenwald, a respondent who provided no identifying details, wrote, “I started on the early internet in 1983-84 on ‘Dialog,’ with a dial-up connection. Now I talk with my devices, giving instructions, dictating, etc. What I expect to see is a growing number of tasks we can complete through the internet, continual increases in collaborative platforms with and increase in a greatly improved ‘open API’ type of program integration, and an increase in the ways we connect with the technology (our wearable technology is crude) so that we are continuously connected. I already have the feeling that one of my senses is cut off when I am unable to connect to the internet. I expect that sense of enabling/dependence to increase.”

Martin Geddes, a consultant specializing in telecommunications strategies, said, “The internet will change in three fundamental ways. Firstly, it will become contextual, rather than today’s amorphous cloud of connectivity, so we will know the difference between servicing a safety-critical application versus something disposable. Secondly, it will become intimate in scale, with the focus of inter-networking becoming body-scale and below, rather than national and international. Finally, it will be far more capable, with the basic set of services extending far beyond connectivity to include identity, security and management capabilities. The result will be increasingly invisible, much as the power infrastructure has become. I am optimistic that we will find a new harmony with technology, having been in dissonance for a long time. This will not be due to newfound wisdom or virtue, but due to the collapse of longstanding cultures and structures that are psychopathic in nature, including today’s central banking systems and mass surveillance systems. The digital and nano/biotech renaissance is only just beginning, and it will in particular transform healthcare. Out ‘satnav for live’ will help us navigate all daily choices that impact well-being.”

Sam Lehman-Wilzig, associate professor and former chair of the School of Communication, Bar-Ilan University, Israel, wrote, “Given the huge (and completely unpredicted) changes of the ‘internet’ over the past 50 years, this question demands out-of-the-box thinking, which I will do here. Literally. In my estimation, within the next 50 years the internet will mainly become the platform for brain-to-brain communication, i.e. no keyboard, no voice, no screen, no text or pictures – merely ‘neuronic’ communication (thought transmission) at the speed of light, with internet speeds reaching terabytes per second, if not more than that. This also means that the main ‘content’ will be various forms of full-experience VR, fed directly to our brains by professional content providers – and perhaps (a bit science-fictiony at this stage) from our brains to other brains as well. The consequences of such a ‘hive mind’ communication are difficult (if not impossible) to predict, but certainly it will constitute a radical break with past human society. However, it might well be that the socio-political ramifications will be dichotomous: far more censorship in dictatorships (‘1984’) and greater free ‘speech’ in open, democratic societies. Although extrapolation is always a bit dangerous, in this case I am relatively confident. Technological change overall has been a net positive for the past hundreds of years. This is true in virtually every area of life: life expectancy; quality of life; broadening civil rights to women, people of color, children, etc. There is no reason to think that such net gain will change. Specifically, greater human communication has always led to life improvement, macro and micro – further digital progress will be no different on that score.”

Marc Noble, a respondent who provided no identifying details, commented, “My guess would be that keyboards and passwords will be a thing of the past. Communications will be voice activated and be ubiquitous. There will have been a lot of displacement in the IT industry as AI, if properly developed, will take over a lot of ‘jobs.’ I foresee that a lot of IT positions will disappear; programming will be relegated to a very small number if at all. AI will develop its own language and communications channels that will be faster, more efficient and a lot more secure. The need for old industries and fossil fuels will be sharply curtailed. I expect that people’s lives will be generally better, especially for the educated. Those who are most flexible and able to change and adapt will be the big winners; those that resist will have problems. I don’t expect smooth sailing in all industries since technological changes are disrupters and those that can adapt will be the most successful.”

Stephen Abram, principal at Lighthouse Consulting Inc., wrote, “We will be well beyond apps and the web in 50 years. The networked information, entertainment and social world will be fully integrated into biology and networked appliances (not toasters but a full range of new appliances that may be stand-alone like Google Home but are more likely fully integrated devices into architecture and spaces.) Sadly, this brings the basic laws around privacy, confidentiality and copyright into full-frontal issues. The internet will be invisible, and the primary interface will be voice and ‘presence’ where the appliances and spaces recognize you as an individual. This will go well beyond facial/fingerprint stuff and into biological presence. Big Brother is a cliché but there is a lot of truth in the metaphor. Whether we (the market, the public) allow it to be benevolent and balanced around personal and commercial interests or totalitarian and controlling will be the key historical arc. I can’t predict which way this will go but the current trends in U.S. and global politics are cause for concern.”

Vassilis Galanos, a Ph.D. student and teaching assistant actively researching future human-machine symbiosis at the University of Edinburgh, commented, “There is a vast amount of literature precisely dedicated on the meshed condition of humanity’s current online and offline life; the borders are actually blurred and one has an impact on the other. One plausible image from the future will need to take into account the integration of various software and their connectivity, i.e., their ability to integrate, always in relation to the right to abort integration. We already feel the early steps toward this through online maps integrated with other media, offering precise details (and really challenging the old dictum that ‘the map is not the territory’ – in fact, now, the map and the territory are in interactive relationship). It is difficult to jump directly to 50 years from now. I would suggest that the problems that were similar in today’s world and that of 20 or 50 years ago, problems of autonomy, freedom of expression, identity and trust will simply be re-invented in different guises. But nonetheless, current work should work more toward the elimination of divides between owners and non-owners of network technologies. My response would be identical to the one I gave to the first question about the impact of AI. There exists a mutual shaping of humans and technologies and the more one habitualises their use, the better the mutual influence becomes. In the same way we now take for granted tools such as books, cars or even the internet, but we are only now able to see their long-term disadvantages, likewise, the full (positive and negative) potential of an amplified version of internet and AI technologies will be recognised only in several decades from now.”

Roland Benedikter, co-director of the Center for Advanced Studies at Eurac Research Bozen, South Tyrol, Italy, responded, “The internet will change into a diversified network with different speeds, access policies and participatory options according to the evolving multipolar global order with its connecting modernities. The crucial dimension will be the interface in between its diversification. The overall problem is democracy. The internet as we know it has been invented by and within open societies. If there will be a multipolar global order in the full sense, it might be partially non-democratic, thus lowering basic rights and opportunities as compared to now.”

Steven Polunsky, director of the Alabama Transportation Policy Research Center, University of Alabama, wrote, “We all know where this is going. We are at the earliest stages of making devices like electric and water meters ‘smart’ and integrating home accessories with internet functionality. The issue is whether people will be allowed, by regulation or by practical exercise, to opt out, and what the effects of that action will be, as well as what efforts will be required to bring services to those at the fringes. Does government have an obligation, such as led to the creation of the Rural Electrification Administration or Essential Air Service, that extends to the requirement or provision of broadband and beyond to the services it enables? AI is the new hammer. Our job is to ensure that every problem isn’t a new nail.”

Seth Finkelstein, consulting programmer at Finkelstein Consulting, commented, “I, for one, welcome our new platform overlords. I see almost no check on the tendency toward monopoly control, or at the very best, oligarchy involving a handful of corporate behemoths. It’s sobering to realize that the very few serious restrictions that exist come from major nation-states (i.e. China’s own desires for internal control). That’s the level of power needed for an effective opposition. Looking at the history of the 20th century, it’s entirely possible that the 21st century will see some massive convulsion similar to the Great Depression or a World War. And the aftermath of that event (presuming civilization still exists) could entail strong anti-trust laws that would severely limit the data-mining business models of many of today’s major internet companies. It’d be a horrible way to get that outcome, but if the past is any guide, one of the few ways it would ever happen. I don’t expect copyright conflicts to ever go away. If it’s possible to exchange information, there’s going to be business disputes over enforcement and liability for copyright. There’s already been an extensive ‘paracopyright’ legal regime, having to do with take-down rules and anti-circumvention laws. A big issue in the next decades is going to be if any pre-emptive monitoring is required. I’ve often tried to point out that the topics of copyright and censorship have mutual implications as a purely technical matter. Strictly as an observation, without making any moral equivalence, if it’s not possible to stop people from speaking out against a dictatorship (which can torture and kill), then it’s certainly not possible to stop them from sharing popular movies. And inversely, if the level of unauthorized exchange of mass media can be restricted to sufficient low levels, the same system will work very well for political material. The Internet of Things is real. There’s simply too much money in the mining of usage data. And even if that data ultimately isn’t of any value, never underestimate the incentive to create charts and plots and generate fancy analytic reports. Mobile phone data is whole topic of study in itself now. Scale up that idea to every time one uses an appliance, and the implications are staggering. In effect, the internet is optimizing for applications such as commercial video delivery and surveillance systems. While I answered ‘better,’ I need to stress that it’s a net positive made up of gains and losses. It’s wonderful if your refrigerator can determine if you’re low on food and automatically send an order for groceries. It’s not so wonderful when the old prank of falsely telephone-ordering a dozen pizzas in someone’s name turns into crackers having a bunch of refrigerators all fraudulently internet-ordering pizzas. And every pizza you really order is noted as a profile item, to be used by everyone from your health insurance company who may deny you medical coverage, to political manipulators trying to generate the most effective emotional appeals. The pizza may be delivered using GPS and AI assisted route optimization, but the delivery driver (if there even is one) is pressured to work ever harder for lesser pay, via tracking every motion and replaceable at moment’s notice. As you eat the pizza, a social-eating app bothers you to rate and discuss it, with the fundamental goal of selling more in the future. It’s important to be careful what you say in any such discussion; otherwise you might get caught up in Pizza Purity Politics. And that could get you fired for allegedly not getting along well with others, a stigma that will be permanent. On the other hand, there’s talk of some good topping to try next time (though you can’t be sure the recommenders are sincere or shills pushing it).”

Rich Ling, a professor of media technology at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, responded, “My expectation is that IT, and as a part of that AI, will become more thoroughly integrated in everyday mundane activities. Just as the first 50 years of digitalization and the internet have led to more fine-grained services and changed the way we work and communicated, I expect that further application of IT and the insights that are allowed by AI will continue this process. This means that we will have to rethink issues such as the role of work in our everyday lives and in our sense of identity. We will have to rethink issues of privacy and we will have to rethink how governance happens. In the next 50 years there will be significant changes in the way that we work. The disruption of that will play through to the way people identify themselves and can also be turned into political movements. AI is on the point of eliminating a wide variety of jobs and professions (taxi driver, accountant, law clerk, etc.) At the same time a large portion of our identity often comes from an idealized sense of our work. Witness the notion of being a cowboy. This is a real job for a small number of people, but it is an identity for many. In the same way, there is an identity in being a truck driver, an insurance adjuster, etc. It often does not have the same panache as the idealized version of being a cowboy, but it’s nonetheless an identity. If that is taken away from people it can, in the worst case, lead to populist political movements. I answered that the general trend will be positive, but I expect that it is not a simple path to better lives through the application of IT. There are many social and eventually political issues that will be played out.”

Steven Miller, vice provost and professor of information systems at Singapore Management University, said, “Actually, I suspect that most of what you are aiming for in your question is not related to the internet per say – the internet is the physical mechanism of connecting all of us, including the integration of all the wireless devices feeding into the internet. Obviously, more devices will come onto the internet. This will include more wireless devices that are used as aids by people (e.g., mobile phones and tablets), as well as the Internet of Things and innumerable sensors as we increasingly instrument everything, and all physical infrastructure turns into cyberphysical infrastructure. We can all see there will be more things connected, and richer ‘networks’ of connectivity. But that is just at the physical level. I suspect much of your question really starts from this point – given this increase in physical connectivity, what will it mean? A lot of this gets into application level – related to the many ways of organising, processing and making use of all of this information that flows through the internet. As you are aware, it is not the internet that does this processing. It is the application layers that use the info flowing through the internet. I would make a distinction between two inter-related but separate streams to consider to address your question. One stream pertains to cybersecurity. A lot of work needs to be done here. With all of these new forms of connectivity, including sensor-based infrastructure, cybersecurity issues will only multiply. The ability for bad people to do bad things to large numbers of everyone else (normal users, not acting as bad people) will only increase. So there must be a giant effort to make our increasingly fused physical-cyber world more knowable, predicable, reliable and trustworthy. Then, there is the other side – all the new applications and services, and most of these will be guided by a combination of data-driven analytics, data-driven AI and other types of AI to indeed make the applications ‘more aware’ of the situation and context, and better able to make predictions of how to aid or offer services to human users (and even to other machine users). I think we will simultaneously see examples of new services and new ways of offering services we hardly ever imagined. At the same time, some basics of what people do and some aspects of human behaviour will continue as they are and always have been, and there will continue to be a tension – and/or a creative set of possibilities at this interface – just as we see today (relative to human behaviour and use of new technology relative to 20, 50, 100 and 500 years ago). Things will be mostly for the better – but one must also acknowledge that there will be numerous situations and numerous people for whom it will not seem ‘for the better.’ But in aggregate, overall, it will be mostly for the better. And if it is not mostly for the better, the reasons will NOT be due to the technology per say. The reasons will be due to choices that people and society make – political choices, choices per how we govern society, choices per how we attend to the needs of our populations and societies. These are people and political issues, not technology ones. These are the factors that will dominate whether people are better off or worse off.”

Ray Schroeder, associate vice chancellor for online learning at the University of Illinois, Springfield, wrote, “Connected technologies and applications will become much more seamlessly integrated into people’s lives. Technologies are emerging, such as MIT’s AlterEgo, that point to practical telepathy in which human thought will directly connect with supercomputers – and through those computers with other people. This kind of thought-based communication will become ubiquitous through always-on, omnipresent networks. Personal devices will fade away as direct connectivity becomes ubiquitous. These advances will enable instant virtual ‘learning’ of new ideas and the whole range of literature. One will be able to ‘recall’ a novel or a treatise as if one had studied it for years. Such will be the state of augmented memory. There will be attempts to apply new rules/laws, but technological capability will most often trump artificial restrictions. This will further empower people, by the power of their purchases and choice-to-use to set standards of acceptability and preference. In most all respects the power of purchasing and personal use preference will decide the path of development and deployment of technologies. The seamless thought-based networking, combined with robust VR, AR and related mixed reality will enable highly advantageous technologies to assist and entertain the public. This will result in a universal rise in virtual learning and knowledge to inform better decision making.”

Susan Aaronson, a research professor of international affairs and cross-disciplinary fellow at George Washington University, responded, “I admit to being a techno optimist. I believe that true entrepreneurs ‘see’ areas/functions that need improvements and will utilize technologies in ways that make it easier for, as an example, the blind to see. But I also anticipate anti-technology movements fearing the effects on democracy. People are just beginning to organize to ask for and obtain greater control of their data online. I think that is the next civil rights movement.”

Edward Tomchin, a retiree, said, “As with my previous response, I do have an abiding faith in my species. That said, I’ve no idea where technology will advance to in the next 50 years. It is wide open to speculation, but I feel pretty certain we will be far better off and much more in control of our lives and at peace with ourselves as a result. Advances in communication have always been accompanied by major changes and advances in human society … and the internet is without doubt the biggest advancement in communication in history. For the first time in that history, every human being on earth has the ability to communicate directly with every other human being. Today, even in the most remote human settlements and villages, there is at least one member of that community (and likely more) that has a cell phone. Therefore, I’m expecting major advances in civilization, in cooperation, in achieving what we have in one way or another always sought – peace and a better life. These major advances will also be accompanied by technology beyond my ability to imagine, but with the certitude that we will be happier, more fulfilled, more content with our lives, our place in the universe and with the direction in which we will be moving. Human beings, homo sapiens, are a most remarkable species which is easily seen in a comparison with how far we have come in the short time since we climbed down out of the trees and emerged from our caves. The speed with which we are currently advancing leaves the future open to a wide range of speculation, but as I noted, we have overcome much in the past and will continue to do so in pursuit of our future. I’m proud of my species and confident in our future. Disease will likely be eradicated, genetic dysfunctions will be eliminated, the health of society and the individual will no longer be in question. The digitization of our world will result in a deeper knowledge of and control over our lives.”

David Sarokin, author of “Missed Information: Better Information for Building a Wealthier, More Sustainable Future,” commented, “The world of 2069 will be dotted with ‘privacy spaces’ in our homes, workplaces and public areas. These will be rooms where people can be assured that their words and activities are not being tracked in any manner. Outside of such spaces, our current notion of ‘privacy’ will have essentially disappeared.”

Mauro D. Ríos, an adviser to the eGovernment Agency of Uruguay and director of the Uruguayan Internet Society chapter, responded, “The internet will reach very advanced technological developments, but will lose freedom, economic and political interests over the network. (It) will be more evident in 50 years if this scenario becomes more and more preponderant, which makes it impossible to maintain freedom on the internet. it is possible that the international community develops a parallel network or establishes technical environments on the internet that are beyond the control of governments or organizations. Technology will adopt a completely ubiquitous form. Virtual worlds such as virtual reality will be rejected by the community that will prefer technology to come to our world and not go to the fictitious world. Augmented reality will be key in people’s lives.”

Warren Yoder, longtime director of the Public Policy Center of Mississippi, now an instructor at Mississippi College, responded, “Over first eons and then millennia and now decades the physical earth was overlain by the ecology of life, which was overlain by human culture, which is now being overlain by the computational net. Each overlay develops its own distributed logic disruptive to the previous logics. Predicting the developing logic of the computational web from within current human culture is not trustworthy. The logics of the 20th century are collapsing. AI will create additional disruption, which will increase pressure for new logics of our metamodern era and new arrangements of the polity. I trust we will be successful, and AI-included changes will mostly increase well-being.”

R “Ray” Wang, founder and principal analyst at Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research, said, “We expect a world that supports infinite ambient orchestration. Infinite – as journeys and processes are broken into intent-driven microservices. These can be reused and made available over and over again. Ambient – using context, choices and anticipatory analytics, next best actions will be surfaced up in a series of suggested choices that will help humans make better decisions. Orchestration – as these experiences will be brought in from outside systems, data, platforms and people. The challenge will be how do we trust these systems as they augment humanity. Are we being manipulated? Will we know if they are just catering to our own biases and whims? The new internet can also be a place where we decentralized human rights, enabling an individual to protect their data privacy and stay free. Keep in mind privacy is not dead. It’s up to us as a society to enforce these human rights.”

Christopher Yoo, a professor of law, communication and computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, responded, “The past 20 or so years of history of the internet as a mass-market phenomenon underscores the limits of people’s abilities to predict the future. Although search engines were common in the early 1990s, no one could anticipate the explosive growth of social media. The iPhone did not revolutionize the smartphone market until 2007, and Netflix did not shift its business to internet-based distribution until that same year. Cloud computing had its historical antecedents, but none achieved the seamless integration that characterizes modern cloud technologies. If I had to predict (and undertake the concomitant risk and inevitable likelihood that some of these predictions will turn out to be wrong), I would expect users to become increasingly reliant on their mobile devices and to rely on them for mobile payments and other functions. Just as cloud computing disintermediated PC operating systems and created new key intermediaries, such as hypervisor leader VMWare, these new functions will shake up existing industries and inevitably displace incumbents that are too slow to innovate.”

Angelique Hedberg, senior corporate strategy analyst at RTI International, said, “It’s naive to jump ahead 50 years and suggest you can conceive of a probable, realistic future. That’s correct; it’s a guess. There will be a black swan event, not because we couldn’t see it coming, but we didn’t want to see it coming or dealt with it once it was here. Something will happen that changes at least one part of the world and as such it’s dangerous to suggest we have any confidence or comfort in the future that’s coming that isn’t built on the people with wealth today. That said, if we choose a future we want in 50 years, and work toward creating it, there is a non-zero probability we will reach a version of that future. In that vein of thought, we will see waves of platform companies that change the way we live and enjoy our lives. The platform companies that exist today will fade, as will the ones that follow. This is not because they fail, but rather, because they succeed. We will find a way to make decisions in a network of decisions. In 50 years, multiple generations of a family will gather for dinner and share sights, smells, sounds, tastes and touches, even if they are in different hemispheres, countries and time zones. You’ll be at a child’s social activity and they will hear the voices all of those who love (and critique) him. You will say goodbye to aging loved ones, even if they cannot hear you. This will all happen with the assistance of technology (some embedded in our brain) that know our wants and needs better than we know our own. The definition of what it means to be human will evolve and the laws and regulation will follow, albeit in a less than direct manner. We will value governments in new and different ways, and we will expect more from our technology platforms. The deluge of data will provide new inputs into the decision models for platforms, bringing greater clarity to the short-term benefits and long-term risks, in return making the financial decisions more social, environmental and moral. Where laws and regulations can put a bottom line, they will. Where law and regulations cannot, the planet will step in and regulate the excess. Our digital footprints – intentional, unintentional and simulated – will create troves of data that will be used to model and predict our behavior and as such will be used to maximize product and control by one or more entities. At the individual level this may feel like a loss of control. At the community and relevant trans-national levels it will make room for enlightenment. We will benefit from the data of individuals we have never met just as we will be questioned about our own potential because of persons who never existed. The term for the greater good will take on new meaning as we balance personal privacy with human good. Technological literacy will be a new form of income (and potential wealth). The next 50 years will be a series of chicken-and-egg problems with as many prisoner’s dilemma. Everyone will want a decision, but no one will want to call/be the decision maker.”

Benjamin Kuipers, a professor of computer science at the University of Michigan, wrote, “We face critical choices between alternative futures, positive and negative. I choose to believe, and explore in these answers, the positive alternative. I hope that future comes true, but there is no guarantee. Fifty years from now, the internet, and digital tools, will be largely invisible to us, much as electricity and electrical motors are to us today. We know they are all around, and we use them constantly, but they barely impinge on our consciousness. However, just as we now take for granted the ability to plug appliances into the wall, we will then take for granted the easy availability of all of the world’s knowledge. We will also take for granted that there will be AIs that know an enormous amount about each of us, and we will trust them to protect our individual interests, consistent with the ethical requirements of society. One of the great contrasts between the positive and the negative possible futures will be the extent to which we can trust that available knowledge, and to what extent we can trust those AI knowers. In my ideal future, within the next 50 years we will have found ways to ensure trustworthiness in the infrastructure of knowledge and AI knowers. We will understand that there are ethical principles governing the use of knowledge about each of us as individuals, and the respect we must all have for the collected general knowledge that is a resource for humanity. We will trust that those ethical principles will be followed by the vast majority of people, corporations, robots and states, and that there are mechanisms in place to detect violations, protect us from their effects and sanction the violators. The Founding Fathers of the United States of America were among the greatest systems engineers of all time, designing feedback systems, checks and balances to protect our government and our society from the failures of all-too-human leaders, holding power and hungry for more. We need a new generation of great systems engineers, to create new feedback systems to create and maintain a trustworthy society, even with the hugely powerful tools we are creating. In the post-World War II era, many people believed that American society was essentially benevolent, providing opportunities for political, economic and social advancement for individuals and families over decades and generations. This was somewhat true for the majority, but dramatically untrue for many minorities. We may have the opportunity to provide this societal benevolence for everyone in our society. The technological, often digital, tools we are creating have the promise of greatly increasing the resources available in society. While it may be possible to automate some current jobs, people have an intrinsic need for meaningful work. If we can use these new resources to support them, many jobs can be created to provide meaningful work for many people, and to improve the environment for everyone in society. Some examples of such jobs are child and elder care, and creation and maintenance of green spaces ranging from urban parks to rural farms to wilderness environments and many others. A national service requirement for young people gets certain kinds of work done, but also provides training in practical skills and practical responsibility, and also exposes individuals to the diversity of our society. Technological change produces resources that allow new things to be done and reduces certain constraints on what can be done. But we need to learn which goals we should pursue.”

Josh Calder, a partner at the Foresight Alliance, commented, “The internet of 2069 will be machine-dominated, with human-involved communication just a thin layer in the overall system. Changes will be for the better if the wealth generated by automation is spread equitably, and this will likely require significant changes to economic systems. If wealth concentration is accelerated by automation, the average person could be worse.”

Brock Hinzmann, a partner in the Business Futures Network who worked 40 years as a futures researcher at SRI International, said, “Miniaturization of processing chips will continue to the point of a direct bio-machine interface, at which point, the applications of networked computers could spread in various unpredictable ways. Some people may plug themselves into the net. Other people will make a living designing software to use the new data in ways we cannot anticipate. The Internet of Things will evolve over a long period of time, as companies design devices and early adopters figure out what the devices are actually good for. The major networking platforms that survive (mostly not) and the new ones that arise will be the ones that can guarantee user privacy and trust and who will provide a secure value-exchange system. In everyday life, people will spend increasing amounts of time on what I call ‘boty training,’ that is, training their AIs to behave in a way that conforms to their expectations. Having the capability to train one’s bots will also require lifelong human learning, which AI will augment and guide as well. Human sensory perception will become increasingly augmented over time, which will have unpredictable consequences. There will be ‘new-age’ type experiences and religions and the big traditional religions will learn quickly to exploit each new development in technology to extend their influence, just as they did with the printing press, radio and television. I choose to remain optimistic, although I don’t expect there to be one future for everyone on the planet, and I expect there will be plenty of abuse of the technology to limit freedom. It could also be that many other concerns, resulting from climate change, global migration and geo-political conflict, will overwhelm issues related to technology.”

Lane Jennings, a recent retiree who served as managing editor for the World Future Review from 2009 to 2015, wrote, “Fifty years from now the internet will be integral to every aspect of life in the developed world. The biggest change may be direct machine-to-machine communications. Already some cars and appliances inform owners when they need maintenance. In 50 years, they will likely contact service agencies directly, schedule needed work and authorize payment from their owners’ accounts. AI built into structures and autonomous robots will perform many – perhaps most – of the ‘jobs’ that require skilled labor (construction, transport, etc.) and complex but relatively predictable ‘thought processes’ (accounting, medical testing, text editing, etc.). Such widespread replacement of humans could produce mass depression, ennui and escape into sports, drugs and pastimes. To prevent this I urge designers of new tech to develop AI applications that encourage human-machine partnership. For example, instead of forcing humans to hopelessly try to match a computer’s ability to process data at light speed, why not slow down apparent processing and response times to restore a human-scale tempo to man/machine interactions? Why should ‘speed’ or ‘efficiency’ always be the most desired ideals in new technology? Voice recognition software accommodates human speech norms and similar buffers might soften the impact of many AI applications. Let’s actively explore ways to promote greater symbiosis between artificial and human intelligences. Linking human brains directly to AI is usually viewed as tending to make humans more machine-like, but must this be so? Preserving or better still enhancing human traits with AI could result in a world where patience, humor, curiosity, compassion and joy are seen as essential elements in operations that now appear merely practical. A self-driving vehicle that actually enjoys moving itself, and communicates its pleasure to others of its kind, might do far more to relieve traffic congestion than mere automatic braking and distance maintenance alone. Or why not give direction-finding software the ability to select not just the fastest or shortest route to a destination, but the one that its human user is likely to find most pleasant? Human-to-human interactions often include digressions, asides and comments that help establish an atmosphere of trust and rapport. Unless similar capabilities are programmed into AI systems, the world of 2069 is likely to be one in which humans no longer feel in control, but merely along for the ride as systems they neither appreciate nor understand increasingly make the decisions that limit their options and dictate the course of their lives. This depends on whether AI is designed strictly for efficiency or is engineered to partner comfortably with humans. Entire classes of humans (drivers, construction workers, editors, medical technicians, etc.) are likely to be replaced by AI systems within the next 50 years. Whether individual members of such groups feel their lives have been improved or made worse will vary depending on many factors. Suffice it to say that public support of some kind to give displaced workers the means to live in relative security and comfort is essential. Moreover, this support must be provided in a way that preserves self-respect and promotes optimism and ambition. A world of former workers who perceive themselves as having been prematurely retired while machines provide the goods and services they once supplied seems to me highly unstable. To be happy, or at least contented, people need a purpose beyond simply amusing themselves and passing time pleasantly. One of the major functions of the internet in 2069 may be to facilitate contact between people with skills who want to work and jobs that still need doing in spite of high-tech robots and ubiquitous AI.”

Sanjiv Das, a professor of data science and finance at Santa Clara University, responded, “Database technology as we know it will cease to exist. Modern protocols will automatically keep and tag data irrespective of which cloud it resides on. We will be able to obtain a view of all our data as all storage and devices will be linked. SQL and NoSQL databases will long be extinct. Instead, some modern version of knowledge graphs will be implemented. These new ‘information structures’ will replace geo-spatial-temporal relationships with relationships based on concepts and context. Legal frameworks will adapt to allow our data to be fully owned by us. Everything will be homomorphically encrypted with new mathematical algorithms, allowing us to reveal different views of our data to specific entities, in the same way as we compartmentalize non-digital human interaction today. Technological revolutions improve the world not because they offer cool new toys but because they improve lives with better use of information. The distribution of means (broadly defined as wealth) is strongly affected by the distribution of knowledge and the use of information and AR/VR systems will become widespread, leveling the knowledge playing field. While the distribution of means has become wider (i.e., the proliferation of inequality of means/wealth), it is clear that the entire distribution has also shifted to the right. I think of this as Phase 1. Eventually, Phase 2 will see greater equality in the distribution of knowledge, followed by greater equality in the distribution of means. The risk to this view lies in political systems and thought not evolving quickly enough. These systems implement control through inequalities in knowledge, which lead to inequalities in wealth. Advances in technology unaccompanied by enlightened politics may delay progress and create turmoil in the short run. It may take a mutiny by a tech elite to move things forward in the right direction.”

George Kubik, president of Anticipatory Futures Group, wrote, “Fifty years is an extremely long forecast period. Outlook: Post-human and post-machine. Technologies: Tachyon communication/networking, faster-than-light communication, organic and non-organic integration, heterodox physics employed. Most important futures will involve the generation of requisite complexity to address rapidly evolving possibility space.”

Daniel Riera, a professor of computer science at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, commented, “Everything will be connected; automation will be everywhere; most of the jobs will be done by machines. Society will have fully changed to adapt to the new reality: Humans will need to realise of the importance of sustainability and equality. In order to reach this point technology, ethics, philosophy, laws and economics, among other fields, will have done a big joint effort. We have a very good opportunity. It will depend on us if we take advantage of it. I hope and trust we will do. Otherwise, we will disappear.”

Matthew Henry, chief information officer at LeTourneau University, Longview, Texas, said, “The next 50 years? We won’t think of it as the ‘internet.’ Similar to electricity, it’s just there and it’s a basic human right. Connections via devices, people, objects, will all be the norm. Think about something simple as depositing a check. I guess that may have taken 15 to 30 minutes, maybe even 60 depending on where you lived. Today, if I get a check (that’s going away too), I pop my phone out, and it’s deposited. These are the kinds of things that add to who we are as humans.”

Jennifer Jarratt, owner of Leading Futurists consultancy, commented, “How will digital tools be integrated into everyday life? They already are, for most people, although the technologies can become more powerful and physically implanted. ‘What new rules, laws, etc.’ We need new regulation now that can protect users and the digital world from themselves and itself. With those we could also have a fully digital government that might be able to handle some of the planet’s big problems. Expect also new activism and new social orders. In the next 50 years, technological change will produce significant change – Yes, it will, but maybe not as much as we expect or would like. The world will have become more difficult to live in by then, so we’d better hope tech has some answers.”

Pedro U. Lima, an associate professor of computer science at Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, Portugal, said, “Most of the focus on technology and particularly AI and machine learning developments these days is limited to virtual systems (e.g., apps for travel booking, social networks, search engines, games). I expect this to move, in the next 50 years, into networking people with machines, remotely operating in a myriad of environments, such as homes, hospitals, factories, sport arenas and so on. This will change work as we know it today, as it will change medicine (increasing remote surgery), travel (autonomous and remotely-guided cars, trains, planes), entertainment (games where real robots, instead of virtual agents, evolve in real scenarios). These are just a few ideas/scenarios. Many more, difficult to anticipate today, will appear. They will bring further challenges on privacy, security and safety, which everyone should be closely watching and monitoring. Beyond current discussions on privacy problems concerning ‘virtual world’ apps, we need to consider that ‘real world’ apps may enhance many of those problems, as they interact physically and/or in proximity with humans. I do not foresee only positive impacts, but I believe that overall the outcome will be positive, as long as we stay vigilant, since it will open doors for new challenges for humanity (e.g., once we are free from hard/repetitive/dangerous work, we can focus on more ambitious challenges, in leisure, culture, science and human well-being and health).”

Meryl Alper, an assistant professor of communication at Northeastern University and a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, wrote, “Parents will be inundated by non-intuitive, AI-sourced information about their children (e.g., their moods, their behaviors) through the data collected about them in their everyday lives. Parents will face a choice about knowing too much about every single aspect of what their child does and says (be it with them or without them) or not knowing all the details – while being aware that someone else (teachers, doctors, law enforcement) is compiling this information for later determinations of some kind about their child. Parents will ultimately be encouraged to automate this data-intensive parenting, but this itself will create more work for parents (and thus more work for parents to outsource).”

John Laird, a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan, responded, “The internet infrastructure will disappear from public view. It will be ubiquitous, always on, always available and invisible. Access will be worldwide. What will change will be our means of interacting with it. Augmented reality will be ubiquitous (much sooner than 50 years), with essentially everything interconnected, including the human body – and possibly the human mind. There are many risks, and many ways in which ubiquitous connectivity can and will be abused, but overall, it will enhance people’s lives. We will go through ups and downs, but there will be significant advances in security.”

Toby Walsh, a professor of AI at the University of New South Wales, Australia, and president of the AI Access Foundation, said, “By 2069, the real and virtual world will have blurred into one. It will be impossible to tell them apart. Whilst many will spend much of their time in this digital world, there will be an analog counterculture, celebrating a disconnected and old-fashioned existence. In the first industrial revolution, it took 50 years for the quality of life of workers to improve, but it then improved greatly. Similarly, in 50 years’ time, we’ll have got past the road bumps and potholes created by technologies like AI, and life will be improving for most people.”

Alan Bundy, a professor of automated reasoning at the University of Edinburgh, wrote, “The Internet of Things will be in full swing. This will be a mixed blessing. I’m especially worried about the security issues this will raise. Many manufacturers of internet connected devices seem oblivious of the vulnerability of their devices to being hacked. Their users will be subject to attack from thieves, terrorists, spies, etc. A yes/no question to this is inappropriate as the answer is much more complex. Any new technologies bring both new benefits and new threats. It’s hard to know how this will balance out. Certainly, we will face unemployment and the disruption this will cause plus new security threats. On the other hand, the new technologies will augment our cognition with new abilities of remote control, information discovery, virtual exploration, etc.”

Andrea Romaoli Garcia, an international lawyer active in internet governance discussions, commented, “I see the AI and blockchain technology scenarios as leading for years to come. I see these as opportunities for work, leisure and social interaction in a new world where there is still place to everyone: the cloud. AI and blockchain technology allow this. Living in the cloud will only be possible if there is ample access to the internet, security without restriction that mutilates the nature of the activity and with low prices. The cloud is a new world and is navigating in international waters. And because it is new, laws must follow the innovation. However, I have watched all countries make laws with their minds focused on traditional models of regulation. This is wrong. Laws must be international. The interpretation of the innovation scenario should be applied by introductory vehicles of new laws. The word ‘disruptive’ must be interpreted to apply to new laws. When we use old models of laws and only we are doing changes to force fit into the new model of doing business or everyday life, we are creating a crippled creature that moves in a disgusting way. I nominated this as a ‘jurisdicial Frankenstein.’ This means laws that will apply to the cloud environment but will never be perfect and legal security will be threatened. Being specific, blockchain technology is able to provide new professional positions. The present world doesn’t have a job for everyone, and this is leading to poverty and hunger in monstrous proportions. As an example, I have done field research and I already know that there is already a new lawyer and I am inserted among them: innovator lawyer. Everyday life will be more dignified, with people using their time for necessary or enjoyable things like work and family. The cloud environment with AI and blockchain technology will prevent people from wasting time in bank queues or supermarket cashier so the entrepreneur makes more profit while using people’s time for it.”

David Schlangen, a professor of applied computational linguistics at Bielefeld University, Germany, responded, “Physical presence will matter less, as high bandwidth transmissions will make telepresence (in medicine, in the workplace, in person interactions) more viable. Increased quality of telepresence will mean less carbon-intensive travel. The individual profits insofar as the destruction of the environment is not exacerbated.”

Bert Huang, an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech focused on machine learning, wrote, “The main concern I see with the internet is that it plays counter to human intuitions about scale. When humans see thousands of like-minded individuals on the internet, it is too easy to believe that those thousands of people represent all of humanity. One promise of the internet is that it would allow people to interact with, and learn from, individuals with widely different backgrounds, unifying the human species in way that was previously impossible. Unfortunately, the more recent effect has apparently been that people are further entrenched in their own narrow views because they are surrounded on the internet with inconceivably large numbers of people sharing their own views. These large numbers make it difficult for people to fathom that other valid views exist. I believe technology can and will help alleviate this problem, and I believe the internet can meet the promise of helping people connect to all of humanity. I see the internet going through growing pains. I still have hope that technology leaders, scientists, etc., are learning from the issues that have arisen. This is only the first decade where the internet is considered a universal part of life and not a commodity, so we should expect to have had some of the issues we’ve had.”

Martin Shelton, a professional technologist, commented, “In all honesty, I think it’s very difficult to answer this question. It’s a bit like imagining what 2000 would be like in 1950; we imagined flying cars, but we did not imagine the internet. I don’t think we are yet well equipped to tell how (or if) we use the internet in 2078. Maybe we have something we haven’t even begun to imagine, that occupies a similar role in our lives.”

Alistair Nolan, a senior policy analyst in the OECD Directorate for Science, Technology and Innovation, wrote, “The growing capabilities of digital technology will generate great wealth and improvements in living standards, through a variety of channels, from research breakthroughs to largely autonomous production systems, to personalised health care, to novel forms of energy generation and robot-enabled resource capture from across the solar system. These developments will likely go hand in hand, for some time, with growing inequalities within and across nations. Asteroid mining, it has been observed, could produce the world’s first trillionaires. But, taken together, most humans will enjoy some benefit from digitally enabled scientific and technological progress, as many, if not a majority, have so far done. I speculate that individuals’ interaction with digital technologies will become much more pervasive and intimate than it is already. Digital technology will be used to counter some of the stresses created by economic development and a digital culture. Digital avatars, for example, might provide intelligent company for the old and lonely, coaching those who are subject to psychological disorders, encouraging and guiding the sedentary to adopt healthier lifestyles, and so on. But changes and societal stresses brought by digital technologies may require a fundamental overhaul of the social contract. A new digital social contract will likely be needed, the specifics of which we cannot be sure now, but the contours of which we see suggested today in proposals ranging from universal basic income to institutionally mandated time free from digital distraction. The hope is that political processes allow our social arrangements to adjust at a pace commensurate with broader technological change, and that dysfunction in political processes is not aggravated by digital technologies. It has been commented that when humankind attempts to take astronauts to Mars the primary challenge will not be technological. Instead, it will be social: namely, the ability of unrelated individuals to live in close confinement for long periods of time. At the level of entire polities, in a similar way, our primary challenge may be living together in civil ways, attending to the full range of human needs, while the technology brings opportunities to carry us forward, or carry us off course.”

Justin Amyx, a technician with Comcast, said, “Internet of Things, everything. Being in the technology field myself, I see everything being interconnected. It will be commonplace and expected – you go to your car it knows it’s you and it opens and starts. Your house will do the same. I believe the internet will be a more organic experience. It won’t feel like you’re accessing a machine. You need something, you ask and it replies. ‘Smart’ houses that close the shades at the heat of the day. The economy is a huge catalyst – the better our economy the more accessible this will be to the average Joe. This question is very difficult to answer. The problem is if we do not put safeguards in place the internet could potentially be a very restricted community, by ISPs trying to strip away our right to a free and open internet. It can also be potentially catastrophic to low-wage, unskilled workers. Without a plan to do something to mitigate that displacement, of machines taking people’s jobs, poverty may prevent access therefore stifling growth. But, if we resolve to account and accommodate for these potential issues there is no telling where technology can possibly go.”

“Change will mostly be for the worse”

When given the three choices, the following respondents answered that in the next 50 years technological change will produce significant change that is mostly for the worse for individuals’ lives.

Jerry Michalski, founder of the Relationship Economy eXpedition, said, “Half a century is a long time. Many futures seem possible; I’ll describe one. Software has ‘personhood.’ It has rights, personality and limited responsibility. Cryptocurrencies and distributed systems have helped one-third of Earth’s population separate from nation states and join ‘nations of choice,’ ranging from Burning Man to racially segregated enclaves. The digital platforms these nations use are larger and more powerful than the old nation-states. Few people have privacy or full-time jobs. Facts hardly exist: Everything is easy to fake, so everything is in doubt. Digital platforms still haven’t figured out how to stop stalking us and use their presence and power to help us govern together better. Most internet-connected devices have been p0wn3d and are in the Dark net, making most systems scary and unstable. Super small drones changed warfare and policing, making it difficult and expensive to hide. Anyone who feels at risk travels in a self-sufficient chamber to avoid infiltration. Meanwhile, a quarter of humanity has figured out how to hear one another and live in abundance, but they have to keep below the radar. It’s hard to remember life before smartphones, which was 10 years ago, or internet search, which is only a little older. And those have definitely transformed our lives. Over 50 years many more things will change, but the forces at play are shoving society in negative directions. People who want better will achieve progress, but I see a dystopian future for the majority of humanity.”

Thad Hall, a research scientist and coauthor of “Politics for a Connected American Public,” wrote, “Three trends are likely to converge in the U.S. Privacy will diminish further and further, as facial recognition becomes more prevalent and people can be tracked through shopping areas and other public places and their personal data from search is linked to their face persona. You walk down the street and you are presented with specialized ads on a small screen in stores as you look at a rack of clothes. Data are used to differentiate between the rich and poor, whites and non-whites, and biases are built into every customer experience. A person’s ability to be anonymous will cease and ad intrusions will become very common. These trends are likely to have political ramifications. Employers, retailers and others will be able to infer people’s political behaviors – or lack of participation – from data and discrimination will occur, much as it did in the early to mid-1800s, but with greater impact. The ability of the news media to report facts will be hampered by a cascade of alternate news, with different video and audio of the exact same event. Things as simple as what the president said in a meeting will be constantly up for debate as instant, real-time alternate feeds show something different, presenting a different worldview. There will be greater segmentation of the population and divisions that separate people. People are likely to become more polarized and tribal over the next 50 years. People will be pushed in different directions by advertisers, who will segment us in ways so that people will not even be aware of certain products others use (especially as online sites like Amazon continue to grow greatly). We will receive different news, again exacerbated by the prevalence of fake news that is exceedingly difficult to discern from reality.”

Paul Vixie, an Internet Hall of Fame member known for designing and implementing several Domain Name System protocol extensions and applications, wrote, “The most active force vectors in the humanity equation right now all relate to the acquisition and preservation of power. We’ve passed peak-cloud in 50 years. Azure grows faster than Amazon Web Services, and billions of dollars are being invested in private data centers and private cloud. However, the centralization of retail transactions and personal information will be irreversible due to the extreme cost of creating a viable competitor in an information hegemony in which corporations, churches and foreign governments know more and have more influence than anything that can be understood by a democratically elected government. Groups of humans have always had an advantage in competition for outcomes against individuals; this is the rational basis for the family unit, the company, the city, the state, the nation and the church. However, before the information age, the difference in power was in the same order of magnitude. That time is past.”

Amy Webb, founder of the Future Today Institute and professor of strategic foresight at New York University, commented, “In 2018, there are nine companies (which I call the Big 9) that control the future of humanity, because they are building the future of artificial intelligence. Over the next five decades, we will see widespread consolidation in the fields of AI and digital platforms. We’ll trade convenience for choice and find that we have far fewer options for everything, from how fast to drive in our cars to which restaurants we’ll choose for dinner. Our professional and personal lives will be tethered to a provider – likely Amazon or Google – which will maintain and run our smart homes, hospitals, schools, city infrastructure and offices. We will probably see a vast new digital divide: The wealthiest among us will have the privilege to remain anonymous if they choose, while everyone else will submit to continual surveillance for marketing and business intelligence. Importantly, during the next five decades, America will have fallen far behind China, primarily because of China’s long-term, comprehensive AI strategy and its integration into other state-level initiatives. In the U.S. commercial interests are what propel AI, platforms and digital media. The interests of for-profit companies don’t necessarily align with the best interests of democracy, our country or humanity. With significant investment in these fields, there is tremendous pressure to generate commercial products and services, and the speed required doesn’t leave room to ask critical questions about a technology’s impact on individuals, communities or our society. If we do not change the developmental track of AI in the present, the probability of negative scenarios will increase during the next 50 years. Collectively, we fetishize the future. Few are actively mapping longer-term outcomes, and that is a big mistake.”

Teus Hagen, Netherlands internet pioneer, former chair and director of NLnet and member of the Internet Hall of Fame, commented, “The next 50 years? Over the past 50 years it was impossible to know, and it is still impossible. In the next five years we will discover that it is impossible to archive the internet information as search engines do today. The search for valuable information will become impossible. The forces that drive technology in years further in the future may no longer be based in the ‘Western countries,’ and the concept of the internet being ‘free’ will go away. The leading companies like Google, Microsoft and Apple will become minor in importance. Individuals will not be able control their individual lives nor be able to tell who they are and what they want to be. The problem is not that there is one other who controls information, but so many different people from so many cultures and jurisdictions. The internet has had a technology-driven evolution, but it will become politically driven if we keep on building the Towers of Babel.”

William Uricchio, media scholar and professor of comparative media studies at MIT, commented, “This is a profoundly social question. The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis calculates a global population of 9.4 billion humans by 207o – this in contrast to the 2.5 billion inhabitants of the earth in 1950. On one hand, whatever emerges from today’s internet and Internet of Things will serve as something akin to a neural network for the species. But what motives will direct the day-to-day shaping and regulation of that network? The two policy extremes that we can see in 2018 – laisse faire (let the platforms do what they will, as long as the stockholders are content) or absolute control (the great firewall and what happens ‘on the other side’) – are not heartening. Nor are the quite dramatic concentrations of wealth and political power that characterize the second decade of the 21st century. Alas, short of an enlightened or catastrophic reconfiguration of motives and resources (the former unlikely, and the latter related to population numbers), there is no reason to expect good news. Technology will not solve our problems… only we can do that. ‘Changes in digital life’ are human-driven; technology will only amplify the social structures that created it. My pessimism ensues from the polarization of power, knowledge and wealth that characterizes much of the world at the start of the 21st century, and by the rapidly growing pressures evident in population growth and ecological degradation. Digital technologies have the capacity to be terrific enablers – but the question remains, enablers of what? Of whose vision? Of what values? These, it seems to me, are the defining questions.”

Valarie Bell, a computational social scientist at the University of North Texas, commented, “In the coming decades, we’ll have one ‘device’ if any at all. Everything will be voice-print activated and/or bio-scanner-activated (retinal scan) so passwords and login details become irrelevant. This will make identity theft more difficult but not impossible as no matter what system or technology people create, other people will immediately develop ways to deviate or breach it. All domiciles’ powered devices will likely be solar-powered or powered in a way other than 20th century electricity. Personal credit cards, driver’s licenses and other portable documentation that you’d carry in your wallet would become synced to a single cloud-based account accessible via bio-scannable systems. To buy groceries, simply use your home grocery ‘app’ to open your account as your pantry, freezer, and fridge order what you’re out of. Then robots will pack your order and self-driving cars with robot delivery staff will restock your kitchen. Later, groceries will appear in your kitchen in much the same way Capt. Kirk and Mr. Spock used to beam up to the Enterprise on ‘Star Trek.’ Instead of you teaching your young children to read, tie their shoes, do their homework or clean their room, aids like Alexa that are more developed and can operate in multiple rooms of the house will do those things. People continue to abdicate their duties and responsibilities to devices and machines as we’ve become more selfish and self-obsessed. Social networking sites like Facebook will be holographic. People will likely have one or more implants to allow them to access the internet and to access whatever the future computer will be. People won’t type on computers. Perhaps you’ll be able to think what you want to type and your system will type it for you while you eat lunch, watch TV, walk in the park or ride in your self-driving car. It’s also important to remember that past projections from 50 years ago never predicted the internet but did predict lots of technology that even now we still don’t have. So, we can expect the same with our predictions. While the gadgets and tools we may have in the future may result in more conveniences, like when ovens turned into microwaves, we find with technology that we trade quality and uniqueness for convenience and uniformity. What tastes better and provides a better experience? The homemade chocolate cake Grandma made from scratch with attention to great ingredients and to baking the cake until it’s perfectly moist OR the microwaved chocolate-cake-for-one? The microwave cake takes less than 10 minutes and you simply add water, but Grandma’s cake is not over-processed, and you taste the real butter, real vanilla, real chocolate instead of powdered butter flavoring and powdered chocolate substitute. Technology will bring us things faster, perhaps even cheaper, but not necessarily better.”

Jonathan Swerdloff, consultant and data systems specialist for Driven Inc., wrote, “In the first 50 years of connected internet, humanity rose from no access at all to always on connected devices on their person tracking their life signs. I expect the next 50 years will see devices shrink to tiny sizes and be integrated within our very persons. Then there will be two inflection points.  The first will be a split between the technology haves and have nots. Those who have the technology will benefit from it in ways that those who do not are unable to. The more advanced technology gets the more this will be the case. While I would like to believe in a utopic vision of AI fighting climate change and distributing food and wealth so that nobody goes hungry – the ‘Jetsons’ future, if you will – history doesn’t support that view.  The second will be a moral evolution. Privacy as conceived in the era before the advent of the internet is nearly dead despite attempts by the EU and California to hold back the tide. The amount of information people give up about their most private lives is growing rapidly. A commensurate evolution of morals to keep up with the technological developments will be required to keep up or chaos will ensue. Moral structures developed when people could hide their genetics, personal habits and lives at home are not aligned with an always-on panopticon that knows what someone is doing all day every day. Human nature is nearly immutable – morals will need to catch up. I don’t know which way each of them will go. The have vs. have not split could disappear as AI enables better farming, supply chains and access to justice. Or it could more firmly establish, as H.G. Wells predicted, a Morlocks and Eloi species split. Anything that happens in society can be magnified by technology. I hope that my pessimism is wrong. There is some evidence of the moral evolution already – millennials and the generation behind them freely share online in ways which boomers and Gen X look at as bizarre. Whether that will lead to a significant moral backlash in 50 years remains to be seen. I see technology causing three likely problems in the next 50 years. 1) Increased control by states against the will of the people. 2) Climate change fueled by ever more technology. 3) Depleted resources to create and develop new technologies cause war.”

Ian Peter, pioneer internet activist and internet rights advocate, said, “The internet, after a period of utopian visions for a form of media that enhanced freedom of expression and communication, and improved access to information has followed the pattern of most forms of mass media by becoming dominated by a few players. As part of this domination a new financial model has emerged where internet users are the commodity, with their free or cheap usage funded by the use of their personal data for a variety of commercial uses. It is hard to see a change to this model occurring in the near future, and the internet as we know it is likely to continue this pattern for the rest of its lifetime. However, the internet will in time become old media like radio and television: New forms of media will emerge, and they are likely to be disruptive changes rather than some type of incremental development. What the internet has brought us is affordable global communications, and that will be its useful legacy. New forms of media are likely to build on the potential of global communication but may utilise a vastly different protocol infrastructure. The security problems inherent in current internet protocols will eventually render it unfit for purpose and we can also expect to see the commercial uses of the internet taking new paths that render greater security. We cannot dismiss two key factors in the current spread of internet usage: firstly the addictive and pervasive ‘always-on’ effect of unending access and multiple device usage, and secondly the effects on our capacity for critical thinking of having the ‘information’ we see determined by algorithms whose objective is not to inform us, but to capture or thoughts and minds. The decline of a capacity for critical thinking is a serious side effect of continued addictive internet usage that warrants more detailed scientific investigation.”

Ebenezer Baldwin Bowles, author, editor and journalist, responded, “The next 50 years? A time frame ending in 2069? As grandpa would say, ‘I can’t imagine.’ But we must try or else fall silent. 1) The best and brightest will communicate brain-to-brain through implants linked to synapses altered by quantum surgery. Encrypted and delivered by carbon-silicone hybrid technology, this radical expression of the desire to communicate will create new systems of power and control by the planet’s ruling class. 2) Global nation-states, empowered by iron-fisted control of electronic media and financial systems, protected by police drones and robots through continuous surveillance systems, and sustained by a willing populous, will oversee legions of workers dedicated to the maintenance of the ruling class of the 1%. 3) The development of no-cost neighborhood-based replicator stations will provide unlimited access for everyone to nutritious food, comfortable clothing suitable to local climates, every imaginable item necessary to maintain a household, and personal necessities linked to popular concepts of comfort and entertainment. The replicator system, an advanced expression of today’s 3-D printing technology, will serve as a means of control of the working and professional classes – a chicken in every pot times 10. So, robots and drones with the Evil Eye to watch and control the people. Unlimited food, clothing and shelter to cow the masses into happy servitude. Total reliance on AI and its tendrils to supply the necessities of life. What a wonder to behold in 2069.  Think back to 1968. Even the most imaginative thinkers missed the one crucial aspect of digital control of everyday life in 2018: the surveillance camera. Who back then could imagine the total loss of privacy and personal independence we live with today? We are swallowed up by digital influences now. In 50 years, the influences shall morph into total control, and the world we know now shall be devoured by electric ones and zeroes, one after another in the rapid march to dissolution.”

Steven Thompson, an author specializing in illuminating emerging issues and editor of “Androids, Cyborgs, and Robots in Contemporary Culture and Society,” wrote, “I expect a dystopia to rise out of the consequences of the aforementioned issues emanating from the matter of the internet appliance moving into the human body. That is a game-changer from economies to personal liberties and everything in between. Doesn’t matter the years that follow – once the internet in inside you, and that’s prior to 2030 even, you are no longer strictly human, so all of the necessary structures for sustainment of you as the creature you have become will change the future for mankind as a species, but fraught with technological disasters, most likely, as we are also looking at, should it choose to make us aware or we stumble onto the matter, a sentient internet.”

Sasha Costanza-Chock, associate professor of civic media at MIT, said, “Here I’ll offer an edge-case optimistic scenario. In 50 years, very high-speed symmetrical network connectivity will be freely available to all humanity, served by a mix of satellite, municipal networks and community-controlled cooperatives. For-profit ISPs will be a thing of the past. In a similar vein, key platforms and features of the net will no longer be controlled by for-profit companies. The dominant search engine will be run by the Wikimedia Foundation, in partnership with the United Nations. Social networking sites will be predominantly decentralized, federated, interoperable and powered by F/LOSS (similar to the way email functions, with many different providers, or the option to host your own, that all communicate with one another). Important services that benefit from network effects will be controlled by municipalities; for example, OpenHail ridesharing standard will be mandated by most municipalities so that ride services are no longer controlled by one or two large firms. Airbnb will be largely replaced by OpenHouse home sharing/hostel standards that enable many players in the market. Most importantly, new applications and services, and improvements to existing applications, will largely be developed through co-design methods that include intended end-users in all stages of the design process. Co-design, or design justice, will have long since become the standard best practice across all areas of technology design and development. All AI and algorithmic decision systems will be monitored through standing intersectional audits by independent third partiers and/or state agencies to ensure equitable distribution of outcomes rather than the reproduction of bias. The most likely outcome is the radically inequitable distribution of the benefits of technological development, and the deeply inequitable distribution of the harms. I believe that it’s possible for us to organize for more equitable outcomes and I am encouraged by recent tech worker actions to demand that their companies drop harmful contracts with the military and with ICE. Hopefully, the ‘ethical tech’ movement will continue to grow, and to deepen its connection with other key social movements, such as #BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo, #KeepFamiliesTogether and more. The only way we will achieve a future where tech benefits and harms are more equitably distributed is if tech workers and policymakers follow the lead of social movements led by those who are most harmed within our current system.”

Jillian C. York, director of international freedom of expression for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, commented, “I expect to see the world’s platform companies break up, and a more diverse array of platforms to enter the market. This may lead to more silos, but it could also create safer spaces for communication for various communities. I suspect we’ll begin to see different tools for experiencing apps – wearables, in particular, are likely to feature heavily. We’ll no longer have to look down at our screens. As for laws, it remains to be seen – but I worry that if our democracy continues down the road it’s on, the internet will suffer. I don’t believe that technology will be a net negative; rather, I worry and suspect that it will make life better for some of us but worse for others. Much of the technology coming out of Silicon Valley aims to serve elites, when we should be aiming toward equality for all.”

Christian Huitema, internet pioneer and consultant focused on privacy online, previously Internet Architecture Board president, chief scientist at Bell Research and Microsoft distinguished engineer, commented, “In the last decade, we have seen a huge consolidation of internet functions into few companies. This is largely a result of network effects and economies of scales, not mitigated by regulation or a new Sherman Act. Pushed to the limit, this could result in the kind of corporation-dominated world described in novels like ‘Snow Crash.’ I wish we could see a ‘return of the pendulum’ toward more distributed systems, but I am not optimistic. The ad-funded business model evolved in generalized corporate surveillance. It requires more attention to drive more revenue; AI-driven user interactions are providing that. This AI + ads feedback loop is creating digital drug addicts.”

Helena Draganik, a professor at the University of Gdansk, Poland, responded, “The rules/law of internet communication will be unified between many countries, which will limit the freedom of expression. There will grow the dependence upon big platforms (e.g., Facebook) and the monetization of our customs and habits. There will grow also the marketing industry. Internet will convert in one more, market-depending medium – as press or TV. Yes, there will be many IT/AI applications and commodities to simplify our lives. But it is possible that we will not be able to function properly without them. It is not so simple to say if the changes caused by AI will be better or worse for humans’ lives. Great AI implementation will simply change the relations between people. It means that some changes will simplify our life, give us more comfort and leisure time. Other changes will affect our habits, relations, preferences and make them completely different than now.”

Karen Oates, director of workforce development and financial stability for La Casea de Esperanza, commented, “At the rate at which technology is evolving, I think the internet as we currently know it and interact with it will have morphed into something very different. I can see people allowing implants in their bodies so they can connect to whatever the internet becomes – leveraging it as an auxiliary brain. This also, however, opens the door for manipulation and potential control of people. We saw this in action in the last presidential election. Like anything, technology can be used for good or evil. Much will be dependent on to what extent an individual is willing to sacrifice independence for comfort, security, etc.”

Grace Mutung’u, co-leader of the Kenya ICT Action Network, responded, “There will be loss of autonomy as humans integrate more with technology. This will have both positive and negative effects. For instance, resourced people with physical defects will have a better quality of life with assistance from technology. On the other hand, technology will increase existing inequalities. At the moment, for example, low- and middle-income countries import technology and participate minimally in its design and creation. Most of the world’s population is in low- and middle-income countries and already disadvantaged by it. They are likely to suffer technology colonialism.”

Uta Russmann, professor in the Department of Communication at FHWien der WKW University of Applied Sciences for Management & Communication, said, “In 50 years every aspect of our life will be connected, organized and hence, partly controlled, as technology platform and applications businesses will take this opportunity. A few global players will dominate the business; smaller companies (start-ups) will mostly have a chance in the development sector. Many institutions, such as libraries, will disappear – there might be one or two libraries that function as museums to show how it used to be. People, who experienced today’s world will definitely value the benefits and amenities they have through technology (human-machine/AI collaboration). If technology becomes part of every aspect of our lives we will have to give up some power and control. People thinking in today’s terms will lose a certain amount of freedom, independency and control over their lives. People born after 2030 will probably just think these technologies produced changes that are mostly for the better. It has always been like this – people have always thought/said ‘in the old days everything was better.’”

Zoetanya Sujon, a senior lecturer specializing in digital culture at University of Arts London, commented, “Based on the cyclical histories of the printing press, telephone, internet, virtual reality and artificial intelligence, I believe that all technologies are subject to waves, often characterized by ferment/early development, great claims and excitement whether positive or negative, and if they reach the mainstream, they will also experience an era of maturity marked by institutionalization and ‘an era of dominant design.’ After this point, technologies are likely to become obsolete, adapt or converge, or follow through incremental change – all rather like knowledge and product cycles. AI, like virtual reality, has a long history and we are yet again in what seems like an early phase marked by great expectations and both negative and positive excitement. In my view, and drawing from the growth of global big tech companies and decreased pluralization of global platforms, I believe that in 50 years, the economic and cultural divides between rich and poor, developed and developing nations, technologically advanced and disadvantaged will continue to grow. These divides are serious and already take place within urban centres, between developing and developed nations, and between rural and urban areas, to name only a few sites of division. Thus, for those with capital, including access to new technologies and the literacies that come with them, life will likely involve wearable and ubiquitous computing based on internet and platformed communication. I imagine these technologies will be highly personalized, and likely involve everything from individualized nano-bots responsible for monitoring and maintaining users’ health and well-being. Communication will also be further advanced, perhaps involving sophisticated sensory tools providing increased impressions of presence over distance (e.g. haptic sensors, holographs, robot host), as will high-speed transport. Again, these kinds of tools will likely be available to those with the economic and cultural capital to access them. As we see with internet technologies today, only 50% of the globe has internet access (whereas the TV penetration rate is 92% according to world bank 2018). For those without enough capital, internet and mobile platforms will be a crucial tool for everyday life (e.g. banking, trade, shopping, communication, photos, cloud storage), but will also be subject to greater surveillance and monitoring by government, corporations, and especially big global tech. For those suffering from climate disasters, disease and extreme poverty, basic needs will remain unmet and the advanced technological infrastructures and tools of those with capital will remain inaccessible. Although I answered that these technologies will introduce significant changes in people’s lives, I believe there will be an equal balance between positive and negative impacts, largely dependent on existing socio-economic factors. However, even small changes to information and entertainment media can mean big changes to the creation, production and consumption of digital content. Likely people will be able to personalize their media/digital environments and some will be able to navigate these to their advantage (e.g., influencers). Others will not, which may benefit them in unforeseen ways.”

Mark Surman, executive director of the Mozilla Foundation and author of “Commonspace: Beyond Virtual Community,” responded, “I see two paths over the next 50 years. On the first path, power continues to consolidate in the hands a few companies and countries. The world ends up balkanized, organized into blocks, and societies are highly controlled and unequal. On the other path, we recognize that the current consolidation of power around a few platforms threatens the open global order we’ve built, and we enact laws and build technology that promotes continued competition, innovation and diversity.”

Douglas Rushkoff, a professor of media at City University of New York, responded, “I don’t think we will be engaging with the internet as a discrete platform anymore. The internet – or networks in general – will be thought of more like electricity. Some people will be fascinated by and committed to retaining objects that don’t require network connections to function. Like hand mixers and manual typewriters are thought of today, these non-networked devices will be like classic cars that people can actually fix by themselves. They will be generally looked down upon, but perhaps truly useful during network outages. It’s not that technology is bad in any way, but when technological development is determined solely by the market, we get some unintended consequences. Barring a major shift in emphasis away from corporate capitalism, the benefits of any technological development will probably be determined by how aggressively one company or another pursues its goals. Some technologies will be less bad, because the manufacturers want to be less harmful. But even those outside traditional venture funding, who attempt to create beneficial technologies, will be subject to the supply chain and platform limitations of the mainstream technologies. So it’s going to be really hard to develop any capital intensive tools that don’t serve capital over people.”

Marc Brenman, managing partner at IDARE LLC, said, “The internet will become transparent to us. We will think our way through it, using implanted devices. There will be no privacy. Everything will be remembered, and there will be no forgiveness. Virtual reality will become reality. The very concept of ‘virtual’ will almost disappear. People will be able to distinguish fact from fiction even less than we do today. Unscrupulous people will use this technology to create our obedience. Free will will be eroded. We will surrender even more of our time to bread and circuses, celebrities, puppies and kittens. We will live so long that life itself will be a burden. Machines will do everything better than we can, including creating art.”

Cliff Zukin, professor of public policy and political science at the School for Planning and Public Policy and the Eagleton Institute of Politics, Rutgers University, said, “Quite an unanswerable question – 50 years into the future. By then I expect everything would be global and individual at the same time. We either won’t be here, or we will have figured it out. If we figured it out, there will be no independent states, nor much difference between human and robot. Borders won’t exist; countries electing their own leaders won’t exist. All big players are multinational corporations. We will have a governance structure of the internet, determined by those powerful enough to make that happen. In other words, the Empire will win. Looking backward, there are two axioms that have stood the test of time: 1) Information is power and 2) Power corrupts. The more universal the experiences, the more we will all become like each other. Some good things to this, but it also will reduce variance across people. Less diversity is not a good thing for positive growth.”

Dan Geer, a respondent who provided no identifying details, commented, “If, and only if, we preserve an analog, non-digital option for running essential components of the economy, the government and civil society can we prove we have learned anything. Continued digitalization without recourse to analog alternatives creates interdependencies which may make failure ever less likely but, at the same time, will make failures ever more costly. It is a probability game which, as with gambling, commands the wise player to not just continue betting until they go bust but, rather, to quit while they are ahead. Life has limits; to pretend otherwise is to claim god-like wisdom. Security people know this to a degree – the pinnacle of security engineering is not ‘no failures’ but, rather, ‘no unmitigatable failures.’ Freedom, security, comfort – choose two. This is a question of the whole being different than the sum of the parts. If one is, as I am, certain that only God is perfect, then a digitalized world that is ever more optimized begs the question of optimized to what end, to whose benefit, to which criteria of perfection? As Donald Knuth said, ‘Premature optimization is the root of all evil,’ and there exist optimizations that are, or soon will be, within our reach yet will be forever premature. When you cannot believe what you hear, cannot believe what you see, cannot believe what you smell, taste or touch, what are you? Soon, my friend, soon.”

Johanna Drucker, professor of digital humanities in the department of information studies at the University of California – Los Angeles, said, “Distributed computing, embedded into ‘natural’ interfaces, will create a seamless integration of access to networked information and experience in the physical, analogue world. The hazard is that the greater the integration, the higher the risks of co-dependence. I would advocate for physical labor (urban gardens and forests, elder care, childcare, local food production and preparation) to be part of the emerging social structure. Free human beings from labor that is meaningless but give them work with a purpose. Keep in mind that skills like plumbing and electrical work cannot be outsourced and that infrastructure is massively physical and built on stacks of systems that have to work together. We should always have a way to sustain ourselves without networked technologies. Reduce our path dependencies, fragment the supply chains, resist monopoly controls, change the values of the culture toward sustainable and equitable human and animal life. Someday the idea of huge profits and private control of massive wealth will look as grotesque as the idea of heads on pikes and guillotines do now. The question ignores the growing and disastrous division between poor, disenfranchised populations and wealthy, privileged ones. [There may be] huge improvements in some people’s lives and negative impacts for many, many more – pollution, toxins from waste generated by electronic media, deregulation of labor conditions for workers in the high-tech industries, deterioration of support systems and social infrastructure and so on.”

Kenneth R. Fleischmann, an associate professor at the University of Texas – Austin School of Information, responded, “Just as it is unlikely that many folks could envision the internet 50 years before its invention, it is risky and problematic to assume that the internet will be the major technological force 50 years from now. Perhaps in 50 years we will have developed some form of telepathy that renders the internet obsolete, for example, or at the very least, the information and communications technologies are likely to change to the point where they do not closely resemble those of today. Just as over the past 50 years we have gone from the era of the personal computer where a few select people in society spend a limited amount of time at a desktop computer to the current mobile computing era where a large number of people go around the world with multiple computing devices on their person, it is likely that the Internet of Things will continue to expand to the point where everything is networked and interconnected, and we are unable to find solitude without screens, cameras, speakers and microphones everywhere. Such a world will introduce important challenges in terms of privacy and autonomy, and control of data will be a major source – if not the major source – of power in society. Not only will knowledge be power, but so will information and data. The key questions are, ‘Which individuals?’ and ‘Better/worse in which ways?’ The impacts on different people will be different, and each person will interpret these changes differently. One major factor is what people value or consider important in life. If people value privacy and they are subject to a digital panopticon then, in that way, their lives may be worse; however, they also likely value convenience, and may find substantial improvements in that regard. Different people will make that tradeoff differently depending on what they value. So, understanding the impact of the technology is not only about predicting the future of technology, it is also about predicting the future of what we value, and these two considerations are of course mutually constitutive, as technologies are shaped by values, and at the same time, over time (especially generations), technologies shape values.”

Luis Pereira, associate professor of electronics and nanotechnologies, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal, responded, “By virtue of the interconnection of the new tools there will be widespread data collection on people, their activities, connections, the environment and the Internet of Things. There will be increased promotion of gig-economy platforms and the focused targeting of individuals with consumerism and ideology. Unless moral values and ethical rules are put in place for application designers, product sellers, data users and autonomous software and robots, people will be forced into cluster drawers. A competitive and increasing AI race for control of profits and policies will sprout, including a digital weapons race, unless a way is found to promote collaboration instead, on the basis of regulated and overseen commitments (similar to global climate agreements) for the benefit of humanity and the planet. Certification methods for software that complies with such commitments need to be developed. People will be teaching machines how to replace themselves and others at increasing levels of cognition. Security will be a major concern. Technological developments will surpass human adaptability and raise issues we do not have the wherewithal to comprehend or address. My negative views arise from the proven inability of our species to internationally regulate any globalization and the competition for resources which the internet will further escalate into a global ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma,’ unless Evolutionary Game Theory is studied more deeply and collaborative solutions and their enforcement are found.”

Marc Rotenberg, director of a major digital civil rights organization, commented, “There is no question that the internet has transformed society. We live in a world today far more interconnected than in the past. And we have access almost instantaneously to a vast range of information and services. But the transformation has not been without cost. Concentrations of wealth have increased. Labor markets have been torn apart. Journalism is on the decline, and democratic institutions are under attack. And there is a growing willingness to sacrifice the free will of humanity for the algorithms of machine. I do not know if we will survive the next 50 years unless we are able to maintain control of our destinies.”

Henning Schulzrinne, co-chair of the Internet Technical Committee of the IEEE, professor at Columbia University, and Internet Hall of Fame member, said, “As with many technologies, they tend to enter a period of stability. For example, broadcast TV and radio in 2019 are not dramatically different from 1970, even if the production values and acting quality have probably improved, on average. Just like earlier media and communication systems relied, partially, on the same infrastructure seen by few, there will be media aspects, extending the notions of on-demand viewing at various time scales, and more functional aspects, such as the Internet of Things and money transfer, thus speaking of ‘THE internet’ is probably not helpful. So far, most internet applications are packetized versions of earlier analog media and processes, changing shape as the internet version dominates. Given that the need to be entertained, to communicate and to conduct commerce will remain, it seems more likely than not that the internet in 2069 will still be recognizable to somebody time-traveling from 2019. It is quite possible that the internet will be more regionalized (e.g., Europe, U.S., Canada, China), depending on, for example, democracy survives in the U.S. One of the main applications of network protocols will be mass surveillance, either for commercial or governmental purposes, or some combination. Digital life will make some lives and aspects of lives better (e.g., possibly transportation, science and medical care, shopping), but may also contribute to reduced professional and job options, surveillance, impersonal treatment in large areas of life (insurance, criminal justice, jobs, education) and societal fragmentation for others. More likely than not, it is going to contribute to even more income inequality, at least in countries without strong countervailing interventions. Thus, it will open up new opportunities for high-status individuals and new constraints for those of low socio-economic status.”

Serge Marelli, an IT security analyst, predicted that the future will bring, “More porn, more advertising, less privacy, fewer users’-citizens’ rights (e.g., right to privacy), more money for big corporations. And politics and democracy will fall short.”

Joël Colloc, professor at Université du Havre Normandy University and author of “Ethics of Autonomous Information Systems: Towards an Artificial Thinking,” responded, “Originally, the internet was intended for exchanges between researchers. Now, the internet is no more than a tool of business polluted by advertising, and internet users are seen as customers to target with CRM and the place of the trade. This evolution is irreversible. The internet has become a space without ethics where the user is subjected to predators in a lawless, wild world. The netiquette rules must be updated to protect the rights of users and protect them against business spamming, which has become a plague.”

John Laudun, a respondent who provided no identifying details, commented, “My sense is that most groups/cultures/societies will pursue multiple paths. Some will continue to seek out the greatest integration between humans and technology, while others will push back at change for the sake of pushing back at change. I think the recent political moment should serve as ample testimony to this. And, let’s face it, the integration of everything – I’ve read a lot of articles about the Internet of Things + AI/machine learning = ‘Everything is wonderful!’ In between these two paths will be a range of sensible explorations of what technology can offer us to make our lives better and where it is best to leave it out. What worries me most is how inward facing most societies are right now. Too few are thinking about long-term matters like climate change, space exploration and the creation of the next kind of human civilization. (And too few futurists are thinking about how much the next kind of human civilization will still have humans in bodies that need to be fed and that need to poo.) I don’t think in the kinds of absolutes and generalizations that this survey seems to want to illicit. I chose ‘worse’ by and large because I think the next 50 years is going to be great for a percentage of humans smaller than the percentage of humans for whom things will probably get worse. We continue to forget that 75% of the world’s populations are effectively peasants, individuals (living in families, groups, etc.) who engage in subsistence agriculture. Too often when we project into the future we imagine ourselves, people like us or the people we think we see. But there are hosts of groups that we do not see. How will technological advances, and their various implementations, help or hurt them? No one, for example, could have predicted the explosion in micro-transactions connecting villagers to one another and a wider world thanks to the cell phone.”

Jonathan Taplin, director emeritus at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab, wrote, “The answer to this question depends totally on the willingness of regulators and politicians to rethink their ideas about antitrust policies in the digital age. If current consumer welfare standards continue to be used, the existing internet monopolies (Facebook, Google and Amazon) will get more dominant in the AI age. They would be bigger and have more data than any government or other mediating institution. They would be beyond control. They would determine our future and politics would be of little use. This is totally dependent on whether the monopolies get regulated or not. I can envision a world in which technology is a boon to human progress, but it cannot come about as long as the internet is dominated worldwide by three firms (with two Chinese competitors in Asia). It is possible that the current efforts around blockchain or the new work of Tim Berners-Lee may lead to a more decentralized web. Count me as skeptical.”

Denise N. Rall, a professor of arts and social sciences at Southern Cross University, Australia, responded, “It is more likely that some climax will come, in a semi-apocalyptic scenario. The world’s resources cannot continue to support ‘life as we know it.’ If people continue to pursue digital realities over real-life realities – that is, too many people to feed and not enough resources to do so, plus the ever-widening gap between rich and poor – any kind of internet-based interactions will come under threat as our physical environment continues to deteriorate around us. Generally, technology has made things better for the ‘haves’ and rarely, with a few positives, such as the Grameen Bank, for the multitude of poor. Over 1 billion people live on less than $1 U.S. dollar per day, and between 20 and 50 million people are housed in refugee camps, without hope of permanent homes. Until these trends can be reversed, internet-based technologies will become secondary to overwhelming necessities of maintaining life for those on this planet. I cannot see any technological solution to this issue, as the wealthy may have increased digital access and employ digital servants, but this will not improve conditions overall. In Australia, we are suffering again from prolonged drought, and the simple fact of growing food is becoming precarious in many parts of the world, while population continues to climb. Again, there will be significant benefits from technology for the wealthy, and significant drawbacks to the poor. Therefore, saying ‘each individual’ is a meaningless parameter for this question. Some percentage (1% to 10%) will be immeasurably richer in their employment of technological solutions, the vast majority will not.”

Dan Buehrer, a retired professor of computer science formerly with National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan, responded, “Social contracts and social credit ratings should promote healthy globalization by increasing trust among strangers, but huge monopolies may control everything. Smart government will greatly reduce crime, but it will be able to model all individual human thinking and planning.”

Andrea Bonarini, a professor of AI and soft computing at Politecnico di Milano, Italy, said, “Fifty years is a too long span to make any reasonable forecast. Fifty years ago we didn’t have cell phones and internet, and what happened with social networks and Google was hardly imaginable. Most forecasts at that time with this span did fail. People will be less free and they will lose their ability to think and design, as we are already experiencing nowadays.”

Brian Harvey, lecturer on the social implications of computer technology at the University of California-Berkeley, said, “Just in this past year, there has been a big increase in popular understanding of who profits from social media technology. If that new understanding leads to rebellion, perhaps the internet can return to the anarchist utopia that was first envisioned. But if it fizzles out, people will still be bought and sold by social media. Things might get better, not because of better technology, but because of popular struggle. Otherwise, no.”

Alper Dincel of T.C. Istanbul Kultur University, Turkey, wrote, “Technology’s first purpose is creating benefits, so apps and programs helping people to consume more. In this point of view, companies are losing their reliability. And we are losing quality of our life. Our life will be like 1990s pop music (not 1980s) with the effects of digital age – less meaningful and more fast.”

Andrew Whinston, a computer science professor and director of the Center for Research in Electronic Commerce at the University of Texas – Austin, said, “Assuming computer capabilities keep improving there will be radical changes based on sensor data that could improve efficiency of the world economy. AI is a broad term that is used to get money for research so that academics in a lot more areas will label their research as AI. Security problems will still be the big challenge since it such a profitable business both for the attackers and the thousands of companies that sell security products to defend. Privacy for individuals will disappear, so we will be ruled by efficient dictators, as we see emerging now in China.”

Alex Turner, a respondent who provided no identifying details, said, “I forecast that insufficient research into ‘AI Alignment’ – ensuring that we can properly specify goals for advanced intelligent agents – will not have advanced sufficiently far. Taking aggregated expert predictions (Grace, et al., 2017) at face value, we face a large probability of an extremely negative general artificial intelligence event within 50 years.”

Andrian Kreye, a journalist and documentary filmmaker based in Germany, said, “The internet as we know it in 2019 is the basic structure for a world based on an AI-driven infrastructure. The internet as such will fade from handheld and desktop devices and become seamlessly integrated in daily life. User interfaces will be speech and even thought based, turning users even more into nodes of an ever-expanding network. For most people these technological advances will increase convenience and ease of use. For corporations using networked AI this will mean a wealth of data and constant contact with a consumer base that can be steered and nudged with increasing ease. Current conditions will solidify monopoly capitalism, making it harder and harder for users to escape the grip of the grid and for newcomers to break into the business. There will be a great struggle to find a balance between an increased quality of life for everybody (driven by leaps in AI driven medicine, the falling cost of services, the increasing quality of mass education) and the possibility for the abuse of new technologies for pure economic purposes.”

Benjamin Shestakofsky, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania specializing in digital technology’s impacts on work, said, “1) The ‘Uber-ization’ of everything will not proceed as rapidly, nor as evenly, as many now predict. Platform companies that facilitate the exchange of goods and services will continue to confront the reality that funneling idiosyncratic human activity through digital platforms is a complicated and costly endeavor. 2) Employers will continue to increase their use of connected technologies to monitor their workforces. However, workers will also continue to find ways to subvert employer surveillance and control. In many workplaces, employers will find it difficult to convert big data about employee activities into actionable insights. Nonetheless, legislators should act to limit the scope of employee surveillance and threats to employees’ privacy. The outcomes of technological change are unlikely to be as monolithic and generalized as the choices presented here assume. Technological change will have different effects on differently positioned people in different social domains. Public policy will play an important role in determining those outcomes.”

Anita Salem, systems research and design principal at SalemSystems, wrote, “In 50 years, digital tools, if used at all, will be used for entertainment only. Video and chat apps will be created by the corporate powers to shape opinions and behaviors of the masses and will be widely and publicly displayed. The dark web will be alive as a black market and revolutionary system used by the outcasts. Organic/chemical communication systems will be used by corporations for real work and they will form the underlying structure of computing systems. They will be embedded in everything, including humans. This will be the ‘post-human’ era, where the human/machine interface is embedded at birth, invisible and pervasive. Without a concerted effort to design these new systems ethically and responsibly with a goal of improving the human condition, we will see a world of increasing power disparity with capitalism and corporations at the top. Worldwide, we already see a rise in authoritarianism, a weakening of democracy, and the dominance of trans-national corporations. In the United States, we are also seeing a shift in demographics and economics that looks to further weaken democratic ideals of freedom (but not for people of color), identity (a corporation has human rights) and free speech (journalists are the enemy of the people.).”

Alan Mutter, a longtime Silicon Valley CEO, cable TV executive and now a teacher of media economics and entrepreneurism at the University of California – Berkeley, said, “I hope internet users in the future will have more control over their data, interactions and the content pushed to them, but I fear that the platform companies – Google, Facebook, Amazon, Baidu and others – will take us in the opposite direction. A safe and satisfying user experience requires far more thought, work and time than the average user can muster. So, we will be at the mercy of the platforms, which have an asymmetrical ability to outwit and out-maneuver any government entities that try to rein them in. The internet will make lives both better and worse in the future. It will provide greater access to information to those who know how to use it well. At the same time, it will push horrific misinformation to people who lack the ability to critically discern what they are seeing, reading or hearing.”

Adam Popescu, a writer who contributes frequently to the New York Times, Washington Post, Bloomberg Businessweek, Vanity Fair and the BBC, wrote, “Either we’ll be in space by then, or back in the trees. Pandora’s box may finally burn us. No one knows what will happen in five years, let alone 50. It’s now obvious that the optimism with which we ran headfirst into the web was a mistake. The dark side of the web has emerged, and it’s come bringing the all-too-human conditions the web’s wunderkinds claimed they would stamp out. Given the direction in the last five years, the weaponization of the web, I think it will go more and more in this direction, which ultimately means regulation and serious change from what it is now. Maybe we won’t be on the web at all in that period – it will probably be far more integrated into our day-to-day lives. It’s a science fiction film in waiting. With email, constant-on schedules and a death of social manners, I believe we have reached, or are close to, our limit for technological capacity. Our addictions to our smartphones have sired a generation that is afraid of face-to-face interaction and is suffering in many ways psychologically and socially and even physically in ways that we’ve yet to fully comprehend. This will impact society, not for the better. Manners, mood, memory, basic quality of life – they’re all affected negatively. It’s a topic I’ve written about before for the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/19/smarter-living/simple-ways-to-be-better-at-remembering.html and https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/smarter-living/bad-text-posture-neckpain-mood.html.”

David A. Banks, an associate research analyst with the Social Science Research Council, said, “The character and functionality of the internet will continue to follow the political and social whims of the major power players in the industry. If these companies continue to engage in monopolistic practices without competent and reflective regulation, then we can expect an ossified and highly commercialized digital network. If something major changes then we can expect something radically different. The only exterior variable to political power is the rising instability of the climate, which will require a significant re-thinking of temperature-sensitive server farms. The underlying assumption of all digital technologies is a user-account dyad which assumes a sociologically radical notion of individuality. This influence is dangerous in its anti-social character. As these technologies get more and more corporate, I suspect we will also see a foreclosing of the best qualities of these technologies: their ability to afford experimentation with identity.”

Alexey Turchin, existential risks researcher at Foundation Science for Life Extension and founder of the Russian Transhumanist Party, responded, “If there will be life on Earth at all, that is assuming a positive outcome, we will live in the world dominated by global benevolent superintelligence, where there will be no border between VR, AR and individual minds of fleshy humans and uploads. The reason I chose the bad outcome is that I feel that catastrophic risks dominate the future, and probability that there will be positive outcome is relatively small, like 20%. But if any survivors will be here in 50 years, they will live better than now.”

David Brake, senior lecturer in communications at the University of Bedfordshire, U.K., said, “The internet in 50 years will be unimaginable because the social, economic and environmental context it will be in is so uncertain. One thing does seem clear, though – it is very likely that the (relatively) free and open internet that flourished across much of the world in the internet’s early days will continue to be threatened and, I fear, all but overwhelmed by an oligopoly of powerful platforms that will have ‘captured’ the time and attention of most internet users most of the time. Whether they are aware of it or not, almost everyone will live their lives continually being sorted into different categories depending on their behaviour, much of which will be in some way digitally recorded, processed and shared. Some will react by attempting to remain constantly ‘digitally vigilant’ but this is not achievable in the long term, particularly as you will remain traceable through your interactions with others. And of course even an absence of digital profile or a carefully curated one sends its own signals.”

Jennifer King, director of privacy at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, said, “The last 10 years have demonstrated the risks with unleashing the internet on society with little accounting for public responsibility. I predict in Western democracies, we will see a greater push for more regulation and corporate responsibility for the effects of technology. In totalitarian states, we will see concentrated social control through technology. And across the board, I suspect it will become increasingly difficult to live a life outside of the reach of technology. Unless companies get serious about taking responsibility for the unintended consequences of the technology they create, we are likely to see technology used for greater surveillance and manipulation of people’s lives for the benefit of companies.”

Llewellyn Kriel, CEO of TopEditor International, a media services company based in Johannesburg, South Africa, wrote, “Despite all the assurances security has become the biggest obstacle in the path of all forms of technology. We predicted this 10 years ago, but things have become worse than even we imagined. The Internet of Things will aggravate this many times. AI so far shows no signs of being able to address security – personal, corporate and national. We see this situation simply getting worse as criminal cartels, international terrorists and rogue governments exploit the thousands of loopholes.”

Luke Stark, a fellow in the department of sociology at Dartmouth College and at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, wrote, “Increasingly ubiquitous digital systems will do a good job of cocooning individuals within personalized augmented reality bubbles, but a terrible job at facilitating durable connections between us. At the same time, those connections will be surveilled, measured, tracked and represented back to us in ways that will aim to make us more economically productive and socially pliant in the guise of ‘wellness’ and ‘community.’ These systems will increase social inequality through their dividuating effects and contribute to environmental degradation through their use of natural resources – a Philip K. Dick dystopia come to banal life. Unless there are major social changes, technological change over the next 50 years will simply deepen and strengthen the dystopian and authoritarian tendencies of today’s digital technologies.”

Tracey P. Lauriault, assistant professor of critical media and big data in the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University, commented, “We are already seeing platform convergence and the resale of platform data to third parties with whom we do not have a direct relationship. We already know that data brokerage firms are not regulated and there is very little regulation when it comes to credit scoring companies. In addition, we are already beginning to see erroneous social science hiding behind algorithms, not unlike what we saw at the beginning of the enlightenment and we have not even begun to address the social-technical and political outcomes of junk AI/social sciences (i.e., finding gay people or criminals in facial recognition – harkening on the bad old days of eugenics and skull measuring). The EU GDPR on the right to access information will help, but, for the moment, there is little individual and aggregate protection. Also, will private sector companies who aggregate, buy and sell our data, who create individual data shadows or data doppelgangers that become our representatives in this data world, know more about us than we know about ourselves? What influence will they have on larger political decision-making? Decision-making over our lives? How do we correct these systems when they are wrong? How do we adjudicate and context egregious ‘data-based decisions’ in the courts with current IP law? And what of personal sovereignty and state sovereignty? What of other decision-making systems such as social scores in China? How with the poor, elderly and disabled be protected from automated decision-making about social welfare and supports if they do not have assurances that the decision-making about them are correct? And what of junk coding that persists and does not get removed and just keeps generating bad decisions? Who audits? Who is accountable? And will these become the new governors? The future is here and we do not know how to deal with it. The EU is beginning to address these and holding these companies to account, but our citizens in North America are not as well versed, and arguably, our governors seem generally less interested in our well-being, or perhaps are more ignorant of the implications.”

Peter Levine, associate dean for research and Lincoln Filene Professor of Citizenship & Public Affairs in Tufts University’s Jonathan Tisch College of Civic Life, wrote, “Right now, the internet seems to be eroding journalism as a profession, giving a few big companies and governments (like China’s) more social control, and balkanizing citizens. Those trends may continue, or they may provoke a civic backlash that yields a better internet. Digital tools may reduce the proportion of people who have significant value to markets and to governments, rendering them marginal. That would certainly be detrimental to them, and if they resist, it might cause repression.”

Michiel Leenaars, director of strategy at NLnet Foundation and director of the Internet Society’s Netherlands chapter, responded, “What the internet will look like in 50 years will greatly depend on how we act today. Tim Berners-Lee in his 2018 Turing speech referred to the current situation as ‘dystopian,’ and this seems like an adequate overall description. The industry is dominated by extremely pervasive but very profitable business practices that are deeply unethical, driven by perverse short-term incentives to continue along that path. A dark mirror version of the internet on an extractive crash course with democracy and the well-being of humanity at large itself. That is a future I’m not very eager to extrapolate even for another 10 years. My target version of the internet in 50 years – the one I believe is worth pursuing – revolves around open source, open hardware, open content as well as in helping people live meaningful lives supported by continuous education and challenging ideas. Permissionless innovation is a necessary precondition for serving the human potential, but so are critical reflection and a healthy social dialogue avoiding personalised bubbles, AI bias and information overload. The openness of the web and the mobile ecosystem in particular are abysmal, and attention and concentration are endangered human traits. But that can be reversed, I believe. Every day we can start to re-imagine and re-engineer the internet. The information age can and should be an era that brings out the best in all of us, but this will not happen by itself. So, I hope and believe the internet in 50 years is going to be as challenging as the early internet – and hard work for many people that want to see this future emerge. In digital life, individuals are typically limited by the input and output they receive. Increasingly the technology they use to maintain their online social environment itself shapes their expectations, and in a way smothers them. We have millennia of non-digital life behind us where information was a scarce luxury, with social norms that helped deal with those circumstances and simple biology inhibited many exploitation scenarios. Filtering out meaning from a limited information diet is probably the most profound human skill we inherited from that era, meaning we are not well equipped to withstand pervasive algorithmic exposure that exploits these mechanisms. Just making sense of the flotsam and jetsam of our personal information overload is already a major life achievement. It is attractive to many to delegate control to some benevolent algorithm, but if we want to go that way any and all forms of bias and psychometric nudging have to be removed – or we lose control and probably a lot more.”

Ramon Lopez de Mantaras, director of the Spanish National Research Council’s Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, said, “Unfortunately, with the arrival of the internet we did not only open a box that contains good and positive things. We opened a box that is causing lots of problems. We are living in an accelerated pace that leaves us less and less time for reflection. We are on a train running at very high speed that is taking us nobody knows where. Are we happier now than 30 years ago? I do not think so! And when one reads about the social credit initiative in China one should be really afraid. In summary, there will be more stress due to living an accelerated life and real threats to our freedom and privacy. I do not think we will live a happier life. Of course, there will be many positive things, but, overall, we will not be happier.”

Mike O’Connor, a retired technologist who worked at ICANN and on national broadband issues, commented, “I’m deeply pessimistic about the future of the planet in general and digital life in specific. The undercurrent of the present-day pits earnest volunteers (like me) against ever more sophisticated and well-funded corporations and governments. I believe that 2050 will find us in a dystopian environmental nightmare in which the internet I love has become a devastatingly powerful tool of suppression and mind control. The next 50 years will see the end of the Enlightenment and the Renaissance and the descent back into a much more authoritarian era. Techniques being beta tested in current politics (e.g., Russian-meddling, Brexit, Trump) will be viewed as unsophisticated trial runs of control technologies built by the very best minds – people who are well compensated for their efforts. While I’m a fan of ‘plucky opponents,’ I don’t believe the forces of good stand a chance against the gathering intellectual and ethical darkness.”

Mark Maben, a general manager at Seton Hall University, wrote, “Predicting exactly what something will be like 50 years from now is a bit of a fool’s errand. We are still waiting for some of the mainstream marvels Popular Mechanics and Popular Science predicted for us in the 1930s, yet just a few years before the iPhone was announced, not many folks saw the rapid smartphone revolution coming right around the corner. With so many variables, the future is difficult to predict. That said, when I ponder the question of ‘where will the internet and digital life be a half century from now?’ I see a three-tiered world. Across the planet there will be people who have fully embraced the digital realm, with completely wired lives and bodies. They will have traded a certain amount of autonomy and humanness for the convenience and amazing capabilities of a fully integrated digital world. Every move, emotion and moment of this group will be known and monitored by just a handful companies or perhaps just one or two. The apps, AI, automation and other digital tools available to this tier will be extremely powerful and seductive in guiding these individuals’ actions, decisions and interests. There will be a second, much smaller group of people who will have rejected much of the digital world. What drives these folks is not outright opposition to technological progress, but rather a rejection of how digital life reduces the state of being human, as well as privacy and autonomy. These individuals will limit their digital interaction in order to preserve as much as possible the elements that make us human – touch, face-to-face communication, in-person group activities, debate, non-machine-aided creativity, sitting quietly, performing physical work and/or tasks, etc. The final tier will be comprised of those dislocated the most by social disruption caused by the rise of AI. They will be bitter, and at times subversive, users of the internet because of their recognition that the digital era, along with failed governmental responses to its advent, has led to their lack of opportunity and feelings of alienation and hopeless. This is by no means the future I wish to see, because as a species we are far better than this, but it is the one I feel is likely given the shortcomings of our current political, social, spiritual and economic leadership worldwide. While I believe in the potential for technological progress to improve our lives, I lack faith in our ability to successfully manage that progress for social good. As E.O. Wilson wrote, ‘We have created a ‘Star Wars’ civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology.’ That’s a dangerous combination, one that presents a real risk for individuals. Right now, we are ill prepared to manage how artificial intelligence will disrupt the nature of work across the globe, both emotionally and institutionally. Humanity has to plan immediately for the loss of literally billions of jobs around the world as AI and automation replace people in all types of work. This means governments must step up to provide for displaced workers through benefits like a universal basic income, health care, retirement security AND guiding people to accept a new definition for what it means to perform meaningful work. Parenting, volunteering, lifelong-learning, mentoring, leisure, artistic creation and other pursuits must be raised in stature and acceptance. But the response to economic disruption so far has been nationalism, authoritarian, scapegoating, violence against ‘the other’ and denial of what’s to come. This is why I feel most people will be worse off in 50 years.”

Vian Bakir, a professor of political communication and journalism at Bangor University, responded, “The answer to this question very much depends upon whether dominant global technology companies maintain their commercial hold over the internet, or whether they are challenged by equally strong regulation that limits what data they can gather and what they can then do with it. Assuming that the commercial impetus remains dominant, that international regulation remains weak, and that people remain willing to give away their data for access to the internet and apps, then I foresee a dysfunctional future where dataveillance reigns supreme, and where privacy (and associated freedoms) has become a distant memory.”

Michael Kleeman, a senior fellow at the University of California – San Diego and board member at the Institute for the Future, wrote, “There will be an increasing obfuscation of what is an app and what is not. And under new mobile services app-like functionality can be delivered from anywhere in the world transparent to the user. Increased OS infection will enable a new class of malware that will hijack users’ accounts and control their resources. Because of the economic disparity the new technologies will be used with those with access to more resources, financial and technical. The digital divide will not be one of access but of security, privacy and autonomy.”

Stephen McDowell, a professor of communication at Florida State University expert in new media and internet governance, commented, “The area of law and policy is already showing some major stresses in dealing with networked connected data systems, apart from AI systems. Law and policy is often dealt with on a case-by-case and issue-by-issue basis, treating questions and legal traditions and precedents in isolation. These issues might include speech, privacy, property, informed consent, competition and security. This has weaknesses already in a networked world where large teach firms offer platforms supporting a wide range of services and track user behavior across services. Marc DaCosta makes this point well (Marc DaCosta, ‘How to fix big tech? We need the right language to describe it first.’ The Guardian, July 7, 2018). If we add systems with more learning and predictive power to this mix, it will be important to develop new concepts that go beyond the segmented approach to law and policy we are trying to use to govern internet-based interactions presently. We need to grapple with the totality of a relationship between a user and a service provider, rather than react to isolated incidents and infringements. We need to address the trade-off between offering free services and users allowing data to be collected with minimal understanding of their consent. We should also consider stronger limits on the use of personal data in machine learning and predictive modeling. Companies that automate functions to save on input costs and to allow services to be offered at scale to reap the private benefits of innovation must also take on responsibility for unintended consequences and possibilities they have created. As with other rounds of innovation and technical change, the goals of AI design and deployment, and the distribution of benefits across different population groups around the globe, will be of central importance in affecting individuals’ lives. Similarly, new processes in AI to create social and economic value will also undermine or destroy some organizations and occupations as part of ‘creative destruction.’ For those for whom the AI innovations are designed, there may be benefits in their daily lives. For example, automation and robotics in manufacturing displaced many workers, and global supply chains shifted work to different places. This had broad social implications in industrial countries. Some powerful groups in the service and professional sectors of the economy were able to resist automation or use it to their advantage, but this advantage of AI dilutes the value of some expertise and professions.”

Hari Shanker Sharma, an expert in nanotechnology and neurobiology at Uppasala University, Sweden, said, “Technology is a tool for making life better. A goal of life is happiness, satisfaction. Both require a set of values to remain good or become evil. The internet has brought the world together. Apps are tools to perform tasks easily. The Internet of Things will connect all living and non-living things. But the dark side of human nature – the hunger for power, possession and control that has brought wars and terrorism – cannot be corrected by the internet or apps. There is a need to identify the evil in human nature and protect the simple, good and well-meaning from becoming its prey. Evil often moves ahead of good. Perhaps it can be predicted by features that check the psychology of individuals, crime records and other past behaviours to block certain actions or warn others. Biometric identification is already used for e-security – for instance, facial recognition – and it might be possible to have bio-feature readers to detect the evil-minded or those who are likely to become evil-minded and put safety checks in place at places of danger. Expert systems for face reading, feature reading, nature reading and analysis might give warning. Trackers could be established for isolated nodes and feed details to law-enforcement agencies. No evil-monger would agree on such checks and caution, but people need to be protected from online financial fraud, rapes by social media stalkers, murders by e-system users, etc., that unchecked because no efficient warning system exists. The law today is not helpful. E-crime should be dealt with and punished without boundary. The internet needs global law and global governance to become user friendly. That past shows us that every new development was used by an army of raiders, attackers. The law always lagged behind. The problem with good people is that they think everybody is good and hence even criminals – rapists, murderers, fraudsters – should be given a chance to reform No study is done to find how many were reformed or did more crimes on bail, etc. Sometimes good and powerful nations take the side of evil due to vested interests. Global connectivity becomes a tool of criminals while those who are simply good have no power to handle evil.”

Simon Biggs, a professor of interdisciplinary arts at the University of Edinburgh, said, “I am not keen to try and foresee the future in concrete terms. One can only extrapolate from the past and present. Given our history as a species, and our current behaviour with the internet, I suspect that our activities (within a more advanced form of the internet) will consist of virtual simulated sex (in the form of interactive pornography – so not really sex but power-play) and killing virtual players in massive online gaming environments (more power-play). In that sense things will be similar to how they are now. Given current trends it is likely that the internet will no longer be ‘the internet,’ in the sense that it was intended as the network of all networks. Networked information and communications technology will be territorialized, broken up and owned, in walled environments (this process is already well advanced). Access will be privileged, not for the consumer but for the producer. The first period of the internet was marked by a democratisation of access to the means of production, but this will not be the case in the future. The vast bulk of internet users will be passive consumers who are offered an illusion of agency in the system to deliver them as a resource to those who profit from consumer playbour. We already see this with Facebook and other companies. The manner in which user data from Facebook and elsewhere has been exploited in the democratic process to affect the outcomes to the benefit of those paying for the data is indicative of where the internet is going. I expect the internet to be far more pervasive than it is today, our experience of our lived life mediated at all times. The only question is to what degree our experiential life will be mediated? I suspect it will be more or less total by 2030. The question is whether we will be able to choose to live a less mediated life? Probably not. Primarily, my reasoning is predicated on the expectation that human behaviour will lead negative consequences flowing from our technological augmentation. These consequences could be quite severe. Do I think our survival as a species is threatened by our technological evolution? Yes. Do I think we will survive? Probably, because we are a tenacious animal. Do I think it will be worth surviving in a world like that? Probably not. Do I think the world would be better off if, as a species, we were to not survive? Absolutely. That is one thing we might hope for – that we take ourselves out, become extinct. Even if we are replaced by our machines the world is likely to be a better place without us.”

Peter Asaro, a professor at The New School, philosopher of sci-tech and media who examines artificial intelligence and robotics, commented, “Perhaps the biggest change so far in internet usage has been smartphones, which permit mobile access and thus always-on, always-available access to the internet. It is difficult to imagine a further evolution that is more substantial. Perhaps augmented reality systems (like Google Glass) that project the internet over all of reality is one possibility. Another would be a truly successful Internet of Things that includes robotics, self-driving cars, etc., in which internet-connected devices do real significant work in the physical and socially lived world. The penetration of the internet deeper into the physical and social world will benefit some greatly, many to some degree and most little or negatively. Most of the benefits will go those who have already benefited from the internet. Some benefits will be derived from aggregating and analyzing the collected data, but few people will see the connection.”

Alistair Knott, an associate professor specializing in cognitive science and AI at Otago University, Dunedin, New Zealand, wrote, “I’ll focus on the role of natural language in internet apps, since that’s the field I work in. I expect natural language processing methods to become a lot better over the next few years. Within 50 years, I expect that computer models will be able to simulate humanlike conversational agents very accurately: My guess is that it’ll be possible to communicate with a computer almost as effectively as we can communicate with other humans. If this comes to pass, it’s hard to overstate the impacts this would have on human society. Most prosaically, all computer apps would include a dialogue interface, and interaction with computers would primarily use this interface. But more significantly, computers would become a little like people, in the minds of their human users. AI systems that understand human language have potential for both good and bad impacts on society. I’m pessimistic, because I think the technologies are likely to be developed, and used, by large transnational companies, with the aim of maximising their profits. The likely effect of this is that people will increasingly fall into the role of ‘consumers’ of entertainment-like language apps, that encourage political apathy, and discourage individualism. (There’s another, more-optimistic possibility: Advances in AI modeling will help us understand our own cognition – and in particular the foibles that cause us to fall into group conflicts, encourage selfish behaviour. This information could help us create fairer, more robust societies, designed to withstand these foibles. But again, this would require seismic political changes.)”

“There will not be significant change”

When given the three choices, the following respondents answered that in the next 50 years technological change will not produce significant change in individuals’ lives.

Justin Reich, executive director of MIT Teaching Systems Lab and research scientist in the MIT Office of Digital Learning, responded, “The trends toward centralization and monopolization will persist. The free, open internet that represented a set of decentralized connections between idiosyncratic actors will be recognized as an aberration in the history of the internet. Today’s internet giants will probably be the internet giants of 50 years from now. In recent years, they’ve made substantial progress in curtailing innovation through acquisitions and copying. As the industry matures, they will add regulatory capture to their skill sets. For many people around the world, the internet will be a set of narrow portals where they exchange their data for a curtailed set of communication, information and consumer services. Shakespeare wrote three kinds of plays: the tragedies where things got worse, the comedies where things got better and the histories, with a combination of winners and losers. Technological advances do little to change net human happiness, because so much of happiness is determined by relative comparisons with neighbors. The primary determinants of whether life for people improves will be whether we can build robust social institutions that distribute power widely and equally among people, and whether those institutions support meaningful relationships among people.”

Danny Gillane, a netizen from Lafayette, Louisiana, commented, “The content owners will become the platform companies (Disney, Time Warner, etc.), and the platform companies will become the content owners (Comcast, Netflix, etc.). In the U.S., we will give up more privacy to gain more convenience. We will have to choose between paying with our wallets or paying with our personal information in order to keep up with the Joneses. Collaboration and communication will become less personal as more of it will be done through virtual reality and through our devices. The promise of worldwide connection will lessen as Europe places restrictions on tech companies to protect its citizens’ rights. but the U.S. will pass laws to protect shareholders even at the expense of its citizens’ rights. Unless the focus of technology innovation moves away from consumer entertainment and communication products (such as social networks) and more toward medical and scientific advances, we will see fewer people truly benefiting from the internet. The money that fuels America’s politics already fuels its legislative efforts, or lack of, with regard to technology. So, I actually don’t think we’ll see any actual change, unless one considers for-profit companies having an even larger presence in more parts of our lives more often and in more ways.”

Christine Boese, digital strategies professional, commented, “I am more optimistic for 50 years of interconnected packet networks and distributed HTML link systems than I am for AI and machine learning. I believe this brilliant system – the internet – is more robust and persistent than anything else the world has created, barring a worldwide failure of electrical grid infrastructure (which is a real possibility). I am more skeptical that humanity will still be around in its present, literate form, to access it! On this point, I believe it is carbon-based life forms which endanger the future networked and communicating computer. I have high hopes for blockchain technology, to be used for far more than cryptocurrency. I believe evolving XML schemas will continue to add important logic to our metadata for semantic parsing and sense-making. Aggregated data has promise, but the server farms required to support constant crawling, indexing and processing will require outsize electrical grid support, and human civilization’s declining literacy, its lack of ongoing infrastructure maintenance and disproportionate grid power draws by server farms could endanger the entire system within 50 years. We are becoming dumb, violent Eloi, without our engineering Morlocks. In 50 years, humans will be the greatest threat to the ongoing evolution of technology, and the greatest threat to human lives with the AID of various technologies, none of which will be all that advanced. Most algorithms used are shortsighted, flawed and reductive, but so ‘black box’ that no one has the expertise to check the work! There is enough tech available for humans to do destructive things, including destroying their own technological infrastructure. There are a number of bad actors on the human stage with outsize resources and ill intent, in this new Gilded Age created, not by technology, but by changes in government policies. Note the number of super-rich people building elaborate bunkers and compounds for themselves and their ‘servants’ if you doubt where the hoarded wealth of this planet believes the future is heading. We are living out a nightmare as analyzed by Jared Diamond, more resembling Western Europe’s ‘Dark Ages’ of feudal castles, keeps and moats. With a vanishing middle class and extreme polarization of wealth and poverty, the super-rich have no intention of investing in a networked infrastructure that serves anyone but themselves. I realized this when I was asked to design a detailed trading analysis system for high-frequency traders, the kind of ‘quant’-supporting work Michael Lewis has written about. It was a high-budget project, and I set about designing a robust interface only to discover later that only three people would be using it. Welcome to our brave new world.”

Joshua Loftus, assistant professor of information, operations and management sciences at New York University and co-author of “Counterfactual Fairness in Machine Learning,” commented, “This is too far into the future for any informative predictions without great uncertainty, but I expect inequality to continue growing in each new dimension. For many in the world it will be a long and drawn-out apocalypse. For others it will be an augmented reality wonderland of hyperstimuli and consumption. It will be better for some and worse for others. For non-humans, for example, mass extinction will probably accelerate.”

Jeff Johnson, computer science professor at the University of San Francisco, previously with Xerox, HP Labs and Sun Microsystems, responded, “The future will bring much-improved speech-controlled user interfaces, direct brain-computer interfaces, bio-computing, advances in AI and much higher bandwidth due to increases in computer power (resulting from quantum computing). Unless national political systems around the world change in ways to promote more equitable wealth distribution, the future will also bring increased stratification of society, fueled by loss of jobs and decreased access to quality education for lower socio-economic classes. Finally, rising sea levels and desertification will render large areas uninhabitable, causing huge social migrations and (for some) increased poverty. Technological change alone will not produce significant change in people’s lives. What happens alongside technological change will affect how technological change impacts society.”

Sam Gregory, director of WITNESS and digital human rights activist, responded, “My perspective comes from considering the internet and civic activism. We are at a turning point in terms of whether the internet enables a greater diversity of civic voices, organizing and perspectives, or whether it is largely a controlled and monitored surveillance machine. We are also swiftly moving toward a world of pervasive and persistent witnessing where everything is instantly watched and seen with ubiquitous cameras embedded in our environment and within our personal technologies, and where we are able to engage with these realities via telepresence, co-presence and vicarious virtual experience. This is a double-edged sword. The rise of telepresence robots will enable us to experience realities we could never otherwise physically experience. This remote experiencing has the potential to enable the best and the worst in our natures. On the one hand, we will increasingly have the ability to deliberately turn away from experiencing the unmitigated pain of the world’s suffering. We might do this for the best of reasons – to protect our capacity to keep feeling empathy closer to home and to exercise what is termed ‘empathy avoidance,’ a psychological defense mechanism which involves walling ourselves up from responding emotionally to the suffering of others. We may also enter the middle ground that Aldous Huxley captured in ‘Brave New World,’ where narcotizing multisensory experiences, ‘feelies,’ distract and amuse rather than engage people with the world. Here, by enabling people to experience multiple dimensions of others’ crises viscerally but not meaningfully, we perpetuate existing tendencies in activism to view other people’s suffering as a theatrum mundi played out for our vicarious tears shed in the safety of our physically walled-off and secure spaces. On the other hand, we will increasingly be presented with opportunities through these technologies to directly engage with and act upon issues that we care about. As we look at the future of organizing and the need to better support on-the-ground activism, this becomes critical to consider how to optimize. We also have a potential future where governments will thoroughly co-opt these shared virtual/physical spaces, turning virtual activism into a government-co-opted ‘Pokémon Go,’ a human-identity search engine, scouring virtual and physical spaces in search of dissidents. In a brighter future, virtual/physical co-presence has the exciting potential to be a massive amplifier of civic solidarity across geographical boundaries, defying the power of national governments to unjustly dictate to their citizens.”

Simeon Yates, director of the Centre for Digital Humanities and Social Science at the University of Liverpool, said, “We did not predict Trump and ‘Fake News’ and filter bubbles – but the implications were there in the earliest research (see the work of Keisler/Siegel/McGuire and Zuboff). I am not sure we are still well placed to use our crystal balls here. I sadly believe that we will see a world of digital haves and have-nots – where the majority have access but utilise a limited set of services (as is the case with written literacy). I also see a much greater commercial role in the digital sphere unless net neutrality can be enforced. It is already as much of a shock to shift from U.K. to U.S. internet environments as it is from U.K. to U.S. TV. As more of the internet is served up through walled garden/gated community platforms and apps (digital places whose access is commercially or organisationally constrained) there are inherent threats to open society and democracy – ironically the opposite of the hopes of the internet’s founders and first users. If we want to see an internet for all (for the many, not the few) we need to realise that this will need regulation and policy. I see the internet becoming ever more part of politics and policy on many fronts ,therefore. Technology will impact people’s lives for good or bad across many domains. It will make life worse for some and better for others and a mix for most. Also what people consider good and bad effects will be affected by the use of the internet. This question simply does not work.”

Eugene H. Spafford, internet pioneer and professor of computing sciences at Purdue University, founder and executive director emeritus of the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security, commented, “We need to come to some form of consensus on issues such as fact, primary sources, and reliability of information. I see a future where there are more likely to be editorial and content controls, and continued Balkanization of the internet. Crime and propaganda are going to be even bigger problems as we have no good, global solutions to deploy as of yet. I do not expect a major shift in either direction. New uses, information sources and paradigms will improve the lives of many. However, the abuses, dilution of privacy and crime will also make things worse.”

Michel Grossetti, a sociologist expert in systems and director of research at CNRS, the French national science research center, wrote, “It seems likely to me that the boundaries between private life and work or public life will continue to blur. Technical changes will certainly contribute to changes in our lives. But I can’t say if it’s to make them more pleasant or more difficult. It is a matter of political choices and more general socio-historical trends, of which technical changes are only one aspect.”

Following are responses to the prompt:

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

Leonard Kleinrock, Internet Hall of Fame member and co-director of the first host-to-host online connection, professor of computer science, University of California – Los Angeles, said, “The internet has dramatically enlarged the reach of the individual to other people, to vast knowledge, to entertainment, to new ideas, to expanded commerce and more, thus acting as a tremendous force multiplier for humanity.”

Vint Cerf, co-innovator of the current Internet Protocol, Internet Hall of Fame member and vice president and chief internet evangelist at Google, wrote, “Access to and discovery of and enhanced sharing of information has made a huge difference. It is hard to avoid the utility of Google search throughout the day, to say nothing of automatic notifications trying to be helpful. I would also add that internet applications linked to GPS for navigation have also been enormously helpful.”

Andrew Wycoff and Karine Perset of OECD wrote, “The ability to share and access knowledge widely over the internet has had tremendously beneficial impact on economies and societies over the past 50 years. This access to an unparalleled wealth of knowledge empowers users, businesses and governments and enables innovation and new social interactions. It has reduced and, in many cases, eliminated asymmetries in information that led to arbitrage, thereby increasing both efficiency and equity.”

Ken Birman, a professor in the department of computer science at Cornell University, responded, “The internet has connected us and created a true global society for the first time in human history. We are experiencing some growth and adjustment pains as this plays out, but the benefits are unquestionable, profound and fundamental.”

Lawrence Roberts, designer and manager of ARPANET, the precursor to the internet, and Internet Hall of Fame member, commented, “The internet has already freed many from commuting and offices. Communication with others now can largely be done with email, phone and other internet tools. Research has been dramatically improved with search engines and the internet access to most prior work.”

Craig Partridge, chief scientist at Raytheon BBN Technologies for 35 years and Internet Hall of Famer, currently chair of the department of computer science at Colorado State University, wrote, “We have connected fragmented communities. Examples range from people with rare diseases, to gay kids in small towns, to descendants of refugee communities reconnecting with their roots and relatives. Folks who felt isolated or alone realize they are part of a larger world.”

James Hendler, professor of computer, web and cognitive sciences and director of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for Data Exploration and Application, wrote, “Access to significant amounts of information at one’s fingertips, on demand and in real time, allows for both work and home life to get credible information in areas ranging from health to home life and beyond.”

Larry Lannom, internet pioneer and vice president at the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI), an expert in digital object architecture, said, “It has greatly improved availability of scientific data.”

Jonathan Grudin, a principal researcher at Microsoft, commented, “It has given many people access to information and participation that they did not have before.”

Esther Dyson, entrepreneur, former journalist, founding chair at ICANN and founder of Wellville, wrote, “The internet has given a voice to many people who were previously voiceless. Yet it has not guaranteed that their voices will be heard.”

Teus Hagen, Netherlands internet pioneer, former chair and director of NLnet and member of the Internet Hall of Fame, said, “Free information in a worldwide flow.”

Bob Metcalfe, Hall of Fame co-inventor of Ethernet, founder of 3Com, now a professor of innovation and entrepreneurship at the University of Texas – Austin, said, “Abundant connectivity had reduced market frictions and spurred economic growth. It has broken down barriers to freedom and democracy.”

Anthony Judge, author, futurist, editor of the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential, former head of the Union of International Associations, said, “Search engine facilities for storing and accessing documents – provided one can ask the right questions and the censorship/ranking operators have not got in first.”

Barry Wellman, pioneering internet sociologist, said, “Instead of being bound up in groups, we are much better able to maneuver among multiple networks as networked individuals – and are less constrained by distance.”

Christian Huitema, internet pioneer and consultant focused on privacy online, previously Internet Architecture Board president, chief scientist at Bell Research and Microsoft distinguished engineer, commented, “Free communication, free access to information, for everybody. That’s great.”

Jillian C. York, director of international freedom of expression for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, commented, “The internet has made the world smaller for many of us. No longer do I lose touch with people I meet in different countries, and more often than not we learn that we have friends in common!”

Brad Templeton, chair for computing at Singularity University, software architect and former president of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, responded, “I am in touch with so many people in my life I would have lost touch with. My ability to know and understand and reach is vastly improved. Many products are cheaper and more abundant.”

Bryan Johnson, founder and CEO of Kernel, a leading developer of advanced neural interfaces, and OS Fund, a venture capital firm, said, “The internet gave rise to the information-exchange scaffolding necessary to build intelligence from scratch and it accelerated intelligence expansion in humans.”

Fred Baker, independent networking technologies consultant, longtime leader in the Internet Engineering Task Force and engineering fellow with Cisco, commented, “Communications technologies have developed with mankind, and mankind with them, for hundreds of years. We have used postal mail, Morse code, analog radio, telephone voice systems, telephonic digital systems and now the internet, and they have both entered and informed our vocabulary. Where Ben Franklin might have mentioned postal services as an important service in the U.S. Constitution, I suspect that he would today mention the internet. One major change I see in my lifetime is that people put their email addresses on their business cards and presume email as a means of communication.”

Henning Schulzrinne, co-chair of the Internet Technical Committee of the IEEE Communications Society, professor at Columbia University, and Internet Hall of Fame member, said, “The ability to communicate easily and cheaply, by text, photos, voice and video, with friends and family has made living apart easier.”

Eliot Lear, principal engineer at Cisco, said, “The cost of knowledge has dropped through the floor. One merely needs to know where to look.”

Judith Donath, author of “The Social Machine, Designs for Living Online” and faculty fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman-Klein Center for Internet and Society, commented, “Access – via a little mobile device! – to unimaginably vast troves of information: historical documents, scanned artworks, seismic data, medical research, cat videos, revenge porn, calorie counters, satellite images, stolen passwords. Much of it findable through a simple query and by following links connecting related documents. While some is erroneous and some harmful, most of the information is valid and useful (or at least entertaining). Never before has even a tiny fraction of this information been accessible at all – certainly not easily and freely. Those of us with internet access can now stand on the shoulders of all giants.”

Wendy Hall, professor of computer science at the University of Southampton, U.K., and executive director of the Web Science Institute, said, “The availability of accessing the information we want when and where we want it.”

Patrick Lambe, a partner at Straits Knowledge and president of the Singapore Chapter of the International Society for Knowledge Organization, wrote, “Democratisation and pervasiveness of access to knowledge, education and information.”

Eugene H. Spafford, internet pioneer and professor of computing sciences at Purdue University, founder of the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security, commented, “Useful information and resources are now readily available in ways they never were before.”

Bob Frankston, software innovation pioneer and technologist based in North America, wrote, “Today I can travel while staying connected and using translation tools, having access to maps and route planning and money.”

William Dutton, Oxford Martin Fellow at the Global Cyber Security Capacity Centre and founding director of the Oxford Internet Institute, commented, “The internet has enabled individuals to better hold institutions accountable, creating what I have called a ‘Fifth Estate.’”

Walid Al-Saqaf, senior lecturer at Sodertorn University, member of the board of trustees of the Internet Society (ISOC) and vice president of the ISOC Blockchain Special Interest Group, commented, “It connected people, empowered citizens, networked scientists and spread knowledge wide and far. In short, it made life easier.”

Marina Gorbis, executive director of the Institute for the Future and author of “The Nature of the Future: Dispatches from the Socialstructed World,” responded, “For those who want to learn, the amount of information and knowledge has exploded over the past 50 years. If you are motivated and you know how to think critically there is no limit to learning opportunities. Virtually anything you want to know you can learn online today or you can find someone online who would connect you to that knowledge.”

Scott Burleigh, software engineer and intergalactic internet pioneer, wrote, “Search. Google Maps alone is reason enough for the multi-billion-dollar mobile phone industry.”

Peng Hwa Ang, professor of communications at Nanyang Technological University and author of “Ordering Chaos: Regulating the Internet,” wrote, “Transparency. There are many examples where the possibility of being exposed has kept people in check. This ranges from surveillance cameras at home to officials being caught lying online. As a result, there is a greater awareness of being honest and truthful and ethical.”

Steve Crocker, CEO and co-founder of Shinkuro, Inc., internet pioneer and Internet Hall of Fame member, responded, “Interpersonal relationships have been greatly facilitated through the ubiquitous, continuous, inexpensive communication.”

Michael H. Goldhaber, an author, consultant and theoretical physicist who wrote early explorations on the digital attention economy, said, “It democratized much knowledge, art, science, etc., by making versions of it instantly available through such sources as Wikipedia, online journals, Project Gutenberg and even Google images.”

Sam Ladner, a former UX researcher for Amazon and Microsoft now an adjunct professor at Ontario College of Art & Design, wrote, “Social networks are now visible to us, and more precious. Work productivity has enhanced for many in creative roles including those relating to finance, law, medicine and art.”

Ramon Lopez de Mantaras, director of the Spanish National Research Council’s Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, said, “It made it easier to find information and communicate.”

Mike O’Connor, a retired technologist who worked at ICANN and on national broadband issues, commented, “There’s the usual list of improvements (economic, educational, health care, etc.) – but what if the price of those improvements is mind-control, class-suppression, environmental disaster?”

Jerry Michalski, founder of the Relationship Economy eXpedition, said, “I’m old enough to have used carbon paper, rotary phones, card catalogs and paper maps. The internet has put superpowers at my fingertips.”

Michael M. Roberts, internet pioneer, first president and CEO of ICANN and Internet Hall of Fame member, responded, “There are many good choices, but I would choose scientific collaboration as my favorite. Pick any field of scientific endeavor, and recent significant advancements have benefitted from the internet’s ability to rapidly share information among geographically dispersed scientists, and to link seamlessly with expensive scientific apparatus. Examples include the gravity wave experiments involving LSU and others, as well as the CRISPR discoveries at Berkeley, MIT and elsewhere.”

Paul Vixie, an Internet Hall of Fame member known for designing and implementing several Domain Name System protocol extensions and applications, wrote, “It is now possible to make common cause with a global team. Same as the next answer (this is also a negative outcome amplified by the internet).”

Joly MacFie, president of the Internet Society New York Chapter, commented, “You mean the ‘capital-I Internet,’ I presume. It established non-proprietary protocols as a basis for global communications.”

John Markoff, fellow at Stanford University and author of “Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots,” wrote, “It made library resources available globally.”

Oscar Gandy, emeritus professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania, responded, “There is little doubt that the internet has improved my ability to gain access to information, including, from time to time, that which we would (or should) recognize as wisdom.”

Cliff Zukin, professor of public policy and political science at the School for Planning and Public Policy and the Eagleton Institute of Politics, Rutgers University, said, “Known (unregulated) information is immediately accessible by everyone. This is people-leveling, a check on governments, efficiency, among other things.”

Simon Biggs, a professor of interdisciplinary arts at the University of Edinburgh, said, “To begin with, the internet offered new ways for more people to have access to the means of production. But this is now under threat.”

Douglas Rushkoff, a professor of media at City University of New York, responded, “People can access information immediately that may have required weeks or months or even years of research in prior eras.”

John Verdon, retired futurist and consultant, wrote, “Costless coordination – enabling an unprecedented capacity of self-organization of human efforts.”

Charlie Firestone, communications and society program executive director and vice president at The Aspen Institute, commented, “It is nearly miraculous that almost anyone in the world can communicate with another, that they can access unlimited knowledge and that one can know the ‘other’ in real time.”

Jeff Johnson, computer science professor at the University of San Francisco, previously with Xerox, HP Labs and Sun Microsystems, responded, “More people have access to email, video calling (e.g., Skype, FaceTime, WhatsApp) and other person-to-person communication means.”

Ian Peter, pioneer internet activist and internet rights advocate, said, “Global communication has increased greatly and the possibilities to increase global understanding are a positive development.”

Paul Jones, professor of information science at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, responded, “We can find our tribes more easily and globally. Enrichment and support are close, quick and intimate as never before.”

Geoff Arnold, CTO for the Verizon Smart Communities organization, said, “Rapid, unmediated sharing of video has exposed institutionalized corruption and discrimination that was widely ignored.”

Yvette Wohn, director of the Social Interaction Lab and expert on human-computer interaction at New Jersey Institute of Technology, commented, “Access to information has shifted priorities about what we remember and how we process information.”

Baratunde Thurston, futurist, former director of digital at The Onion, co-founder of comedy/technology start-up Cultivated Wit, said, “The decentralization of power has largely been a good thing, though it’s not without major social costs and chaos. Today we see it in #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter. The ability to organize disparate people into a movement is often very healthy in a democracy and is mostly due to the internet. There is no guarantee that power will be wielded in a better way, but the past 50 years have mostly shown that the internet has helped distribute ‘power to the people’ more than not. We are hearing from voices that never would have been heard under historical power models.”

Grace Mutung’u, co-leader of the Kenya ICT Action Network, responded, “Liberation of information.”

Zoetanya Sujon, a senior lecturer specializing in digital culture at University of Arts London, commented, “The internet has enabled global communication between individuals and groups on every level. It is much easier to be connected to those that matter to you, and this is of significant benefit for those individuals, families and many other kinds of groups.”

Mark Surman, executive director of the Mozilla Foundation and author of “Commonspace: Beyond Virtual Community,” responded, “Half of the world now has immediate access to the biggest library and source of knowledge humanity has ever built.”

Greg Shannon, chief scientist for the CERT Division at Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, said, “Fast, distance-agnostic, often-asynchronous human interaction. We can text/email/blog/post when/where we and our friends, family and community can see it when/where they want. This is an amazing efficiency. This really struck me a decade ago when I met a taxi driver in Omaha who served as an on-call, as-available voluntary translator for the local social services office. This is also part of the reason why internet access is such a value to even those without homes (see the homeless in San Francisco on their smartphones) or literacy (east-Asian farmers tracking markets and selling crops remotely via voice-to-text and text-to-voice apps).”

Marek Havrda, director at NEOPAS and strategic adviser for the GoodAI project, a private R&D company focusing on the development of artificial general intelligence and AI applications, said, “Democratisation of the access to information.”

Robert Bell, co-founder of Intelligent Community Forum, wrote, “It has created billions and billions in economic value that would not otherwise have existed, raising living standards around the world to an unprecedented degree.”

Monica Murero, director of the E-Life International Institute and associate professor in sociology of new technology at the University of Naples Federico II, Italy, commented, “In the health care field, the internet has facilitated rapid access to knowledge and information exchange, not only among health care providers but, most interestingly, among patients and their caregivers.”

Gary Kreps, distinguished professor of communication and director of the Center for Health and Risk Communication at George Mason University, wrote, “The internet has provided the general public with tremendous access to relevant information and support in many important areas of life. It has helped to connect people to share information and to build important relationships across time and distance. It has also provided broad access to entertainment and enterprise for many people.”

Steven Miller, vice provost and professor of information systems at Singapore Management University, said, “1. I can find what I need to know. In fact, I can more quickly and easily find a wide range of info on what is known on a topic, and sort through that. 2) I can share with others the things I want or need to share. While one could do this 100 years ago or more, it is just so much easier to find what one needs to know, and to share. It makes knowledge ubiquitous, and that is a huge change. In principle, it should make it much easier and more rigorous to test and validate knowledge at speed and at scale, and for certain types of people, with certain open approaches and mindsets, this is indeed true. Unfortunately, as we have also soon learned – perhaps to our surprise – is that for other types of people with other states of minds and other intentions it is directly the opposite. They use this same capability to sow seeds of distrust, fragmentation and ill intent. While this is not new to history and civilisation, the scale at which the evil stuff can be done, and the targeting of the pernicious efforts has definitely achieved its own unprecedented scale and speed, counterbalancing the positive and constructive benefits. It really is a tug of war between good and evil.”

Andrew Tutt, an expert in law and author of “An FDA for Algorithms,” said, “The internet has made more information available to more people than any other single innovation in human history. In so doing, it has acted as a great leveler, providing millions of people the opportunity to do things they could never have imagined doing before. People have been able to connect with one another, persuade one another, learn from one another, do commerce with one another. The one thing the internet does so well – allow people to spread knowledge – is also the most significant way that it has changed things for the better in the past 50 years.”

Juan Ortiz Freuler, a policy fellow and Nnenna Nwakanma, the interim policy director for Africa, at the Web Foundation, wrote “The internet has allowed marginalized groups to network, discuss their identity and coordinate in defense of a common future. It has allowed for stories that were systematically being silenced to reach a wide audience (e.g., #MeToo). It allows for individuals that are geographically dispersed, and often target of State inattention (e.g., people with rare diseases) to network and defend their interests as a collective. It has allowed for innovators to find an audience for their ideas, often despite the physical barriers that traditionally kept the space of innovation reserved to the few.”

Lindsey Andersen, an activist at the intersection of human rights and technology for Freedom House and Internews now doing graduate research at Princeton University, said, “The internet has opened up a world of information that has enabled better education, research, decision-making, coordination and connection. Before the internet, access to information was a privilege, and information had to be purposefully sought out. Beyond what you read in the newspaper or watched on TV you had to be in a classroom or in a library, or in another corner of the world, to learn about new things. Now, the internet gives us information at our fingertips nearly anywhere in the world. And while many people in the world still lack this access, whether it is because they do not have internet access or it is because of government censorship, all in all we have access to far more information than ever before.”

Valarie Bell, a computational social scientist at the University of North Texas, commented, “The democratization of education and information. As a kid if I had a question about anything I either had to hope it was in our set of encyclopedias or I’d have to hope the public library was open and that a parent was free and able to take me there, so I could use the CD-ROM or card catalog to find the reference that might have my answer. Now I can ask and answer any question 24 hours a day, anywhere. That’s miraculous to me. Thanks to the internet, more people from diverse and non-privileged, non-white backgrounds are able to become highly educated. To me that’s even more miraculous.”

Frank Kaufmann, president of Filial Projects and founder and director of the Values in Knowledge Foundation, said, “The internet has improved life in every way. There is no downside to the progress from the internet other than its effect on people who have no awareness, and no control over themselves.”

Brock Hinzmann, a partner in the Business Futures Network who worked 40 years as a futures researcher at SRI International, said, “People have instant access to the world’s database of information about nearly every subject. They are increasingly able to teach themselves new fields and to combine information from multiple sources into new knowledge for themselves.”

Wangari Kabiru, author of the MitandaoAfrika blog, based in Nairobi, commented, “One major way the internet has changed things for the better in the past 50 years is in human interaction. The internet has enriched and diversified human communication tools and mechanisms and, in turn, their interaction ability, quality and quantity. Humanity is all about interaction – it is not an island. This generates wealth. The internet has disrupted the definitions and measures of the wealth of nations, including the basic terminology of GDP and GNP. Giving any nation a seed – its talent and an open field – the internet can turn around its wealth and global status.”

R “Ray” Wang, founder and principal analyst at Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research, said, “The big change is global connectivity – one standard for communication around the world.”

Christopher Yoo, a professor of law, communication and computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, responded, “Increased ability to access information remotely, including government information, business information, email and other communications, work-related documents, maps and directions, transportation and hotel reservations, restaurant and movie reviews and photographs.”

Benjamin Kuipers, a professor of computer science at the University of Michigan, wrote, “The internet has made most of the general knowledge of the human race available to a large fraction of the members of the human race and has enabled unparalleled communication among people.”

Peter Asaro, a professor at The New School, philosopher of sci-tech and media, commented, “Better access to information about location and maps, travel and transportation; interpersonal communication by email, chat and video chat; education, employment and entertainment.”

George Kubik, president of Anticipatory Futures Group, wrote, “It stimulated the generation and exchange of diversity of thought.”

Daniel Riera, a professor of computer science at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, commented, “It has connected diverse peoples, thus, it has reduced distances.”

Matthew Henry, chief information officer at LeTourneau University, Longview, Texas, said, “Knowledge is not the end anymore; the wisdom to apply knowledge is.”

Emanuele Torti, a research professor in the computer science department at the University of Pavia, Italy, responded, “The major improvement is the possibility to immediately share opinions, results, ideas, etc., all around the word.”

Jennifer King, director of privacy at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, said, “The internet has increased access to information for people at large in many positive ways.”

Fred Davis, mentor at Runway Incubator, San Francisco, responded, “Instant connection with vast numbers of people and vast amounts of information.”

Gene Crick, director of the Metropolitan Austin Interactive Network and longtime U.S. community telecommunications expert, wrote, “The internet has enabled contact among millions of people. We are learning to navigate this flood for vastly improved communication, information access, health care, education and all the rest. The net is not now perfect, nor ever will it be. But it opens an entire new universe of people sharing, which has quite literally changed the world.”

Kenneth R. Fleischmann, an associate professor at the University of Texas – Austin School of Information, responded, “The internet has made it much easier to stay in touch with people over geographical separations. People are now able to keep track of their friends from, for example, high school, using social networking sites. They are also able to connect with new people who share interests, along long tails of particular political, social, entertainment, etc., perspectives.”

Hank Dearden, executive director at ForestPlanet Inc., said, “The internet has helped reveal the good/bad/ugly in the world, with an emphasis on the problems (‘if it bleeds, it leads’). Some people would prefer ignorance, but we can’t begin to solve problems if we don’t know they exist.”

Hume Winzar, associate professor and director of the business analytics undergraduate program at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, wrote, “Communications.”

Kenneth Cukier, author and data editor for The Economist, commented, “It is easier to find and reach out to people, be it for friendship or for intellectual collaboration at a distance.”

Lou Gross, professor of mathematical ecology and expert in grid computing, spatial optimization and modeling of ecological systems at the University of Tennessee – Knoxville, said, “It has made society in general more efficient in that individuals can now more readily track many aspects of their lives and deal with changes more effectively.”

João Pedro Taveira, embedded systems researcher and smart grids architect for INOV INESC Inovação, Portugal, wrote, “Sharing, sharing, sharing and sharing. For centuries, the best way to share and store knowledge was using books or the spoken word. What if Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky could meet and talk? It took decades to merge the research of Piaget and Vygotsky. The internet reduces considerably the latency of gathering, processing and compiling to spread knowledge worldwide.”

Jeff Jarvis, director of the Tow-Knight Center at City University of New York’s Craig Newmark School of Journalism, commented, “Simply put, the internet has robbed gatekeeper institutions of the ability to silence and ignore people too long ignored. This had led us in America to #metoo, #blacklivesmatter, the Parkland students’ movement and to the shameful awareness that racist America calls the police on black people with far too much regularity.”

John Willinsky, professor and director of the Public Knowledge Project at Stanford Graduate School of Education, said, “The internet has radically improved access to information for many more people than was possible with print, if not always for the better, in terms of the quality of that information, then at least far, far better overall for those interested in pursuing it.”

Joseph Potvin, executive director at the Xalgorithms Foundation responded, “Comprehensive information is now readily available.”

Doug Schepers, chief technologist at Fizz Studio, said, “#MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter.”

Devin Fidler, futurist and founder of Rethinkery Labs commented, “The overall push of digital networks deeper and deeper into everyday life as continued uninterrupted over the last 50 years. The Internet of Things and lower-latency next-generation mobility promise to make the next decade a period of amplified digital orchestration of activities in everyday life.”

Daniel Siewiorek, a professor with the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, observed, “The internet has made all of knowledge available to everyone in the world.”

Ebenezer Baldwin Bowles, author, editor and journalist, responded, “If one retains the traits of discrimination and avoids casual gullibility, the ability to tap into mainstream media reporting and commentary on a global scale is refreshing. The presence of alternative voices can be illuminating to the critical thinker.”

Andreas Kirsch, fellow at Newspeak House, formerly with Google and DeepMind in Zurich and London, wrote, “Google and YouTube as knowledge-distribution platforms.”

Danil Mikhailov, head of data and innovation for Wellcome Trust, responded, “The best effect of the internet in the past 50 years is undoubtedly its ability to collapse distances and bring different people together, particularly where they are united by a common interest or practice. This, combined with vastly easier access to knowledge online, has resulted in a true democratisation of learning. Knowledge is no longer the preserve of experts only but is both consumed and created by lively communities of skilled amateurs online.”

Charles Ess, a professor expert in ethics with the Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo, Norway, said, “Whatever its deficits – including decreasing attention and focus – global and instantaneous communication is an extraordinary boon to families and communities.”

Chao-Lin Liu, a professor at National Chengchi University, Taiwan, commented, “The ways people access and exchange information have changed dramatically in the past 20 years.”

Denise N. Rall, a professor of arts and social sciences at Southern Cross University, Australia, responded, “The internet has fostered a worldwide communication explosion. Some of it contains meaningful content; the vast majority does not.”

Ben Shneiderman, distinguished professor and founder of the Human Computer Interaction Lab at University of Maryland, said, “The internet has provided huge expansion to the availability of knowledge, especially Wikipedia and health information.”

Erik Huesca, president of the Knowledge and Digital Culture Foundation, based in Mexico City, said, “It has made more accessible structured information that helps individuals build their knowledge.”

David Wells, chief financial officer at Netflix, responded, “The speed of information look-up has dramatically improved.”

Bart Knijnenburg, assistant professor of computer science active in the Human Factors Institute at Clemson University, said, “The free (as in ‘open’ as well as in ‘costless’) access to information is one of the great freedoms the internet provides us. Looking up facts, prices and locations has become second nature to us, and the same is increasingly true for people and opinions.”

Barry Hughes, senior scientist at the Center for International Futures, University of Denver, commented, “Ease and speed of access to the stock of human knowledge has been greatly enhanced by the internet. Why stop at one positive impact: In spite of all of the abuse of communication via the internet, it has made communication on demand easy, inexpensive (I can now ‘telephone’ around the world without cost) and much higher quality (including video conferencing).”

Aneesh Aneesh, author of “Global Labor: Algocratic Modes of Organization” and professor at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, responded, “The internet has triggered a still-unfolding information revolution. Information that had tended to be confined in expert circles has become available to the masses, even though it has become difficult to wade through the sheer amount of information. The evaluation of information (e.g., expert reviews) is increasingly being crowd-sourced. Global masses in their aggregate forms are winners here.”

Danny Gillane, a netizen from Lafayette, Louisiana, commented, “The internet has made it easier to communicate with people.”

Paola Perez, vice president of the Internet Society chapter in Venezuela, and chair of the LACNIC Public Policy Forum, responded, “Today many people are dependent on what they see in social media. We share our meals with our phones. In the past we spoke in-person; now we just send a message! The good thing is that all people can have their voice on internet.”

Brian Harvey, lecturer on the social implications of computer technology at the University of California – Berkeley, said, “Self-organizing-anarchist responses to natural disasters, e.g., matching lost kids with parents after a tsunami.”

Dalsie Green Baniala, CEO and regulator for telecommunications for Vanuatu, wrote, “For a country like Vanuatu the great good is effective and efficient communications. It is an advancement of communications from one island to another. It is another tool kit for education, learning and materials.”

Ed Lyell, longtime internet strategist and professor at Adams State University, responded, “I watch high school and college students use their smartphones and laptops to look up things while they are doing project-based learning. Young folks use internet-based tools to enhance their formalized learning. A floor guy uses a laser-guided ruler to measure a floor and connects to find pricing and availability of solutions to replace a floor. I can keep up with family and friends on Facebook and Skype and talk face-to-face to a granddaughter at her university in New Zealand or grandson on a ship in the China Sea.”

David Klann, consultant and software developer at Broadcast Tool & Die, responded, “It is shrinking the world. People across the planet can connect with each other.”

Tomas Ohlin, longtime professor at Linköping and Stockholm universities in Sweden, responded, “The internet has made life easier for all and it is on its way to also making life more democratic.”

Betsy Williams, a researcher at the Center for Digital Society and Data Studies at the University of Arizona, wrote, “The internet has revolutionized communication, allowing people to instantly send messages and post information, (practically) for free, (nearly) regardless of geography. This has strengthened existing relationships. It has also allowed strangers with common interests to find each other, possibly even becoming collaborators or spouses. I cannot overstate the value of the internet’s contributions to disseminating scientific knowledge, increasing many workers’ and companies’ productivity, and building communities across national boundaries and other differences.”

Mai Sugimoto, an associate professor of Sociology at Kansai University, Japan, responded, “The World Wide Web, which can deal with images, has provided information about what is happening all over the world. People can easily learn what other people are experiencing now.”

Christopher Leslie, lecturer in media, science and technology studies at South China University of Technology, wrote, “The ability to evaluate information by sharing and comparing sources.”

Denise Garcia, an associate professor of political science and international affairs at Northeastern University, said, “Creating new platforms for connection and action.”

David Zubrow, associate director of empirical research at the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute, said, “It has provided nearly everyone the ability to learn and experience the world in ways that would have been impossible in the past.”

Anirban Sen, a lawyer and data privacy consultant, based in New Delhi, India, wrote, “It has brought information at our fingertips and the ability to communicate easily. Different expressions have found its way in different media and the speed of spread of info has been stunning.”

Michael Dyer, an emeritus professor of computer science at the University of California – Los Angeles, commented, “The ability to rapidly access vast amounts of information has sped up how quickly humanity is progressing. Thanks to Wikipedia and Google, much of the world’s knowledge is at anyone’s fingertips. For most of my life, when I wanted to know something, I had to go to a library or to a bookstore or I had to track down someone knowledgeable. Today, if I happen to wonder about something, in any area I just hunt around on the internet. For example, since alcoholism is a carcinogenic then is it more so for people who process alcohol less efficiently? Do those Asians whose skin flushes when they drink alcohol have a greater risk of cancer? Now I can find out with a little bit of web search. In tax law, if I give a gift to someone, will I be taxed and under what conditions? I can check the internet before asking my CPA. If I want to know how many European countries are smaller in population (and/or in land mass) than the county of Los Angeles, I can easily find out.”

Divina Frau-Meigs, professor of media sociology at Sorbonne Nouvelle University, France, and UNESCO chair for sustainable digital development, responded, “The internet has made it possible for me and many other professional women to continue leading full lives as mothers and wives while conducting valuable research. This has been possible because of unprecedented access to archives, websites and other online depositories of knowledge as well as unprecedented opportunities to publish and network – from the home or the office.”

Dave Burstein, editor and publisher at Fast Net News, said, “Connecting internationally with ease. For me, a typical day might include connections from London to Kenya to Australia.”

Micah Altman, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and head scientist in the program on information science at MIT Libraries, wrote, “The internet has made both educational content and scholarly communications available more cheaply and widely than ever, and enabled people to participate in the discovery of new knowledge in ways that were not previously conceivable.”

Avery Holton, a clinical/translational scholar and professor expert in digital and social media at the University of Utah, commented, “As the geographical relevance of neighborhoods has declined (think sprawling suburbs now providing less close proximity for individuals to develop relationships with those around them), digital and social media technologies have opened up new spaces for communities and what exactly it means to be neighbors. This includes those who communicate more effectively online rather than face-to-face. These communities move across geographies and are less and less restricted by temporal bounds.”

Justin Reich, executive director of MIT Teaching Systems Lab and research scientist in the MIT Office of Digital Learning, responded, “It is the greatest time in world history to be a learner. The internet supports a distributed community of experts in almost any subject imaginable, willing to share their wisdom and insights with novices.”

Benjamin Shestakofsky, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania specializing in digital technology’s impacts on work, said, “The potential downsides of the internet have become all too apparent of late, but the internet has changed many aspects of people’s lives for the better by democratizing access to knowledge, information and entertainment.”

Jamais Cascio, research fellow at the Institute for the Future, wrote, “The world feels awakened. We get sensor, analytic and inferential data from our surroundings and can hold conversations with our environment. (This is richer in #3 than in #1, and highly abstracted in #2.) More generally, we gain a greater contextualized awareness of the world.”

Amy Webb, founder of the Future Today Institute and professor of strategic foresight at New York University, commented, “The internet has made research more efficient, information more accessible and access to an education more egalitarian.”

Amali De Silva-Mitchell, a futurist, responded, “Access to medical, education, product and service information for all.”

Cliff Lynch, director of the Coalition for Networked Information, responded, “It has absolutely democratized access to a truly amazing array of information: financial, consumer, medical, genealogical, cultural, scientific and a very wide range of news sources.”

Edson Prestes, a professor and director of robotics at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, responded, “The internet has empowered people! High-level knowledge once available only in developed countries is being shared with everyone in the world. This has increased everyone’s competitive abilities and it has diminished, a bit, the gap in the quality of research conducted by people in developed and those in developing nations.”

Jennifer J. Snow, an innovation officer with the U.S. Air Force, wrote, “The proliferation of shared knowledge and expertise gained by allowing people the opportunity to learn and advance by access to online education has been a major positive.”

Anita Salem, systems research and design principal at SalemSystems, wrote, “Wikipedia is an example of open-sourced, democratically adjudicated, globally accessible knowledge for all.”

Alan Mutter, a longtime Silicon Valley CEO, cable TV executive now a teacher of media economics and entrepreneurism at the University of California – Berkeley, said, “Access to boundless information and the ability to choose your airline seat (for a price).”

Craig Burdett, a respondent who provided no identifying details, wrote, “Near-universal access to information previously held in discrete remote repositories.”

David Bray, executive director for the People-Centered Internet Coalition, commented, “The internet has allowed us to transcend geographical borders to share ideas, events and endeavors around the planet in ways not possible at such speed or scale before.”

David Cake, an active leader with Electronic Frontiers Australia and vice-chair of the ICANN GNSO Council, wrote, “The greatest advancement of the internet in the last 50 years has been dismantling the barriers to entry of all forms of publication, be it of music, education, free expression, critical understanding, political expression, market information or simply obscure interests with limited obvious commercial appeal. All have been hugely empowered, and that has vastly improved human efficiency and opportunity.”

Alex Halavais, an associate professor of social technologies at Arizona State University, wrote, “The blog is an underappreciated social boon. People no longer have to rely on the leaflet and the copy machine and can find an instantaneous global audience for a good idea.”

Adam Popescu, a writer who contributes frequently to the New York Times, Washington Post, Vanity Fair and the BBC, wrote, “You can now purchase anything at the click of a button.”

Alex Simonelis, computer science faculty member, Dawson College, Montreal, said, “A huge amount of computing power (e.g., Google search) is at our fingertips for instantaneous use.”

Barry Chudakov, founder and principal of Sertain Research and author of “Metalifestream,” commented, “Flow. Interconnectedness keeps conversations and options flowing. The option of interconnectedness alters and often obliterates boundaries. Many of our disputes today are at their core arguments about old boundaries (social, personal, racial, political) confronting new realities. These boundaries were created by older technologies that told Alphabetic Order stories and myths. The internet, by conveying knowledge instantaneously, has challenged these myths. For millennia humans were isolated from each other by geography, by role, by class, by religion. The flow of interconnectedness is new and has changed how we see each other while also, as Mary Aiken underlines in ‘The Cyber Effect,’ escalating and accelerating good and bad aspects of connectivity.”

David J. Krieger, co-director of the Institute for Communication and Leadership in Lucerne, Switzerland, wrote, “Communication, participation, transparency.”

Craig Mathias, principal at Farpoint Group, an advisory firm specializing in wireless networking and mobile computing, commented, “Just one? E-mail. Messaging of many forms. Access to vast amounts of information and commerce via the web. Continuous connectivity of critical services. An effective platform for all communications.”

Ethem Alpaydın, a professor of computer engineering at Bogazici University, Istanbul, responded, “Improved connectivity has brought all sorts of advantages. It allows faster communication between people, through email for example. Just as digital storage has supplanted the book and the library as the main medium of information storage, the digital network has supplanted the post as the main medium of transfer of information. This communication does not need to be person-to-person; it allows information sources (such as newspapers), and digital repositories (such as Wikipedia) to be accessible from everywhere where there is access to internet, which lately has become much easier and cheaper through mobile smartphones.”

David A. Banks, an associate research analyst with the Social Science Research Council, said, “The internet has done an excellent job of taking minority groups (demographic, cultural, interest-based, and so on) and letting them talk to one another on a regular basis. That has had a major impact on mainstreaming marginalized groups.”

Bernie Hogan, senior research fellow at Oxford Internet Institute, wrote, “In the long sense of 50 years, the internet has become more interoperable. Mac, PC, Linux, Chromebook – it doesn’t matter too much. Lately we have seen how major companies have been shutting down APIs, so I do not know if this will continue.”

Alexey Turchin, existential risks researcher at Foundation Science for Life Extension, responded, “We will be able to record dreams and share them via the internet. The internet will finally help us to feel less lonely.”

Ken Goldberg, distinguished chair in engineering, director of AUTOLAB and CITRIS “People and Robots” Initiative, founding member, Berkeley AI Research Lab, University of California – Berkeley, said, “The internet has replaced encyclopedias as a vast source of knowledge for students; as a result, the students I teach at UC – Berkeley have become much more sophisticated over the past 20 years.”

Joseph Conklin, a respondent who provided no identifying details, commented, “It has massively reduced barriers to entry for select industries.”

Joaquin Vanschoren, assistant professor of machine learning at Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands, responded, “We gained fast access to information. This allows us to do more, faster, and make better decisions. Our current scientific progress would be unimaginable without the internet.”

Henry E. Brady, dean, Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California – Berkeley, wrote, “The ability to search for information and to find it in a moment is a remarkable achievement.”

John Lazzaro, retired professor of electrical engineering and computer science, University of California – Berkeley, commented, “The paperless revolution has become the new normal. In many domains, long-distance physical transport of printed paper has been replaced by networks and screens. The decline of business-class letter revenue of the U.S. Post Office is testimony to this reality.”

Manoj Kumar, manager at Mitsui Orient Lines, responded, “In the past 50 years the internet has provided information to the masses in the way that human intelligence is unable to choose the right and wrong. The services sector has progressed at the expense of infrastructural industries, making the world prey to wild economic swings.”

Karl M. van Meter, faculty of social sciences at Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, and author of “Computational Social Science in the Age of Big Data,” said, “Access to information for the general public, for professionals such as journalists and writers, and for scientists.”

Frank Feather, futurist and consultant with StratEDGY, commented, “The internet has brought people together across all kinds of barriers, real and artificial, and has greatly helped human intelligence advance, so that the species can lay the groundwork for its own next stage of evolution to become DigiTransHuman.”

James Gannon, global head of eCompliance for emerging technology, cloud and cybersecurity at Novartis, responded, “It has made the world a smaller place. A world where I can wake up and talk to a friend in Japan, chat with a colleague in Los Angeles at lunch and at night voice call my wife in Brazil, all as if they were right beside me.”

Garland McCoy, founder and chief development officer of the Technology Education Institute, wrote, “It has brought over half of the world closer together. Now we need to finish the job.”

Mike Meyer, chief information officer at Honolulu Community College, commented, “The most important benefit to date is the provision of vast amounts of information to anyone with an internet connection. This has already begun to transform education from information delivery to critical analysis and utilization. This has begun to seriously both enhance and blend our cultures as people become much more aware of this planet’s diversity. A less publicized benefit is the great distribution of specific skills training on an as-needed basis. The Millennial and Gen Y people naturally look to your YouTube for training in how to do things from programming to simple appliance repair.”

Justin Amyx, a technician with Comcast, said, “Honestly, the majority of internet-based things are a luxury. Health care: The ability for doctors and nurses to access information to assist in the treatment of various medical problems. Greater access to information for the common person.”

Wout de Natris, an internet cybercrime and security consultant based in Rotterdam, Netherlands, wrote, “The access to information, the ability to combine available information, the ease of doing business, the ease of personal contact, the decline of time spent waiting.”

Dan Geer, a respondent who provided no identifying details, commented, “The killer app of the internet is, without doubt, search. Search enables access to a library of all knowledge. That is two-edged, to be sure, but unbalanced toward ‘better.’”

Rik Farrow, editor of “;login:” a publication of the USENIX Association, wrote, “Access to information has been democratized. Whether the question is about health, science, news or society, the answers are readily available.”

E. Ohlson, a respondent who provided no identifying details, commented, “Entire new career fields have been created, several times over.”

Andrian Kreye, a journalist and documentary filmmaker based in Germany, said, “The internet has made communication, the access to information and culture easier than ever. Political opposition in autocratic systems was enabled.”

Alf Rehn, a professor of innovation, design and management in the school of engineering at the University of Southern Denmark, commented, “As speed of communication has increased, we’ve built a global community and become better at sharing. It is not perfect, not by a long shot, but it is a far better thing to communicate and at times do this badly, than not have the option to communicate at all.”

Bryan Alexander, futurist and president of Bryan Anderson Consulting, responded, “The internet has immensely expanded our access to, and also our ability to contribute to, the worlds of education, storytelling and culture.”

Charles Zheng, a researcher into machine learning and AI with the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health, commented, “The internet has made scientific research much more efficient, both by enabling more collaborations and by increasing accessibility of academic work.”

Bebo White, managing editor of the Journal of Web Engineering and emeritus associate of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, said, “Online education.”

Adam Powell, senior fellow at the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy, wrote, “One major way the internet has changed things for the better is its essential role in the economic miracle of our time, lifting hundreds of millions from poverty in Africa and Asia, strengthening dairy farmers in Africa, enabling clinics in Asia and empowering women across the world.”

Anthony Picciano, a professor of education at the City of New York University Interactive Pedagogy and Technology program, responded, “We have far greater access to information than ever before. Some might say that we have information overload, but I would rather have the overload. Our work, schooling, medical care, etc., have all become more productive because of internet technology.”

Bruce Edmonds, a professor of social simulation and director of the Centre for Policy Modelling, Manchester (U.K.) Metropolitan University, wrote, “Access to information, particularly academic knowledge and papers.”

Arthur Bushkin, an IT pioneer who worked with the precursors to ARPANET and Verizon, wrote, “The democratization of knowledge and information.”

Alex Smith, partner relationship manager at Monster Worldwide, said, “In the past 50 years we’ve seen classified and job ads being placed online to search. We pay less for cabs because we book them on our phones. We do most of our shopping from our couch as opposed to trekking to the mall.”

Gary Arlen, president of Arlen Communications, wrote, “Access to ideas and people and points of view. For encyclopedia nerds and research seekers, the web has put information at our fingertips and has let us see ideas that may have been inaccessible. These options have led to access to other new services, especially shopping, health information and finding people who share interests in our topics. As a globalization devotee, I like the internet’s value in opening new windows.”

Jim Belanich, of the Institute for Defense Analyses Science and Technology Division, responded, “The immediate access to information. Information is no longer held captive in knowledge repositories (libraries, people, organizations) that limited access.”

Jerome Glenn, executive director of the State of the Future reports for the Millennium Project, said, “It made the phrase ‘I don’t know’ obsolete.”

Helena Draganik, a professor at the University of Gdansk, Poland, responded, “The internet (online communication) helps overcome the distances between humans. It helps us to be more informed – or disinformed; it’s a question of the sources we choose. Online learning helps us to reach the knowledge we need. The cultural heritage of all humanity is digitalized and can be available everywhere – this is the big role of public-domain and open sources.”

Robert K. Logan, chief scientist at sLab and OCAT and professor emeritus of physics at the University of Toronto, Canada, said, “It increased access to information and connected people who are not co-located. It shrunk the planet to a global village as Marshall McLuhan predicted.”

Glenn Grossman, principal consultant for Fair Issac Corporation (FICO), wrote, “Technology has improved communication. We can be mobile and send typed messages, voice or video from almost anywhere on earth. We can sustain relationships without gaps in time. Gone are the days of mailing a love letter. Now lovebirds can text, email, call, video at any point. Apply that to business, education – they are much better now.”

John Leslie King, computer science professor, University of Michigan, and a consultant on Cyberinfrastructure for the NSF CISE and SBE directorates for several years, commented, “Internet search engines have made it much easier to get vast amounts of information on things. You do have to evaluate the quality of the information.”

K. Stout, a respondent who provided no identifying details, said, “I can sit in my house and research complex topics, consulting digital copies of original documents. My access to information is astoundingly large.”

Lee McKnight, associate professor, School of Information Studies, Syracuse University, commented, “The ability to maintain human relationships, whether among family and friends, or for business or other purposes, is far easier today thanks to the internet than it was 50 years ago. Back then, expensive international telecommunications services were priced so high that any international phone call was treated and taxed as a luxury good. Today text and voice messages are free or dirt-cheap, since they amount to little more than a rounding error in the bandwidth we demand for viewing and sending video.”

Greg Lloyd, president and co-founder at Traction Software, responded, “It made near-universal personal communication, publication and access to information an affordable birthright.”

José Estabil, director of entrepreneurship and innovation at MIT’s Skoltech Initiative, commented, “No one with a smartphone is ever truly lost. Ever.”

Jan Schaffer, founder and executive director of J-Lab – The Institute for Interactive Journalism, responded, “Life is easier – navigation, shopping, research, knowledge acquisition – all are simple now.”

Liz Rykert, president at Meta Strategies, a consultancy that works with technology and complex organizational change, responded, “It has helped people of common cause to come together and find joint solutions to the big problems we face.”

Guy Levi, chief innovation officer for the Center for Educational Technology, based in Israel, wrote, “Knowledge and learning became extremely ubiquitous – anytime and anywhere and enabled the prosperity of innovation and creativity. These facilitated all the new inventions in all realms – medicine, food and health, leisure, etc.”

Kenneth Grady, futurist, founding author of The Algorithmic Society blog and adjunct and adviser at the Michigan State University College of Law, responded, “As societies grow more complex, it takes teams to solve many problems. The internet has facilitated both access to information and the ease with which teams can work together to use that information. Researchers around the world can almost instantaneously share what they learn and test new theories. Once-siloed resources become widely available. The internet has accelerated the growth of knowledge and our ability to use it.”

Geoff Livingston, author and futurist, commented, “The internet made access to information an almost universal service for most people in western countries. Anyone with access to a computer can find information about any topic they like and pursue new interests. The internet democratized knowledge to a great extent.”

Kristin Jenkins, executive director of BioQUEST Curriculum Consortium, said, “Access to information is enormously powerful, and the internet has provided access to people in a way we have never before experienced. This means that people can learn new skills (how to patch your roof or make bread), assess situations and make informed decisions (learn about a political candidate’s voting record, plan a trip) and teach themselves whatever they want to know from knowledgeable sources. Information that was once accessed through print materials which were not available to everyone and often out of date is now much more readily available to many more people.”

John Sniadowski, a director for a technology company, wrote, “It made access to previously closeted information more readily accessible along with the ability to cross reference information across international boundaries.”

Joseph Turow, professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania, said, “The accessibility of databases via the internet and the rise of search engines to explore them have redefined in profound and positive ways the construction of ideas and relationships between ideas.”

Katja Grace, contributor to the AI Impacts research project and a research associate with the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, said, “The internet has made it possible to search the world for like-minded people fairly easily.”

Gianluca Demartini, a senior lecturer in data science at the University of Queensland, Australia, wrote, “The way we are able to communicate in real-time was unimaginable 50 years ago.”

Fernando Barrio, director of the law program at the Universidad Nacional de Rio Negro, Argentina, commented, “The internet has made the world smaller and it has given potential access to a wealth of knowledge to many.”

Jack Gieseking, a University of Kentucky professor expert in cultural geography, American studies and gender and sexuality, said, “Access to knowledge and the ability to define and spread that knowledge is by far the most exciting outcome of the internet. I have in mind LGBTQ, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian and black people in the U.S. especially, whose histories went unrecorded or were very limited. As a researcher of LGBTQ geographies, the shift into digital worlds (social media, websites, chat rooms) afforded coming out earlier and with greater self-support and comfort.”

Gabor Melli, senior director of engineering for AI and machine learning for Sony PlayStation, responded, “The internet has dramatically improved our ability to communicate, particularly for the English-speaking world.”

John Laudun, a respondent who provided no identifying details, commented, “In some ways, the widespread and usually free distribution of knowledge is the single greatest change the internet has wrought. And that was an actual, intended outcome. So, score one for the good people of the world who made that happen.”

Joseph Konstan, distinguished professor of computer science specializing in human-computer interaction and AI at the University of Minnesota, said, “The enormous access that people have to information and services (especially on mobile devices) has had a profound impact on how we live our lives (mostly for the better).”

Timothy Leffel, research scientist, National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, said, “Free(r) access to information and scientific research.”

Jonathan Swerdloff, consultant and data systems specialist for Driven Inc., wrote, “In the last 50 years the internet has improved the world by allowing people who thought they were alone to find each other – specifically, communities of the mentally ill, LGBTQ and the bullied. Connecting people who believe that they are alone to others like them has generally positive effects.”

Jonathan Taplin, director emeritus at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab, wrote, “The instant access to much of the world’s knowledge databases.”

Leonardo Trujillo, a research professor in computing sciences at the Instituto Tecnológico de Tijuana, Mexico, responded, “It has facilitated the organization of social movements that lack resources and it gives easy access to independent media outliers, especially independent press.”

James Scofield O’Rourke, a professor of management at the University of Notre Dame specializing in reputation management, commented, “The internet has provided a relatively inexpensive method for reducing the effects of time and space on the creation and transfer of human knowledge. It has come with a ferocious carbon footprint, but if that can be managed with low-carbon renewables, the net effect (pun intended) will be both positive and substantial.”

Laurie Orlov, principal analyst at Aging in Place Technology Watch, wrote, “Instant access to information about jobs and services that enable more productive, healthier lives and more successful aging. And of course, Netflix.”

Karen Oates, director of workforce development and financial stability for La Casea de Esperanza, commented, “Vast amounts of valuable information and knowledge are available for many to be used to address challenges in science, medicine, the economy, etc.”

Jay Sanders, president and CEO of the Global Telemedicine Group, responded, “It has dramatically improved the exchange of ideas between individuals and cultures.”

Barrack Otieno, general manager at the Africa Top-Level Internet Domains Organization, wrote, “The internet has revolutionized how people communicate and collaborate globally.”

Aaron Agien Nyangkwe, a respondent who provided no identifying details, said, “The internet gives us broadened access to information. The knowledge gap has been narrowed, as intellectual resources are now widely available.”

Steven Thompson, an author specializing in illuminating emerging issues and editor of “Androids, Cyborgs, and Robots in Contemporary Culture and Society,” wrote, “Ubiquitous access to hyperlinked information.”

Nigel Hickson, an expert on technology policy development who is based in Brussels, responded, “Social media have revolutionised society.”

Uta Russmann, professor of communication at FHWien der WKW University of Applied Sciences, said, “It has given more people access to information and education.”

Ross Stapleton-Gray, principal at Stapleton-Gray and Associates, an information technology and policy consulting firm, commented, “Access to information for self-education and a digital sharing economy.”

Andrew Odlyzko, professor at the University of Minnesota and former head of its Digital Technology Center and the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute, said, “Improved communication has helped produce scientific and technological advances that have enabled much greater numbers of people to lead fulfilling lives.”

Michael R. Nelson, a technology policy expert for a leading network services provider who worked as a technology policy aide in the Clinton Administration, commented, “Connecting and empowering communities (both online and face-to-face) and providing ways for new ideas to turn into products or political movements in weeks not years.”

Robert M. Mason, a professor emeritus in the Information School at the University of Washington, responded, “Increased access to personal knowledge and contacts: higher frequency of contact between and among individuals and groups who are geographically separated; maintenance of a broader network with ‘loose ties.’”

Mary Chayko, author of “Superconnected: The Internet, Digital Media, and Techno-Social Life” and professor in the Rutgers School of Communication and Information, said, “Our interpersonal connections have become deeper, stronger and more multifaceted. We know our fellow human beings better and the networks in which we are connected to them are more diverse and robust.”

Jim Spohrer, director of the Cognitive Opentech Group at IBM Research-Almaden, commented, “The internet allowed Wikipedia, GitHub, Kaggle.”

Lee Smolin, a professor at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and Edge.org contributor, responded, “Together with cheap airfares, it makes it possible to migrate and travel without breaking ties to home. This makes possible a new kind of immigrant who is, in Pico Iyer’s sense, a global soul. This includes many business people, engineers, scientists, but I also chatted with many taxi drivers in Toronto who have lived and worked in New York City, London and Rome before coming to Canada; their children are in university in Canada and they Skype with their parents in Bangladesh, Nepal or Nigeria most nights.”

Mícheál Ó Foghlú, engineering director and DevOps Code Pillar at Google, Munich, said, “The internet has enabled many small interest groups to create common cause with others over vast distances, allowing for a new set of economic models that exploit the long tail of many distributions.”

Yoram Kalman, an associate professor at The Open University of Israel and member of the Center for Internet Research at the University of Haifa, wrote, “The improvement in access to knowledge and to learning is unbelievable. Nevertheless, the ability of people to effectively leverage this access to their own benefit is only in its early stages. Only a minority of the population, mainly in the elites, truly benefit from this access.”

Michael Veale, a technology policy researcher at University College London, responded, “The internet has forced countries to listen to their citizens due to their more-equal ability to broadcast. This isn’t perfect, but in some areas it gives the possibility for groups to mobilise, be heard and accelerate change.”

Mechthild Schmidt Feist, department coordinator for digital communications and media at New York University, said, “I could live without a fridge before I could live without a computer. The change in media is immense – access to information, instant communication, radical change and new options in all media – from design to all formats of moving images, sound, interactive arts.”

Thomas H. Davenport, distinguished professor of information technology and management at Babson College and fellow of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, responded, “The vast access to digital information means that light can easily be shed on almost any question or issue virtually instantaneously. This is a huge benefit, although it benefits some more than others.”

Sy Taffel, a lecturer in media studies at Massey University, New Zealand, wrote, “Improved access to information.”

Luke Stark, a fellow in the department of sociology at Dartmouth College and at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, wrote, “It provides mechanisms whereby people can more easily connect with each other, such as videoconferencing or SMS messaging.”

Tracey P. Lauriault, assistant professor of critical media and big data in the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University, commented, “We have more access to more data and information, here and globally, although there is still a digital divide.”

Sam Gregory, director of WITNESS and digital human rights activist, responded, “It increased the ability of many more people to participate in civic discussions, to self-organize, to share the ground-truthed reality of their lives and to learn from others.”

Sasha Costanza-Chock, associate professor of civic media at MIT, said, “Wikipedia has enabled the largest structured sharing of human knowledge in history, and has remained free, open and nonprofit. Despite challenges around participation (especially regarding gender, language, and global north/south divides), it’s a phenomenal success with a huge impact.”

Peter Levine, associate dean for research and Lincoln Filene Professor of Citizenship & Public Affairs in Tufts University’s Jonathan Tisch College of Civic Life, wrote, “It enriches the private thoughts and the social interactions of people who choose to use it to expand their horizons, deepen their knowledge and engage with diverse others.”

Michiel Leenaars, director of strategy at NLnet Foundation and director of the Internet Society’s Netherlands chapter, responded, “The internet has enabled instant global collaboration and sharing on a scale that is unprecedented. Millions of people work on developing open software, content and art together, facilitated by online repositories and publishing environments. That is an amazing achievement, and something we can use to build the next 50 years.”

Simeon Yates, director of the Centre for Digital Humanities and Social Science at the University of Liverpool, said, “Putting people in contact – the world is more open and visible to all – it makes us see and allows us to celebrate the variety of human existence.”

Robert D. Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, wrote, “The internet has streamlined commerce, enabling higher productivity and greater consumer convenience and choice.”

Matt Belge, founder and president of Vision & Logic, said, “The ability for repressed people to seek out vital information and use that information to better their lives. The Arab Spring is one example. Black Lives Matter getting their message out over the net is another.”

Dan Schultz, senior creative technologist at Internet Archive, responded, “There is nearly universal access to all knowledge.”

Peter Reiner, professor and co-founder of the National Core for Neuroethics at the University of British Columbia, Canada, commented, “The major way that the internet has changed things for the better is undoubtedly the amazing access to information that accrues to everyone. At our fingertips is a vast array of amazing ways of knowing the world. Yes, there is much in the way of degraded information as well, but the discerning user of the internet can learn a new language, discover the meaning of words, find people who share their interest in topics both arcane and popular, and much more.”

Nicholas Beale, leader of the strategy practice at Sciteb, an international strategy and search firm, commented, “We have much faster access to information and much easier collaboration, especially internationally.”

Marshall Kirkpatrick, the product director at Influencer Marketing, responded, “Self-knowledge is a subset of all knowledge and all knowledge has been made far more accessible.”

Ian O’Byrne, an assistant professor at the College of Charleston whose focus is literacy and technology, said, “We now have the opportunity to connect, learn and socialize anywhere, anytime, with any group or idea that interests us.”

Michael Wollowski, associate professor of computer science and software engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, expert in the Internet of Things, diagrammatic systems and artificial intelligence, wrote, “Instant access to information fosters curiosity. Shopping is so much more fun. I am ordering things from Germany, and they get here faster than some of the goods I order from the U.S. Finally, communication has vastly improved; for instance, I can listen to my favorite radio station from back home.”

Ryan Sweeney, director of analytics at Ignite Social Media, commented, “Global connectivity. We are now more exposed to different ideas, cultures and backgrounds. The tension we are feeling, as nationalism is heating up again, is a result of that connectivity, though I think, or hope, that this connectivity is building a stronger level of empathy that will eventually settle the current, divisive climate we are in.”

Susan Mernit, executive director, The Crucible, co-founder and board member of Hack the Hood, responded, “OMG, only one? People are so much more connected on a broader scale to their friends, families and communities.”

Mark Maben, a general manager at Seton Hall University, wrote, “For the better, the internet has made collaboration so much easier. I’ve been able to work effortlessly with people thousands of kilometers away thanks to the miracle of the internet.”

Vian Bakir, a professor of political communication and journalism at Bangor University, responded, “It has brought people together – geographically dispersed families, communities of interest – and it has given those of them who live in nation-states that respect privacy a collective voice.”

Shannon Ellis, a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, said, “The internet has increased the ease of nearly every aspect of life. Communication via text and e-mail. Google Maps. Booking everything online. Discussing issues with customer-service departments. These tasks were not simple before as they are today.”

Mario Morino, chairman of the Morino Institute and co-founder of Venture Philanthropy Partners, commented, “It changed our ability to create, share and learn from one another.”

Tom Worthington, an Australian internet pioneer and adjunct senior lecturer in the Research School of Computer Science at Australian National University, said, “The internet has provided broader access to lower-cost higher education. I was able to complete a master’s of education, online from another country.”

Richard Forno, of the Center for Cybersecurity and Cybersecurity Graduate Program at the University of Maryland – Baltimore County, wrote, “The creation of global communications capability that allows anyone, anywhere, to reach anyone else in the world by phone, fax, email or video is a fantastic benefit for humankind. Longtime geek that I am, I’m still sometimes in awe that I can hold a videoconference with global participants from my house for free.”

Soroush Vosoughi, a postdoctoral associate at the MIT Media Lab and fellow at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University, said, “The internet has made knowledge accessible to a large portion of the human race.”

Michael Kleeman, a senior fellow at the University of California – San Diego and board member at the Institute for the Future, wrote, “It has provided virtually anyone in the world with access to a range of information unthinkable a few years ago. Knowledge (financial, market, etc.) has become almost universal.”

Bill Woodcock, executive director at Packet Clearing House, the research organization behind global network development, commented, “The internet has made it possible to read, to navigate, to research, without resorting to use of physical stacks of paper. The internet has made communities of shared interest more common and more consequential than communities of coincidental geographic proximity.”

Pamela Rutledge, director of the Media Psychology Center, responded, “The internet has made it nearly impossible to hide bad behaviors at a local or a global scale because it shines a light in all corners and people are always watching.”

Raimundo Beca, partner at Imaginacción, formerly a member of the ICANN board, said, “The digital divide is largely lower.”

Stuart A. Umpleby, a professor and director of the research program in social and organizational learning at George Washington University, wrote, “One major change for the better in the last 50 years is that access to information through university libraries has been greatly enhanced. It is now much easier to find specific articles and obtain books.”

Michael Pilos, chief marketing officer at FirePro, said, “Education and media have the power to create a much better world. As governments historically strive to control both, the internet has provided a venue for all humanity to research and understand more without biased editing from government media or schools. This has been a momentous achievement for the world and has helped humanity move exponentially faster across all sciences. This alone has been a magical recipe for humanity.”

Sam Punnett, research and strategy officer at TableRock Media, wrote, “The internet has changed things for the better by enabling the broad dissemination and access to information.”

Stephen McDowell, a professor of communication at Florida State University and expert in new media and internet governance, commented, “Broad diffusion and adoption of email and social media platforms has empowered some individuals and social groups to sketch out, build and maintain their own social connections and networks.”

Serge Marelli, an IT security analyst, responded, “Simpler, faster communication. Possibilities for researchers, scientists and professionals to communicate faster. There is far less possibility for censorship as well, though.”

Hari Shanker Sharma, an expert in nanotechnology and neurobiology at Uppasala University, Sweden, said, “The internet has brought people and things closer. Calling from anywhere to anywhere anytime is a great tool. Social media and APIs have further added value to connectivity. But the benefits are reduced by the internet’s facilitation of financial frauds on cards, accounts, etc., and the spread of misinformation by terrorists, evil-mongers, etc., which law is not fully capable of checking.”

Ian Rumbles, a quality-assurance specialist at North Carolina State University, said, “It creates the ability to connect and communicate effectively with others.”

Perry Hewitt, a marketing, content and technology executive, wrote, “So many ways! Arguably the greatest impact is reduced costs/an increased standard of living due to supply-chain advances affecting pricing for everything from communications to food to clothing (significantly, not for health care). For me personally, the greatest advance is the potential to expand learning from episodic and location-based to lifelong, including just-in-time. Our ability to scale and distribute education and research previously available to only a few will continue to fuel both scholarship and productivity.”

Frank Tipler, a mathematical physicist at Tulane University, commented, “The internet has made scientific research – at least mine – vastly more efficient.”

Thornton May, technology futurist, author and educator, said, “Thanks to the internet, if one wants to know, one can know. We are living in a Jeffersonian paradise, where the knowledge of the world is affordably accessible.”

Randall Mayes, a technology analyst and author, wrote, “Quality of life is improved.”

Thomas Streeter, a professor of sociology at the University of Vermont, said, “For historical reasons, the internet came along at a time when established institutions were unprepared for it, which turned it into a context for thinking about and experimenting with new kinds of social relations.”

Miguel Moreno-Muñoz, a professor of philosophy specializing in ethics, epistemology and technology at the University of Granada, Spain, said, “eGovernment, eInclusion, eLearning… Almost-universal access to knowledge and culture, for 30 to 50% of the world population.”

Michael J. Oghia, a Belgrade-based consultant active in internet governance activities and media-development ecosystems, commented, “The internet is the reason I have everything in my life: my friends, my career, my history and my love. It is the ability to connect instantly regardless of geographic location.”

Michel Grossetti, a sociologist expert in systems and director of research at CNRS, the French national science research center, wrote, “Easy access to information and remote people.”

Martin Geddes, a consultant specializing in telecommunications strategies, said, “The internet has allowed people who are in some kind of minority or suffering position – for instance with an illness, or a trauma – to come together and no longer be so isolated.”

Sam Lehman-Wilzig, associate professor and former chair of the School of Communication, Bar-Ilan University, Israel, wrote, “It has facilitated far greater communication and information transfer, with huge consequences in furthering science, economics, technology, etc.”

Marc Noble, a respondent who provided no identifying details, commented, “The internet has created many new opportunities in commerce, not just in IT. The ability to communicate globally has stepped up the pace of commerce and lifted living standards globally.”

Stephen Abram, principal at Lighthouse Consulting Inc., wrote, “Connecting networks of scientists and people generally socially, culturally, economically and more at low cost and low barriers to entry. Invention and creativity and dissemination are on steroids.”

Vassilis Galanos, a Ph.D. student and teaching assistant actively researching future human-machine symbiosis at the University of Edinburgh, commented, “It has shown how similar and how different its users are. People have now the opportunity to con-struct (structure together), recognise themselves in others and celebrate their differences with others.”

Roland Benedikter, co-director of the Center for Advanced Studies at Eurac Research Bozen, South Tyrol, Italy, responded, “Access and participation.”

Steve King, partner at Emergent Research, said, “The internet has greatly improved access to information.”

Steven Polunsky, director of the Transportation Policy Research Center at the University of Alabama, wrote, “The easy transmission of quality, high-definition text and still images, while not unique to the internet (fax machines and amateur radio can do this), reduce or eliminated many barriers created by distance. We use this feature every day for business, family, entertainment and other purposes.”

Seth Finkelstein, consulting programmer at Finkelstein Consulting, commented, “Being able to connect with anyone in the world for positive reasons: Hear from strangers who love your opinions. Do business or hire workers in other countries. Collaborate with like-minded colleagues where distance is no barrier. Have much of the world’s knowledge available for the taking.”

Rich Ling, a professor of media technology at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, responded, “The internet and other IT-based developments (e.g., the mobile phone) have facilitated interpersonal communication and the access to information.”

Ray Schroeder, associate vice chancellor for online learning at the University of Illinois, Springfield, wrote, “Access to learning worldwide for those who would not have been able to access education. This access transcends time, distance, wealth and language. As a result, I am convinced that the population of the world is more educated than ever before.”

Mark Crowley, an assistant professor expert in machine learning and core member of the Institute for Complexity and Innovation at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, wrote, “Access to information is huge. I am 42 years old and when I was a child my parents bought a physical encyclopedia as a learning resource. Now all information is available to anyone.”

Susan Aaronson, a research professor of international affairs and cross-disciplinary fellow at George Washington University, responded, “More people have more access to more information, making it easier to innovate, to be educated.”

Edward Tomchin, a retiree, said, “Communication has always advanced human civilization and life. Fifty years ago (1968) there was no public internet. We were stuck with telephone and radio communications. Today I can be out in the wilderness and speak with someone, anyone, on the other side of the world by pushing a couple of buttons.”

Norton Gusky, an education technology consultant, wrote, “People anywhere in the world now have access through mobile devices to the knowledge of the ages.”

David Sarokin, author of “Missed Information: Better Information for Building a Wealthier, More Sustainable Future,” commented, “It has freed me from microfiche, and that’s a blessing beyond measure.”

Mauro D. Ríos, an adviser to the eGovernment Agency of Uruguay and director of the Uruguayan Internet Society chapter, responded, “The internet has made it possible for people to access all the information available regarding their lives and with respect to all the matters that are linked to each person. But we are wrong to think that giving access to the internet will change by itself and positively, the reality of people in impoverished contexts, or groups of citizens without access to education or reverse the desertion of education systems.”

Marc Brenman, managing partner at IDARE LLC, said, “Quicker shopping.”

Luis Pereira, associate professor of electronics and nanotechnologies, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal, responded, “Access to information.”

Josh Calder, a partner at the Foresight Alliance, commented, “It has increased the availability of information.”

Lane Jennings, a recent retiree who served as managing editor for the World Future Review from 2009 to 2015, wrote, “Vast amounts of information once confined to books and periodicals and stored at a limited number of locations is now easily and quickly accessible via the internet.”

Alistair Knott, an associate professor specializing in cognitive science and AI at Otago University, Dunedin, New Zealand, wrote “There are so many great things about the internet, I don’t know where to start. I’ll pick email. We can communicate instantly with our friends and family, wherever they are in the world. Likewise, voice-over IP. We can talk to our friends and family wherever they are, at minimal cost.”

Steve Chenoweth, an associate professor of computer science at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, said, “People can do things they already wanted to do, only at a greater distance, things like interacting with friends and shopping. The world economy is flatter.”

Jennifer Jarratt, owner of Leading Futurists consultancy, commented, “It opened up access to information for (almost) all people. You can’t force them to use it, however.”

Francisco S. Melo, an associate professor of computer science at Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, Portugal, responded, “Access to information has been widely democratized.”

Pedro U. Lima, an associate professor of computer science at Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, Portugal, said, “It provides a global view of the world and humanity to a large number of people who were once limited to their often poor and non-democratic regions and lives.”

Meryl Alper, an assistant professor of communication at Northeastern University and a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, wrote, “It allows people to maintain deeper social ties among a wider network of people in times of both turmoil and triumph.”

Toby Walsh, a professor of AI at the University of New South Wales, Australia, and president of the AI Access Foundation, said, “Vannevar Bush’s 1945 vision described in ‘As We May Think’ has come true. We have libraries of information available at our fingertips. The only thing we miss now is the smell of the books.”

Alan Bundy, a professor of automated reasoning at the University of Edinburgh, wrote, “Fast access to an immense store of information and the ability to communicate remotely with other people instantly.”

Peter Eachus, director of psychology and public health at the University of Salford, U.K., responded, “In one word: connectedness. That is the most important thing the internet has given us.”

Stavros Tripakis, an associate professor of computer science at Aalto University (Finland) and adjunct at the University of California – Berkeley, wrote, “The internet has connected the whole world. Communication was costly; now it is not.”

Andrea Romaoli Garcia, an international lawyer active in internet governance discussions, commented, “Technology has made communication possible at global levels. As an example, I live in Brazil and develop an NGO in Zimbabwe. Without communication technology and the internet this would not be possible. It made the life of those people better.”

David Schlangen, a professor of applied computational linguistics at Bielefeld University, Germany, responded, “High-quality information (e.g., academic papers) is available much faster, and science can iterate faster.”

Bert Huang, an assistant professor of computer science at Virginia Tech wrote, “As a scientist in an international research community, I’m able to communicate instantly with scientists around the world.”

Denis Poussart, a consultant in advanced technologies with expertise in computer architecture and AI, commented, “The internet has fully transformed our society and life, with everyone now linked or linkable to nearly anyone on the planet.”

Following are responses to the prompt:

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

Baratunde Thurston, futurist, former director of digital at The Onion, co-founder of comedy/technology start-up Cultivated Wit, said, “Really. Just one way? Fine. The internet has broken our relationship with space, time and human connection so we can increasingly be anywhere or anywhen and associate with anyBODY. That’s having devastating effects on our social cohesion. It’s fragmenting us in some pretty negative ways and allowing us to opt out of shared reality and opt in to narrow sub-realities, some of which are defined completely by disinformation and propaganda. It’s the flip side of decentralization. Without a center, what keeps society together?”

Perry Hewitt, a marketing, content and technology executive, wrote, “We are ill-equipped to manage the technology we have created. The impact of more than 80% of the U.S. population carrying a computer in their pocket is not yet understood – on our productivity, our parenting, our privacy! And yet we stumble ahead blindly, assimilating new capabilities. The lack of control of our personal data and how it is shared is by far the biggest cost. Like a moth to the flame we crave more knowledge, searching through Google, tracking our movement through Strava, submitting our DNA to 23andMe. Without our consent, social networks like Facebook create shadow profiles, and both the private sector and the government scan and store our faces. The lack of clarity of how that data will be used – the loss of anonymity, right to be forgotten – is a frightening change.”

Juan Ortiz Freuler, a policy fellow and Nnenna Nwakanma, the interim policy director for Africa, at the Web Foundation, wrote “1. In low- and middle-income countries, where less than 50% of the population is online, the benefits of connectivity risk further entrenching inequality. 2. A lot of what used to be a private matter has now become available to a broad and undefined audience. Furthermore, the large amounts of data allow for shadow profiles to be built, meaning that when corporations or governments manage to identify enough people who are similar to those individuals who have not shared certain data, these can be accurately simulated, limiting the individual’s ability to effectively opt out. These processes have created increased risks for particularly vulnerable groups, such as women and systemically excluded minorities.”

Vint Cerf, Internet Hall of Fame member and vice president and chief internet evangelist at Google, wrote, “Botnets and malware are a serious problem. The loss of privacy. Vulnerability to identify theft or direct breaking into accounts are all troubling, especially given that law-enforcement agreements and practices have not been able to keep up.”

Bart Knijnenburg, assistant professor of computer science active in the Human Factors Institute at Clemson University, said, “Unfortunately, evil forces have become aware of the vulnerability of our free access to information and are trying to attack it by blurring the lines between fact and fiction and creating fake people with fake opinions. Some sort of digital literacy will have to be taught in school to prevent these attacks from eventually ruining the internet.”

Craig Partridge, chief scientist at Raytheon BBN Technologies for 35 years and Internet Hall of Famer, currently chair of the department of computer science at Colorado State University, wrote, “We made it easier to distribute messages of hate and abuse. It used to be you had to own a broadcast system (radio or TV). Now you just need a server.”

Thad Hall, a research scientist and coauthor of “Politics for a Connected American Public,” wrote, “The internet has not polarized people but it has allowed people to have their views reinforced and their ‘bubble’ protected in ways we have not seen before. People can get their own news and easily have their biases reinforced. It has also encouraged coarseness in discussion, with the killer ‘dis’ on Twitter seen as more valuable than thoughtful exchange.”

Andrew Tutt, an expert in law and author of “An FDA for Algorithms,” said, “The internet has paradoxically made many people feel more isolated and more lonely than they were before it existed. Study after study has shown that industrialized nations across the world are experiencing steep losses in areas traditionally associated with community such as sports leagues and civic organizations. The internet took people away from the physical world, but it is not a perfect substitute for the physical world. Because it is not, it can only incompletely replace what it destroyed, and that has meant that many people have been left behind. The loneliness the internet fostered is the most important way that the internet has changed things for the worse in the past 50 years.”

Mark Surman, executive director of the Mozilla Foundation and author of “Commonspace: Beyond Virtual Community,” responded, “While the internet initially sparked competition and innovation, it has ultimately led to the creation of the biggest monopolies the world has ever seen. This is bad for society, the economy and humanity.”

Jennifer J. Snow, an innovation officer with U.S. Air Force USSOCOM Donovan Group and SOFWERX, wrote, “The internet, in its anonymity, has allowed the weaponization of information to occur. This is a tool leveraged between states, between politicians, between people that drives hate, anger and discord. Creating an internet that holds people accountable for their actions online and in the real world will go a long way toward stopping bad behavior. Fake news can kill a person just as easily as a reckless driver can, yet there is no [required] license or training in the use of the internet to encourage appropriate use and behavior online. Perhaps it’s time that globally we come together to address cyber bullying, weaponized information and fake news by educating and building in accountability with the users. The internet, like a car, is a tool and a privilege not a right. When people endanger others with their driving we take away their license. We should consider a similar option with regard to internet use and abuse, too.”

Anirban Sen, a lawyer and data privacy consultant, based in New Delhi, India, wrote, “Despite the beauty in communication, each day continues to have 86,400 seconds and tech has become a huge distraction and a method of increasing shallowness. Each app and notification and call takes away time from the present. We are now all together in our separateness and isolation.”

Oscar Gandy, emeritus professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania, responded, “It is important to be clear that it is not the internet as a technology, but the internet as a socio-technical system, which necessarily includes the actors and their institutions, such as platforms like Facebook, that have cultivated an approach to social communication and the presentation of self that is destructive of social, economic and political relationships.”

Joseph Potvin, executive director at the Xalgorithms Foundation – creating specifications and components for an “Internet of Rules” – responded, “The internet emerged in an era when ‘human responsibilities’ were not conceptualized on par with ‘human rights,’ and it has tended to exacerbate and entrench the gap.”

Peter Reiner, professor and co-founder of the National Core for Neuroethics at the University of British Columbia, Canada, commented, “We can’t attribute it to the internet, per se, but rather to the fact that digital technologies have evolved businesses that depend upon capturing our attention by continually presenting us with novel stimuli. The result is a general degradation of human attention that affects young and old alike, and this is surely not improving the human condition.”

Steve Crocker, CEO and co-founder of Shinkuro, Inc., internet pioneer and Internet Hall of Fame member, responded, “I actually don’t think anything has changed for the worse. Many people are concerned about various forms of bad behavior that have been facilitated by the internet, but, in my view, this is just the same form of bad behavior in a new setting. Everyone has to learn how to cope with and adjust to the threats and difficulties, but this is the case whenever new technology is introduced.”

Teus Hagen, Netherlands internet pioneer, former chair and director of NLnet and member of the Internet Hall of Fame, commented, “The globalisation of misuse that is nearly impossible to correct.”

Bob Metcalfe, Hall of Fame co-inventor of Ethernet, founder of 3Com, now a professor of innovation and entrepreneurship at the University of Texas – Austin, said, “None. Well, maybe connectivity makes it harder to be happy being merely a big fish in a small pond.”

Scott Burleigh, software engineer and intergalactic internet pioneer, wrote, “Social media. The impact of graffiti used to be limited; now it is central to the operation of government.”

Randy Marchany, chief information security officer at Virginia Tech and director of Virginia Tech’s IT Security Laboratory, said, “Surveillance and the loss of privacy have started to create a climate of suppression of individual ideas. Social media has encouraged the rise of tribalism.”

Peng Hwa Ang, professor of communications at Nanyang Technological University and author of “Ordering Chaos: Regulating the Internet,” commented, “Time pressure. I find that I am overwhelmed by emails and I am therefore having a greater sense of being behind in work. I suspect that this affects my creativity and thinking, but I have no evidence for this as yet. It certainly adds to the feeling of stress.”

Michael H. Goldhaber, an author, consultant and theoretical physicist who wrote early explorations on the digital attention economy, said, “It has allowed the spread of unverified and often deliberately-false rumors or exaggerations, some of which do terrible damage and distort beliefs as to how the world actually is.”

Sam Ladner, a former UX researcher for Amazon and Microsoft, now an adjunct professor at Ontario College of Art & Design, wrote, “Work has become undignified for many of us, and the internet has created both an Amazing Distraction Machine, and a place for indulging hatred, crime and vice. These two forces are mutually reinforcing, making it easier and easier to be distracted by indignity in real life; indignity breeds hatred, which in turn provides fodder for self-distraction.”

Greg Shannon, chief scientist for the CERT Division at Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, said, “From USENET trolls, to spam, to phishing, to cyberbullying, to digital-influence operations, malefactors can exploit the naïve trust and inexperience of new-tech users, especially as a tech/application scales up. The internet amplifies pre-existing issues about anonymity and accountability and their impact on communities.”

Paul Vixie, an Internet Hall of Fame member known for designing and implementing several Domain Name System protocol extensions and applications, wrote, “It is now possible to make common cause with a global team (for any purpose).”

Sam Punnett, research and strategy officer at TableRock Media, wrote, “The internet has devalued face-to-face human interaction. The combination of internet and media consumption, I believe, has diminished us psychologically through incessant distraction. This is difficult to assess, given there is no control group. One lesser metric I can offer is distracted driving. Other indicators may be such things as an increase in diagnoses of depression and ADHD.”

Stephen McDowell, a professor of communication at Florida State University expert in new media and internet governance, commented, “The quality of public discourse and the definition and management of national spaces for political and public discussions has changed. Internet-based services allowed for the diminishing of authoritative media gatekeepers and agenda setters and allowed for a wide range of new actors and voices to assert themselves. The weak veracity and questionable origins of many of these claims call into question for some the value of participating in public affairs.”

Serge Marelli, an IT security analyst, responded, “More porn. I don’t mind or care about porn; I’m just acknowledging a trend. More advertisements. Less privacy. Less users’/citizen’ rights (e.g., right to privacy). And politics and democracy will fall short.”

Hari Shanker Sharma, an expert in nanotechnology and neurobiology at Uppsala University, Sweden, said, “The lack of global laws to tackle globalization-related problems is the cause of troubles. The of use of the internet by criminals for financial frauds, the spread of misinformation by terrorists and evil-mongers using social media, etc., which law enforcement is not fully capable to check is a major risk.”

Kyle Rose, principal architect at Akamai Technologies, responded, “The internet is a neutral conduit and cannot by itself distinguish between knowledge and misinformation. Systems that have eased the spread of knowledge have also eased the spread of misinformation, potentially to an even greater degree via the human susceptibility to confirmation bias.”

John Willinsky, professor and director of the Public Knowledge Project at Stanford Graduate School of Education, said, “The degree of surveillance and loss of autonomy is decidedly for the worse as a result of the internet’s place in our lives as economic, social and political beings.”

Frank Kaufmann, president of Filial Projects and founder and director of the Values in Knowledge Foundation, said, “The internet has not changed anything for the worse. The inability and/or unwillingness to reflect on the personal and social impact of excess and mindless consumption have been wrongly attributed to the internet.”

Ken Birman, a professor in the department of computer science at Cornell University, responded, “The use of the internet as a tool for invading privacy, harassing others, disseminating false information, manipulating large populations, suppressing dissent – these are upsetting and frightening developments. However, I also believe that in the long term, large societies will prove to be robust enough to shake off such intrusions. Ultimately, I think we are stronger and more diverse than we realize, and oppressive regimes and technologies are narrower and more limited. Freedom and truth invariably prevail, and for the better.”

Bert Huang, an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech focused on machine learning, wrote, “The internet is a high-capacity medium for radicalization. Extreme ideas can spread quickly and be psychologically reinforced by online communities.”

Denis Poussart, a consultant in advanced technologies with expertise in computer architecture and AI, commented, “The internet has made the propagation of stupidity and cognitive biases so easy they are now, in many ways, taking over.”

Anthony Judge, author, futurist, editor of the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential, former head of the Union of International Associations, said, “A reduction in confidence in validity of information and exposure to insecurity (surveillance, hacking, identity theft, etc.).”

Alistair Nolan and Karine Perset of OECD commented, “Cybercrime and cyber-insecurity present new and significant forms of danger to individuals, firms, critical systems and entire economies and societies. While these are hard to measure, some studies suggest the number and sophistication of cyberattacks is rising. The simultaneously stealthy and potentially critical nature of some of the threats is new. Moreover, it is hard to see an end to such threats, as technological change enables attackers and defenders at the same time. We could also note the echo chamber and polarizing effects of the internet, particularly as algorithms redistribute and amplify extreme viewpoints.”

Andrea Romaoli Garcia, an international lawyer active in internet governance discussions, commented, “People didn’t evolve at the same pace as the technology and they still don’t know how to protect themselves. Criminal activity did follow the same pace of the technology’s evolution and developed elaborate techniques. The result: financial crime has increased.”

Alan Bundy, a professor of automated reasoning at the University of Edinburgh, wrote, “We are all ‘always on.’ It is difficult to find solitude and relaxation.”

Garland McCoy, founder and chief development officer of the Technology Education Institute, wrote, “Immediate gratification when restraint and reflection are the better path.”

David Zubrow, associate director of empirical research at the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute, said, “It has become an instrument for criminals and demigods to victimize others.”

Hank Dearden, executive director at ForestPlanet Inc., said, “Too much information can be overwhelming and lead to snap decisions that are ironically uninformed. The result is, borrowing from Alvin Toffler, ‘Present Shock.’”

Hume Winzar, associate professor and director of the business analytics undergraduate program at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, wrote, “Work-life balance.”

Michael Dyer, an emeritus professor of computer science at the University of California – Los Angeles, commented, “The spread of fake news, disinformation and alternative ‘facts’ is influencing people to make decisions against their own long-term self-interest. This effect will worsen as graphics and speech technology can simulate human skin, facial movements and individual speech patterns to imitate political leaders and other celebrities. As more digital media are used, there will be greater and greater loss of privacy, allowing for more ways in which one’s government (and other entities) will to be able to target you.”

David Cake, an active leader with Electronic Frontiers Australia and vice-chair of the ICANN GNSO Council, wrote, “The internet has changed the way we communicate and collaborate at scale in almost every way. This is happening faster than we have been able to understand it and far faster than we have been able to have a good policy understanding in institutions that we rely on (such as courts, regulators, mental health, etc.). Our only hope is to get much better at understanding those issues, because it impossible to slow it.”

Leonard Kleinrock, Internet Hall of Fame member and co-director of the first host-to-host online connection, professor of computer science, University of California – Los Angeles, said, “The internet demands considerable attention from each human, invading their quiet, private, thoughtful and creative-thinking time.”

Jerry Michalski, founder of the Relationship Economy eXpedition, said, “Spinmeisters used to have to work hard and wait a long time for results to propagate and show up. Not anymore. The internet has amplified our dumbed-down, consumerist tendencies and vastly accelerated the speed of opinion. The combination is toxic to civic society.”

Charlie Firestone, communications and society program executive director and vice president at The Aspen Institute, commented, “Recently we have seen weaponization of the internet, not only in actual cyberwar and sabotage (e.g., Stuxnet, which was good for the U.S. in the short term), but also in the use of news to disrupt democracy. Most recently, we have seen a ‘techlash’ against social media that appear to use techniques to keep us on their service, a net negative.”

Jeff Johnson, computer science professor at the University of San Francisco, previously with Xerox, HP Labs and Sun Microsystems, responded, “Early internet pioneers predicted that the internet would improve democracy where it already exists and bring it to places that didn’t have it, and would lead to a revival of writing ability among the populace. In fact, what the internet has brought is mobocracy, fake news, flame wars, political manipulation and a realization that the majority of people are extremely poor writers, suggesting that educational systems around the world are failing to teach people how to write.”

Ian Peter, pioneer internet activist and internet rights advocate, said, “We are absorbing far more targeted rather than relevant information and losing our capacity for critical thinking.”

Jonathan Taplin, director emeritus at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab, wrote, “The living of much of the world’s creative class (authors, musicians, journalists, photographers, filmmakers) has been upended by the digital revolution. Newspapers are dying; musicians can’t make a living from their recordings. Until the platforms figure out a way to support the creative economy, we are in trouble.”

Lee McKnight, an associate professor in the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University, commented, “On the internet, there is no peace, ever, as we must assume all individuals, organizations, devices, services and software, whether artificially intelligent or not, are being probed for weaknesses and vulnerabilities, all day, every day, forever. The internet has made it far easier to manipulate individuals and societies than 50 years ago. For a fraction of the cost of armed conflict, cyber-physical assaults intentionally damage social cohesion and upend nations and communities at little cost to the perpetrator. Armed conflict at least is obviously a conflict that we may hope will eventually conclude, leading to peace.”

Joaquin Vanschoren, assistant professor of machine learning at Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands, responded, “We have, to an extent, lost our ability for deep thought and deep work. Most people are not taught how to filter large amounts of information. The ability to look up things quickly in a way diminished our ability to figure things out ourselves or look at the world differently than others. This is a skill that requires constant training, but we get fewer opportunities to hone it. This requires changes in the way that we work that we haven’t figured out yet. The internet should be equally available to anyone, and everyone should be trained equally well how to use it.”

Wendy Hall, professor of computer science at the University of Southampton, U.K., and executive director of the Web Science Institute, said, “The internet never sleeps and nor do we.”

Sam Gregory, director of WITNESS and digital human rights activist, responded, “The internet has been turned into a surveillance machine for governments and malicious actors and an attack vector to harass individuals, truth-tellers and dissidents, disrupt movements and affect democratic processes.”

Sasha Costanza-Chock, an associate professor of civic media at MIT, said, “The internet has become crucial infrastructure for a massive surveillance apparatus deployed by nation-states together with multi-national firms, an apparatus used to closely track, monitor and make important decisions about the lives of much of the world’s population, typically without their knowledge or consent.”

Mike O’Connor, a retired technologist who worked at ICANN and on national broadband issues, commented, “The internet and digital tech has become the most effective tool of mind control ever. China is now doing a country-wide beta test of this with their ‘worthiness-ranking’ technology.”

Marshall Kirkpatrick, the product director at Influencer Marketing, responded, “Bad people in the next town are now all the more my problem. Governments can hire troll armies to harass journalists and anti-social behavior on any scale now includes system-overload of stimuli, which is bad enough to be a problem in and of itself.”

Thomas Streeter, a professor of sociology at the University of Vermont, said, “The arrival of the internet occasioned a fierce revival of a kind of solipsistic individuality, enabling people to limit awareness of their interdependence with the larger social world and imagine their personal experience to be reality writ large.”

Miguel Moreno-Muñoz, a professor of philosophy specializing in ethics, epistemology and technology at the University of Granada, Spain, said, “It doubled work on many procedures (analog/digital), enabled mass monitoring/surveillance programs and expanded work systems to 24 hours a day, seven days a week, associated with reduced wages and precarious access to work.”

Michel Grossetti, a sociologist expert in systems and director of research at CNRS, the French national science research center, wrote, “It accelerated communication rhythms and volume to the detriment of concentration and reflection.”

Michael M. Roberts, internet pioneer, first president and CEO of ICANN and Internet Hall of Fame member, responded, “It enabled expansion of the voices of ignorance. As the net has provided a voice for democratic debate and dialogue, it has also allowed silly as well as malevolent voices to influence others. Ignorance building on ignorance and willful bad behavior is a serious problem on today’s net.”

Simon Biggs, a professor of interdisciplinary arts at the University of Edinburgh, said, “The internet has made us willing participants in our own surveillance and control.”

Douglas Rushkoff, a professor of media at City University of New York, responded, “It has made us think in either/or, black and white ways. Everything is discrete. It has also de-socialized us, by creating the illusion of connection when we are actually missing the cues we need to feel trust or empathy.”

Martin Geddes, a consultant specializing in telecommunications strategies, said, “Screen time has created a narcissistic and socially impaired culture among youth.”

Peter Levine, associate dean for research and professor of citizenship and public affairs at Tufts University, wrote, “The choice that the internet affords allows people to tune out uncomfortable facts, diverse perspectives and pressing social issues.”

Larry Lannom, internet pioneer and vice president at the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI), an expert in digital object architecture, said, “A decrease in the public’s common understanding of world events. It is too easy to be part of an echo chamber.”

Henry E. Brady, dean, Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California – Berkeley, wrote, “The internet has allowed extremist groups to form and thrive in a cyber-world in which the members reinforce each other’s prejudices and hatreds without much social censorship.”

John Lazzaro, retired professor of electrical engineering and computer science, University of California – Berkeley, commented, “From the early Usenet days, it was apparent that well-mannered people could turn ugly in an online social environment. But as the internet became ubiquitous, ugly behaviors of the online world, like a forest fire jumping a freeway, began to vie with good manners to become the ‘new normal’ of everyday life. Which side wins is anyone’s guess at this point.”

James Hendler, professor of computer, web and cognitive sciences and director of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for Data Exploration and Application, wrote, “Access to significant amounts of information at one’s fingertips on-demand and in real time allows for those who can profit from spreading misinformation and rumor to reach a wider range of potential victims than ever in the past.”

Manoj Kumar, manager at Mitsui Orient Lines, responded, “The internet’s world of choices has given freedom without control and left masses prey to false information and actions. Commerce is being adversely affected and stability has not been achieved in the last 20 years, and digitalisation is not yet on peak.”

Christian Huitema, internet pioneer and consultant focused on privacy online, previously Internet Architecture Board president, chief scientist at Bell Research and Microsoft distinguished engineer, commented, “Corporate surveillance, government surveillance and data manipulation.”

John MacCormick, an associate professor of computer science at Dickinson College, author of “Nine Algorithms That Changed the Future,” formerly of HP Labs and Microsoft, responded, “Less psychological downtime and more-frenzied news cycles.”

Gary Kreps, distinguished professor of communication and director of the Center for Health and Risk Communication at George Mason University, wrote, “The downside to the internet has been the loss of privacy and control over personal information, coupled with inefficient and frustrating design of many digital systems used to access the internet. I am hopeful that many of these issues will be well-addressed in the future.”

Patrick Lambe, a partner at Straits Knowledge and president of the Singapore Chapter of the International Society for Knowledge Organization, wrote, “The manipulation of facts, truth and reliable knowledge in the service of commercial and political power. The drowning out of socially useful knowledge in the trivial. The amplification of the worst human instincts as well as the best.”

William Uricchio, a media scholar and professor of comparative media studies at MIT, commented, “The shift from ‘counterculture to cyberculture,’ as Fred Turner so eloquently phrased it, has seen us move from the utopian ideals of an open and participatory commons, to platformization, data-tracking and commodification. This has happened without much of a debate, without an informed public and without regard to the rhetorical claims that still embellish our notions of citizenship.”

Warren Yoder, longtime director of the Public Policy Center of Mississippi, now an instructor at Mississippi College, responded, “The growth of internet-enabled technologies disrupted previous economic and social arrangements faster than the old polity could handle the resulting conflict.”

R “Ray” Wang, founder and principal analyst at Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research, said, “We’ve lost our privacy because we did not put forth policies to prevent digital dictatorships.”

Christopher Yoo, a professor of law, communication and computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, responded, “Increased vulnerability of critical infrastructure.”

Steve Chenoweth, an associate professor of computer science at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, said, “Enemies can crash our utilities and other systems in cyber warfare. To some extent the world is divided into digital haves and have-nots.”

Jennifer Jarratt, owner of Leading Futurists consultancy, commented, “I disagree with the term ‘worse.’ The internet is disrupting and has disrupted almost all pre-internet systems and institutions.”

Daniel Riera, a professor of computer science at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, commented, “It gives the opportunity to powerful people and states to control information and generate fake realities.”

Matthew Henry, chief information officer at LeTourneau University, Longview, Texas, said, “People are able to spread and make believable bias at the touch of a button.”

George Kubik, president of Anticipatory Futures Group, wrote, “It has increased difficulty in assessing the value of information.”

Benjamin Kuipers, a professor of computer science at the University of Michigan, wrote, “Certain people with a desire to exploit others, rather than to cooperate with others, have found ways to use the communication capabilities of the internet to amplify fear of others and to undercut the trust people must have in others to cooperate.”

Peter Asaro, a professor at The New School, philosopher of sci-tech and media who examines artificial intelligence and robotics, commented, “The breakdown and fracturing of the public sphere; the erection of a massive surveillance apparatus capable of manipulating the public; massive concentration of wealth and information in the hands of a few.”

Luis Pereira, associate professor of electronics and nanotechnologies, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal, responded, “The demotion of person-to-person contact.”

Josh Calder, a partner at the Foresight Alliance, commented, “It has increased the availability of ungated misinformation.”

Eugene H. Spafford, internet pioneer and professor of computing sciences at Purdue University, founder and executive director emeritus of the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security, commented, “False, misleading and highly biased information is highly available and it too closely resembles facts.”

Susan Mernit, executive director, The Crucible, co-founder and board member of Hack the Hood, responded, “Our tech overlords profit as our data is sold and used to manipulate the populace.”

Mario Morino, chairman of the Morino Institute and co-founder of Venture Philanthropy Partners, commented, “It provided terrorists, extremists and hate organizations the ability for highly effective decentralized management, recruitment and mobilization.”

Mark Maben, a general manager at Seton Hall University, wrote, “The internet has changed things for the worse by making it super easy to disseminate hate, pit people against one another and spread false information. The resurgence of misogyny, nationalism, belief in conspiracies and bigotry in all its forms is due very much to the growth of the internet and social media.”

Michael Kleeman, a senior fellow at the University of California – San Diego and board member at the Institute for the Future, wrote, “‘Social networks’ have reduced the nature of dialog and democracy and helped to polarize our societies. The financial incentives for the likes of Facebook and Twitter seem to prevent them from really caring about civility and democratic discourse, and fraud and real fake news goes largely unpoliced since it is profitable.”

Bill Woodcock, executive director at Packet Clearing House, the research organization behind global network development, commented, “By enabling remote interaction at massive scale, the internet has made it possible for people to take advantage of other people in ways that are almost unimaginably impersonal. While making interaction at a distance cheap and ubiquitous, it has obscured and abstracted that interaction in ways that have allowed human beings to treat each other in inhuman ways for self-benefit, and allowed them to do so, and to profit from doing so, at a scale previously unimaginable.”

Bob Frankston, software innovation pioneer and technologist based in North America, wrote, “Our infrastructure is increasingly vulnerable to bad actors and the surveillance state is every day more powerful.”

Steven Thompson, an author specializing in illuminating emerging issues and editor of “Androids, Cyborgs, and Robots in Contemporary Culture and Society,” wrote, “Dependency.”

Mary Chayko, author of “Superconnected: The Internet, Digital Media and Techno-Social Life” and professor in the Rutgers School of Communication and Information, said, “People have discovered new modes with which to be cruel to one another.”

Andrew Odlyzko, professor at the University of Minnesota and former head of its Digital Technology Center and the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute, said, “By giving everyone a voice, we have learned just how thin the veneer of civilization is.”

Michael R. Nelson, a technology policy expert for a leading network services provider who worked as a technology policy aide in the Clinton Administration, commented, “It enabled fraudsters, spammers and malicious hackers to harm millions of innocent people.”

Jim Spohrer, director of the Cognitive Opentech Group at IBM Research-Almaden, commented, “Weaponized social media, trolls.”

Lee Smolin, a professor at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and Edge.org contributor, responded, “Screen addiction and video game addiction are widespread among children and teenagers.”

Frank Feather, futurist and consultant with StratEDGY, commented, “As with any poorly controlled and administered technological evolution, the internet has been exploited for evil by human against human, and society/tribe against society/tribe.”

Guy Levi, chief innovation officer for the Center for Educational Technology, based in Israel, wrote, “The internet promoted a shift of capitalism in the way that knowledge became a commodity. Hence, this will give some extra time in the historical process of the demise of capitalism. Behemoths like Google, Microsoft and Facebook – instead of changing the global life by promoting more equity, equality and trust – are running after their ‘market cap’ and satisfying their shareholders instead of their customers.”

Henning Schulzrinne, co-chair of the Internet Technical Committee of the IEEE Communications Society, professor at Columbia University, and Internet Hall of Fame member, said, “The internet has contributed to and accelerated societal fragmentation, both by making workplaces less stable and by reducing the shared set of facts and norms.”

Eliot Lear, principal engineer at Cisco, said, “People spend less time in the real world.”

Geoff Livingston, author and futurist, commented, “The internet, in particular social media, has shown us who we are – in particular, our worst, most-divisive character aspects. Rather than exposing these as weaknesses, social media has empowered these defects of character, fueling populist strife and wrongdoing.”

Kristin Jenkins, executive director of BioQUEST Curriculum Consortium, said, “Anyone can post information on the internet and often they do so to promote a political or economic agenda. Consumers of information need to be able to identify agendas and filter accordingly. Campaigns like the anti-vaccination movement have benefited from the ability to spread misinformation easily and cheaply. The ability of search engines to identify our preferences and cater to them has reinforced opinion silos, amplifying political divisions in unhealthy ways. The spread of misinformation and oversharing of personal information has created dangerous real-life situations for people. An acceptable code of conduct has not been developed.”

John Sniadowski, a director for a technology company, wrote, “There is systematic corporate abuse of personal information in exchange for so-called ‘free’ services, coupled with systematic corporate deception and obfuscation of basic individual control of that personal information.”

Joseph Turow, professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania, said, “The internet has accommodated the bouncing of hatred and socially corrosive venom from small corners of society to larger areas of public discourse, sometimes giving beliefs more legitimacy than they deserve. The ability to use the internet to pit groups against each other through dismissive rhetoric reinforces and extends the polarization that marks our era. Moreover, the ability to use the internet to selectively (and even secretly) target these sorts of messages to people who will be politically energized by them threatens open democratic discourse.”

Fernando Barrio, director of the law program at the Universidad Nacional de Rio Negro, Argentina, commented, “The internet has amplified the differences between the haves and the have-nots of society, both at a domestic and global scale, while allowing levels of control not dreamed of by the totalitarian regimes of the past.”

Paul Jones, professor of information science at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, responded, “Our tribes and their support systems often mislead us, creating isolation and solipsisms only experienced within cults in the past.”

Jan Schaffer, founder and executive director of J-Lab – The Institute for Interactive Journalism, responded, “I worry that people assume facts and truth will always be at their fingertips. As my son, who doesn’t want to finish college, says: ‘Why should I go back? I can find out anything I need to know online.’”

Jonathan Grudin, a principal design researcher at Microsoft, commented, “In my opinion, by creating a global village the internet has undermined participation in the smaller communities – geographic and professional – that our species is designed for.”

Johanna Drucker, professor of digital humanities in the department of information studies at the University of California – Los Angeles, said, “The creation of a short-cycle, rapid-response, massive proliferation of message exchange is creating forces we do not know how to regulate.”

Arthur Bushkin, an IT pioneer who worked with the precursors to ARPANET and Verizon, wrote, “Democratization of the technology of destruction, whether mass destruction or targeted destruction.”

Joseph Konstan, distinguished professor of computer science specializing in human-computer interaction and AI at the University of Minnesota, said, “The internet and its applications have led to a distancing of people from their local communities and to a deterioration of tolerance and social belonging. While some aspects of this change are good (including renewed organization for civil rights in many places around the world), as a whole I believe we are a more divided and unhappier society as a result.”

Timothy Leffel, research scientist, National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, said, “There is an increased reliance on complex systems that few people fully understand comprehensively. This is especially dangerous for basic infrastructure and utilities.”

Jonathan Swerdloff, consultant and data systems specialist for Driven Inc., wrote, “The always-on, addictive nature of social media has changed human behavior in negative ways. Attention spans are shorter, people are less prone to investigate questions deeply and manipulating the populace has become easier.”

Judith Donath, author of “The Social Machine, Designs for Living Online” and faculty fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman-Klein Center for Internet and Society, commented, “It has greatly increased consumption. Two reasons are obvious: pervasive online advertising encourages more buying and online shopping makes buying stuff easier. A third is less recognized yet very important: It has accelerated the fashion cycle. The rate of change in fashion depends on the speed at which information about new things can spread. With instantaneous global communication, fashions change very rapidly. Keeping up with rapid changes in digital fashion (music, memes, emoji) consumes our time and attention – but keeping up with physical fashion (clothing, tech, toys) wastes tremendous amounts of resources on a severely overburdened planet.”

Jillian C. York, director of international freedom of expression for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, commented, “I don’t want to blame the internet for this, but I believe that the architecture and policies of some of the platforms we use have made us more susceptible to misinformation, harassment and other societal ills.”

Brad Templeton, chair for computing at Singularity University, software architect and former president of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, responded, “Prior to 2015, I would have talked about our over-availability and the brain-sucking nature of the always-on world. Recently, I will switch to talk about the way the disintermediation of communications has helped spread corrupt and propaganda-style information much more than expected, to great negative results.”

Charles Zheng, a researcher into machine learning and AI with the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health, commented, “The internet has made it easier for specialized communities of people to form and to recruit, but this also applies to hate groups, criminal organizations and terrorist groups.”

Divina Frau-Meigs, professor of media sociology at Sorbonne Nouvelle University, France, and UNESCO chair for sustainable digital development, responded, “The internet has amplified a lot of human propensities for harmful content and harmful behaviour. It has eroded borders between attitudes that used to be confidential and minor and made them into ‘norms’ such as cyber-bullying, revenge porn, ‘fake news’… This has affected children and young people, often left alone to deal with such violence.”

Dave Burstein, editor and publisher at Fast Net News, said, “The U.S. was first to volume-use on the net so U.S. companies had a first-mover advantage. The result: Power and money have moved to California, including from poor countries.”

Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy and author of “Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future,” said, “We are not using our economic bounty wisely. In the U.S. and many other developed countries, many people are being left behind as their real incomes stagnate. This is reflected not only in economic indicators, but also social metrics like the opioid crisis.”

Micah Altman, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and head scientist in the program on information science at MIT Libraries, wrote, “Broad, fast, open network communications have exacerbated all sorts of problems, from spam, to the spread of false information, to surveillance, to cyberattacks, to the energy-wasting financial scams that are increasingly propagated in the form of cryptocurrencies. None of these problems is, at core, a problem with the concept of, or even (in most cases) the core design of the internet itself. Nevertheless, the vulnerabilities that are exposed in national physical (e.g., electrical) and financial infrastructure are of urgent concern.”

Wout de Natris, an internet cybercrime and security consultant based in Rotterdam, Netherlands, wrote, “There’s no business case for aspiring musicians anymore. Surveillance by/options for industry and governments. Challenges for cooperation between law enforcement agencies have risen. Spam, phishing, fraud, trolling, etc., have become too easy. Addiction and dependency on apps and social media have negative effects on attention span and overall quality.”

Bryan Johnson, founder and CEO of Kernel, a leading developer of advanced neural interfaces, and OS Fund, a venture capital firm, said, “The internet gave people an exaggerated ability to exploit the default human configuration, stealing our attention and time and making us less in charge of our decision making rather than more in charge.”

Bernie Hogan, senior research fellow at Oxford Internet Institute, wrote, “The internet has created a breeding ground for misunderstanding. Text is decontextualised, repurposed and manipulated. It is very easy to misunderstand someone now, both for what they say and who you think they are. Anonymity creates a sort of safe space for controversial opinions, but it also seems to aggravate people’s emotions.”

Doug Schepers, chief technologist at Fizz Studio, said, “[It enables people like] Neo-Nazis and Flat-Earthers.”

Andreas Kirsch, fellow at Newspeak House, formerly with Google and DeepMind in Zurich and London, wrote, “Fake news and viral content. Overall, negative monoculture effects due to consolidation through the internet and its economy of scale.”

Danil Mikhailov, head of data and innovation for Wellcome Trust, responded, “The worst effect of the internet over the past 50 years is the cavalier approach to privacy of personal information which developed among many technology companies. This risks the whole enterprise of an internet free for all, for two reasons. It harms public trust in technology, increasing nervousness about the application of technology with great potential to save lives to sensitive areas like the health sector. At the same time, it encourages government regulation, which has every likelihood of over-reaching and stifling innovation, further delaying potential benefits.”

Charles Ess, a professor expert in ethics with the Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo, Norway, said, “Not just ‘the internet,’ but what we have elected to do with it – especially the strong affordances toward the short, the quick and the relatively unequivocal. Complex mathematics, engineering – and philosophical/humanistic analyses, interpretations and arguments – demand focused attention and great patience. As do civil discourse and debate. All of this is increasingly being replaced by the imagistic, the affective and ‘market logics.’ The cost to political discourse and robust democracy, especially in the U.S., is manifestly enormous. But I fear that such affordances and deskilling reduce or eliminate our ability to exercise these skills and virtues in other key domains of the lifeworld, beginning with family life and friendships, and then extending into the larger social and political spheres.”

Chao-Lin Liu, a professor at National Chengchi University, Taiwan, commented, “The easiness for people to distribute disinformation on the internet.”

Denise N. Rall, a professor of arts and social sciences at Southern Cross University, Australia, responded, “The answer is evident – Government by Twitter and other social media platforms: fake news.”

Ben Shneiderman, distinguished professor and founder of the Human Computer Interaction Lab at University of Maryland, said, “The internet can be frustrating and overwhelming, with incorrect, misleading and dangerous information being spread widely.”

Evan Selinger, a professor of philosophy at the Rochester Institute of Technology, commented, “Frictionless, large-scale harassment.”

Erik Huesca, president of the Knowledge and Digital Culture Foundation, based in Mexico City, said, “The transformation of objects into subjects.”

David Wells, chief financial officer at Netflix, responded, “Emphasis on displaying only how our lives are going well via social media (bias toward external sharing of only the good gives a false impression of our happiness).”

Barry Hughes, senior scientist at the Center for International Futures, University of Denver, commented, “The distraction power of constant internet communication and the attractive power of electronic device use for other purposes as well (gaming, music, cat videos, etc.) have disrupted deeper and face-to-face connections even of people out for a walk together or seated at a restaurant. Those using it in that way probably see it as a change for better.”

Aneesh Aneesh, author of “Global Labor: Algocratic Modes of Organization” and professor at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, responded, “Less focus on what is here and now. More focus on what is elsewhere.”

Danny Gillane, a netizen, commented, “The internet has made it easier to spread hatred, fear and anger.”

Paola Perez, vice president of the Internet Society chapter in Venezuela, and chair of the LACNIC Public Policy Forum, responded, “We can pay everything just by our phone, we can see a lot of movies in just one day and we don’t spend money on DVDs, CDs or cassettes. In years past our oceans were clean and now they have a lot of optical fiber, so we are killing the ecosystem.”

Brian Harvey, lecturer on the social implications of computer technology at the University of California – Berkeley, said, “The commodification of people’s intimate (I don’t mean sexual) private lives.”

Dalsie Green Baniala, CEO and regulator for telecommunications for Vanuatu, wrote, “Using social media, people are becoming perceivers, saying things without factual support. Also, the excitement of using internet is causing laziness and heavy reliability on internet to give them directions, instructions and even planning, which is not right.”

Ed Lyell, longtime internet strategist and professor at Adams State University, responded, “Watching students wasting their time watching monkeys dance on their laptops when they should be working. Seeing the pain in students’ faces when they are being tracked by a former boyfriend on Facebook or their cell phone. Being tracked by marketing people, especially politicians, who hound people to sell them something, or raise money. Hackers stealing our identities and destroying someone’s life. Smartphones that use GPS to track our every move creating a loss of privacy. Children being tracked by parents, not being able to learn by mistakes.”

David Klann, consultant and software developer at Broadcast Tool & Die, responded, “Gossip and lies travel as fast as truth and good will.”

Tomas Ohlin, longtime professor at Linköping and Stockholm universities in Sweden, responded, “The internet has not been available for all, which has been unfair.”

Betsy Williams, a researcher at the Center for Digital Society and Data Studies at the University of Arizona, wrote, “For many people, the internet has encouraged them to spread their personal data more widely than if they were fully informed about what search engines can access, what privacy permissions are and what various terms of service permit. Losing control over one’s data through broad terms of service is especially difficult, given that there may be few good alternatives that protect privacy. It is becoming clear how much information legitimate data brokers have, as well as what is available through hacks. Espionage, cons, hoaxes, doxxing and, of course, spam are the most visible downsides of these privacy fails.”

Christopher Leslie, lecturer in media, science and technology studies at South China University of Technology, wrote, “Improving the way some countries and cultures are able to take advantage of others. The internet did not create pools of finance capital in major U.S. cities, but it did improve their effectiveness and increase the wealth differential.”

Justin Amyx, a technician with Comcast, said, “The internet can be a mirror. When people go on and look for information to back up their argument or idea it is always possible to find somebody else who agrees. With the internet being a mirror, you surround yourself, on social media, with like-minded people and people who may have views that are a little bit more extreme than yours. This has the unintended consequence of potentially making viewpoints more extreme when in the past they would be more moderate.”

Dan Geer, a respondent who provided no identifying details, commented, “Personalization and targeting differ not one whit beyond the intent of the analyst. If you are entitled to your own opinion but not to your own facts, then the internet has created a world where that to which you are not entitled is served daily (West). Or you already live in an information despotism (China).”

Bruce A. Hamilton, retired from Northrop Grumman, Sun Microsystems and Xerox, said, “It lessened privacy and enabled deep state surveillance.”

Rik Farrow, editor of “;login:” a publication of the USENIX Association, wrote, “The best example is the rise of authoritarian governments through manipulation of social media. Consider what the Russians have done in the U.S. as an example. The possibility of manipulation has grown with the ability of anyone to say anything on social media.”

E. Ohlson, a respondent who provided no identifying details, commented, “The increase in data that tracks our every movement, combined with humans’ innate predictability, has significantly eroded privacy. This data/knowledge in the wrong hands, used with malicious intent, has been catastrophic.”

Andrian Kreye, a journalist and documentary filmmaker based in Germany, said, “The destruction of whole industries and the erosion of economic models for culture has left gaping holes in society. Lately the degradation of public discourse has reached levels that do endanger democracy.”

Alf Rehn, a professor of innovation, design and management in the school of engineering at the University of Southern Denmark, commented, “At worst, the internet has amplified bad tendencies in us humans – sectarianism, spite, a tendency for bullying – but it should be noted that we were really good at this long before the internet arrived.”

Bryan Alexander, futurist and president of Bryan Anderson Consulting, responded, “The digital divide has deepened social gaps.”

Bebo White, managing editor of the Journal of Web Engineering and emeritus associate of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, said, “The enabling of ‘bad actors’ that exploit security and privacy, spread misinformation and threaten the vulnerable.”

Adam Powell, senior fellow at the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy, wrote, “That’s easy: the end of privacy. There are signs on computers in some federal offices, ‘Don’t type anything on this keyboard that you don’t want to read tomorrow in the Washington Post.’ That’s the least of it.”

Anthony Picciano, a professor of education at the City of New York University Interactive Pedagogy and Technology program, responded, “The internet has opened up serious privacy issues for people, especially those who bare too much personal information about themselves on social networks. Young people in particular have become victims to those looking to prey on their naiveté, vulnerabilities and inexperience.”

Bruce Edmonds, a professor of social simulation and director of the Centre for Policy Modelling, Manchester (U.K.) Metropolitan University, wrote, “It has enabled a lot of misdirected activity in terms of social networking – mostly defending and attempting to create online status.”

Dan Robitzski, a reporter covering science and technology for Futurism.com, commented, “The absolute worst of humanity has been given a megaphone and a soapbox, thanks to social media and other online communities that have willfully rejected the notion of moderation or regulation.”

Alex Smith, partner relationship manager at Monster Worldwide, said, “We have fewer direct human interactions, and this has made many people weaker. It’s too easy to say mean things about someone that you wouldn’t say in their presence when you are operating under the mask of your Twitter profile or other social handles.”

Avery Holton, a clinical/translational scholar and professor expert in digital and social media at the University of Utah, commented, “The expansion of mis- and disinformation has opened new spaces for people to lean more on ideological alignments than the truth. In other words, the rise (and acceptance) of incorrect and misleading information has moved people from relying on facts and truths to support their claims and ideals to simply dismissing those and those who would question them in favor of those who would take them at face value.”

Justin Reich, executive director of MIT Teaching Systems Lab and research scientist in the MIT Office of Digital Learning, responded, “As we look back over the last 50 years and into the next decades, we will mourn the substantial loss of privacy into our daily lives. The worst surveillance states set up under fascist regimes today will pale in comparison to what lies ahead.”

Benjamin Shestakofsky, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania specializing in digital technology’s impacts on work, said, “Employers have used the internet to intensify the blurring of the divide between work and non-work life, reinforcing the expectation that workers will be ‘always on’ and available.”

Jamais Cascio, research fellow at the Institute for the Future, wrote, “In all three, loss of control. In number one it’s authoritarianism hoarding control; in number two it’s limits to the extent and reach of our control without AI systems; in number three it’s the loss of the day-to-day management of our lives.”

Amy Webb, founder of the Future Today Institute and professor of strategic foresight at New York University, commented, “Because lawmakers didn’t consider risk scenarios, we now have many different ‘splinternets,’ where data and information are subjected to different laws depending on country. This has exacerbated the problem of misinformation and fake news, and it will embolden bad actors to leverage vulnerabilities in the years to come.”

Amali De Silva-Mitchell, futurist, responded, “Fake data.”

Cliff Lynch, director of the Coalition for Networked Information, responded, “It has consumed our time, for better or worse. Social media interaction has supplanted many other activities. The time demands to keep up with the constant flood and wealth of information has done the same, even for people who eschew social media. And it has exposed societies to enormous amounts of manipulation, lies, deliberate attempts at polarization and divisiveness, propaganda and fraud. Once a tool for advancing science and scholarship, it now simultaneously undermines support for these things with the general public.”

Edson Prestes, a professor and director of robotics at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, responded, “At same time we had great advances coming from internet, we also witnessed some undesired effects. In my opinion, the worst is the easy access to illegal content related, for instance, to violence and pornography. It is just a one-click distance from children and teenagers and it has the potential to cause a long-lasting impact on the way they see other people or living beings, e.g., as objects. Seeing people this way can easily lead, for instance, to segregation, decrease of empathy through the banalization of violence or sexual objectification.”

Anita Salem, systems research and design principal at SalemSystems, wrote, “The internet was initially designed as an open-source, low-entry communication system. It is now a vehicle for manipulated buying and selling.”

Alan Mutter, a longtime Silicon Valley CEO, cable TV executive, now a teacher of media economics and entrepreneurism at the University of California – Berkeley, said, “Abetting the atmosphere of hate, xenophobia, misinformation and deceit that produced Donald Trump.”

Craig Burdett, a respondent who provided no identifying details, wrote, “SPAM.”

David Bray, executive director for the People-Centered Internet Coalition, commented, The internet has resulted in sensationalist, emotion-ridden news and other communications that gets page views and ad clicks, yet lacks nuance of understanding, resulting in tribalism and a devolution of open societies and pluralities to the determent of the global human condition.”

Lindsey Andersen, an activist at the intersection of human rights and technology for Freedom House and Internews now doing graduate research at Princeton University, said, “Before the internet, we had reliable filters in the form of the press and publishers. There were certainly plenty of misinformation, rumors and propaganda, but they spread far less quickly when they required word of mouth or control of the airwaves or presses. Now, anyone can produce a video or an article and it can spread like wildfire. Rumors propagate quickly through messaging services and social media with no one to intervene. And there is so much information, that it is increasingly hard to parse it. In countries without an independent media to counteract the chaos the results have often been tragic, as in the case of Myanmar, where ethnic hatred and misinformation spread through social media has resulted in the ethnic cleansing of an entire group of people. And even in countries like the U.S., with a strong free press and a history of a plurality of voices, we struggle to separate fact from fiction and identify partisan spin. The result has been a more polarized, post-truth world.”

Alex Halavais, an associate professor of social technologies at Arizona State University, wrote, “We have seen a continuation of a shift from the textual world to a new kind of networked visual. I’m not sure that, in its totality, this is a negative, but things have been and will be lost in the process.”

Adam Popescu, a writer who contributes frequently to the New York Times, Washington Post, Bloomberg Businessweek, Vanity Fair and the BBC, wrote, “You can now purchase anything at the click of a button. While it makes things easier, it makes us lazier, and it has killed mom-and-pop business and ushered in a monopolistic mentality. Oh yes, and don’t forget that it’s killed the print ad news model.”

Alex Simonelis, computer science faculty member, Dawson College, Montreal, said, “Countries like Russia that have always practiced agitprop can now use the net and social media.”

Barry Chudakov, founder and principal of Sertain Research and author of “Metalifestream,” commented, “Masking or falsifying identity. The internet, due to its illusion of distance and anonymity has united yet separated people from the people they contact and the consequences of their actions. This is ironic, of course, because on the internet reaction is often instantaneous. Yet because you are not in the same space, not face-to-face with another, the online disinhibition effect kicks in and it is possible to behave more exaggeratedly than you might in person and to bypass empathy for the person with whom you are interacting.”

Craig Mathias, principal at Farpoint Group, an advisory firm specializing in wireless networking and mobile computing, commented, “Just one? Publishing without appropriate review of content for accuracy. Trolls. Security and privacy threats. Enabling and even easing the activities of those with bad intent.”

David A. Banks, an associate research analyst with the Social Science Research Council, said, “Powerful actors in the industry (Google, Facebook, Apple, etc.) have been willfully ignorant of basic sociological truths. This has led to a lot of unnecessary suffering at the hands of reactionary political movements that take advantage of platforms’ affordances.”

Alexey Turchin, existential risks researcher at Foundation Science for Life Extension and founder of the Russian Transhumanist Party, responded, “Internet could be a channel for unfriendly AI to disseminate, or for other knowledge of mass destruction.”

Emanuele Torti, a research professor in the computer science department at the University of Pavia, Italy, responded, “The worst thing about the internet is the spread of fake news.”

Gerry Ellis, founder and digital usability and accessibility consultant at Feel The BenefIT, responded, “It is already obvious that younger people spend far too much time looking at screens rather than interacting with their peers. Gaming and the use of pornography have led to expectations that real life will give the same results as in the stylised world of internet interactions. Some attribute the resulting pressures to an increase in suicides.”

Jennifer King, director of privacy at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, said, “The internet has increased access to misinformation and enabled powerful actors to engage in propaganda campaigns at scale.”

Fred Davis, mentor at Runway Incubator, San Francisco, responded, “The current economic model makes it difficult to pay for journalism and other high-value content. It’s become too easy to express moral outrage without the same consequences and effects as it would have if done in person.”

Gene Crick, director of the Metropolitan Austin Interactive Network and longtime U.S. community telecommunications expert, wrote, “I’m not sure the internet has yet made any permanent changes for the worse. My biggest fear in this regard is that the internet might become little more than a shopping network and trivial communications medium for the prosperous. If so this could tragically aggravate the divisions among an already polarizing society.”

Kenneth R. Fleischmann, an associate professor at the University of Texas – Austin School of Information, responded, “The internet has fundamentally changed how we interact with and understand each other. Filter bubbles cause people to seek media sources that reinforce their perspectives and beliefs and interact with only like-minded individuals. This has resulted in a fragmentation of our political and social conversations and a polarization of politics globally. Unfortunately, in many cases this has bred intolerance and hatred, both on the far right and on the far left.”

Kenneth Cukier, author and data editor for The Economist, commented, “In a virtual setting, people are nastier to others.”

Lou Gross, professor of mathematical ecology and expert in grid computing, spatial optimization and modeling of ecological systems at the University of Tennessee – Knoxville, said, “It has led to more disaffection for some groups around the world who are either ‘left out’ of the transformations and know they have been left out, or for whom the tech use contradicts central tenets of their life.”

João Pedro Taveira, embedded systems researcher and smart grids architect for INOV INESC Inovação, Portugal, wrote, “Every single human has a bright side and a dark side… The internet allowed the sharing of people’s evil side, and even worse, the possibility for them to join other evil persons.”

Jeff Jarvis, director of the Tow-Knight Center at City University of New York’s Craig Newmark School of Journalism, commented, “The internet has spawned a genre of dystopian books and journalistic reporting.”

Ken Goldberg, distinguished chair in engineering and founding member of Berkeley AI Research Lab at the University of California – Berkeley, wrote, “Social media’s distractions with what Philip Reiff called ‘ephemera.’”

Karl M. van Meter, faculty of social sciences at Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, and author of “Computational Social Science in the Age of Big Data,” said, “Trump and his sidekicks.”

Gary Arlen, president of Arlen Communications, wrote, “One detriment of the web has been its ability to help people believe bad ideas, ‘just because they’re on the net.’ This has created rancor, rather than community-building. And the internet’s global nature means this creates worldwide woes – quickly! Access to ideas and people and points of view – means keeping aware of ‘fakes’ and ‘false’ information.”

Jerome Glenn, executive director of the “State of the Future” reports for the Millennium Project, said, “It is a new medium to support organized crime, terrorism, pornography and information warfare.”

Helena Draganik, a professor at the University of Gdansk, Poland, responded, “The role of information in war has always been great. The internet increased the possibilities of dissemination of false information. The many sources and forms on the net augment the possibilities of infowars. Education regarding fact-checking is still very poor.”

Robert K. Logan, chief scientist at sLab and OCAT and professor emeritus of physics at the University of Toronto, Canada, said, “Fake news – a medium for terrorists and those opposed to democracy – gave the United States Donald Trump as president.”

John Leslie King, computer science professor, University of Michigan, commented, “You have to keep track of so much more than you used to. For example, passwords. Because of security threats rules are put in that make memorable passwords impossible. There are many things like this.”

K. Stout, a respondent who provided no identifying details, said, “The ability to spread rumors and falsehoods. In the past, information was mediated through ‘authorities’ such as newspapers, topic experts, governments and so on. Now any crazy claim can find support and be spread.”

Greg Lloyd, president and co-founder at Traction Software, responded, “Increased financial and political rewards for unscrupulous, unethical and evil uses of internet technology.”

José Estabil, director of entrepreneurship and innovation at MIT’s Skoltech Initiative, commented, “Digital fluency requires literacy and electricity, two problems yet to be solved for a large chunk of the developing world.”

Fred Baker, independent networking technologies consultant, longtime leader in the Internet Engineering Task Force and engineering fellow with Cisco, commented, “As information has become more freely accessible and available, abuses of that information have escalated. This is often facilitated by malware, but the European GDPR would opine that it is also facilitated by misuse of personally-identifiable information that is simply laying around.”

Liz Rykert, president at Meta Strategies, a consultancy that works with technology and complex organizational change, responded, “It has allowed the spread of pornography and related hate and oppression of people.”

George Barnett, a professor of communications at the University of California – Davis, said, “The problem is not really the internet, but social media, which limited actual face-to-face interaction.”

Hassaan Idrees, an electrical engineer and Fulbright Student Program alumni active in creating energy systems for global good, commented, “Violence and divisive politics have reigned supreme thanks to unchecked journalism on the web.”

Kenneth Grady, futurist, founding author of The Algorithmic Society blog and adjunct and adviser at the Michigan State University College of Law, responded, “Tools that can magnify good things can also magnify bad things. Just as the internet has made it easier for researchers to access and share knowledge, it has made it easier for those with criminal intent to do the same. Child pornography, human trafficking, illicit drug activity and other criminal enterprises benefit from what the internet can provide.”

Jack Gieseking, a University of Kentucky professor expert in cultural geography, American studies and gender and sexuality, said, “At the same time as the vast increase to knowledge and proliferation of sharing stories via social media has made many people’s lives better, especially LGBTQ people, there are obvious ways there has not been social change. The number of LGBTQ suicides has not decreased and harassment, violence, lack of policy support and so on remains.”

Gabor Melli, senior director of engineering for AI and machine learning for Sony PlayStation, responded, “Governments and for-profits have a tremendous and unnecessary amount of information about us.”

John Laudun, a respondent who provided no identifying details, commented, “The internet has changed things for the worse chiefly in regard to surveillance. While most individuals fear governmental surveillance, I suspect we are now at a moment when people realize that it is all the non-governmental surveillance and the way that that data is sold and combined that will pose the greatest threat to our lives and our institutions.”

John Verdon, retired futurist and consultant, wrote, “The retrieval of a tribal constraint on personal identity, e.g., when we hear talk of ‘personal brand’ we retrieve the ‘rigid’ tribal constraints reducing identity to character/temperament, role and status.”

Leonardo Trujillo, a research professor in computing sciences at the Instituto Tecnológico de Tijuana, Mexico, responded, “It has simplified surveillance and propaganda techniques that can be used easily to track and distract large amounts of people.”

Laurie Orlov, principal analyst at Aging in Place Technology Watch, wrote, “Social media sites, especially Facebook, skewed search results (Google), the gaming of reviews and information, the ruined definition of ‘fact’ and online stalking.”

Karen Oates, director of workforce development and financial stability for La Casea de Esperanza, commented, “The vast amount of misinformation.”

Jay Sanders, president and CEO of the Global Telemedicine Group, responded, “Ironically, while it has enhanced communication generally, it has tended to decrease personal interaction.”

Geoff Arnold, CTO for the Verizon Smart Communities organization, said, “It has facilitated anonymous harassment and misinformation.”

Yvette Wohn, director of the Social Interaction Lab and expert on human-computer interaction at New Jersey Institute of Technology, commented, “Connections through social media and persistence/distribution of online content makes it very difficult for someone to make major life changes and evolve their identity.”

Mike Meyer, chief information officer at Honolulu Community College, commented, “The most serious problem created by the internet is the move from broadcast media to mass social media. This has created an incredibly easy way to trigger propaganda across large numbers of people who are prone to manipulation. Much of this is the carryover of broadcast media mentality that assumes some veracity to information broadcast to a large audience by professionals. The ease of creating professional-looking media messages that are false will require a tremendous amount of information and training in data confirmation. While this is a large problem it is not insurmountable.”

Grace Mutung’u, co-leader of the Kenya ICT Action Network, responded, “Surveillance and loss of personal autonomy.”

Marek Havrda, director at NEOPAS and strategic adviser for the GoodAI project, a private R&D company focusing on the development of artificial general intelligence and AI applications, said, “Mass spreading of unverified information leading to creation of perceptions which are not aligned with the real world.”

Robert Bell, co-founder of Intelligent Community Forum, wrote, “The anonymity built into the underlying protocols, based on the idea that every user is a trusted user, unleashes the worst in human nature: fear, hatred, resentment, rage. The network effect that makes the internet so powerful makes its worst aspects just as powerful.”

Monica Murero, director of the E-Life International Institute and associate professor in sociology of new technology at the University of Naples Federico II, Italy, commented, “The improper use of the internet and the web may facilitate the publication and the consumption of wrong or inaccurate health information that may generate damages for the non-medical population, or for those who are not able to identify ‘correct’ medical information.”

Nigel Hickson, an expert on technology policy development who is based in Brussels, responded, “Surveillance.”

Uta Russmann, professor in the Department of Communication at FHWien der WKW University of Applied Sciences for Management and Communication, said, “People’s lives can be more easily controlled by politics and business.”

Ross Stapleton-Gray, principal at Stapleton-Gray and Associates, an information technology and policy consulting firm, commented, “The ability to propagandize and to ‘manufacture consent’ via digital channels. The social media platforms have tremendous power to influence, and they have sold that to many actors whose interests are largely self-serving.”

Robert M. Mason, a professor emeritus in the Information School at the University of Washington, responded, “Less personal empathy because there is less face-to-face interaction.”

Mícheál Ó Foghlú, engineering director and DevOps Code Pillar at Google, Munich, said, “The internet has enabled many criminal networks to become more efficient, most obviously for those involved in digital products such as illegal pornography that exploits women and children in particular.”

Yoram Kalman, an associate professor at The Open University of Israel and member of The Center for Internet Research at the University of Haifa, wrote, “I am mainly worried about the inability of the majority of people to benefit from the increased access to knowledge and to learning the internet now offers. At the moment, most benefits accrue to those in societal elites. This contributes to the phenomenon of ‘the rich get richer.’”

Wangari Kabiru, author of the MitandaoAfrika blog, based in Nairobi, commented, “One major way the internet has changed things for the worse in the past 50 years is in relation to all humans not exploiting their full God-given potential. Yes, while tools have enabled people to do more, the majority have not become more of themselves. Most on the internet are dependent on a few, many are copy-cats and copy-paste. This is a hidden detrimental factor with degenerative effects to the human mind. The discipline, personal decree and diligence become missing factors in the degenerated minds, overall, with severely negative impact to nations. Africa must be alert and raise its populations to CREATION-mode on the internet, not USER-mode.”

Michael Veale, a technology policy researcher at University College London, responded, “Easy access to information has made individuals prioritise speed and access over quality, and the forces on the internet do not support a citizenry that can stop, think and contemplate issues for themselves, as we might have hoped.”

Mechthild Schmidt Feist, department coordinator for digital communications and media at New York University, said, “The increasing power of instantaneous and anonymous communication is not paired with growth of ETHICAL CONDUCT/SOCIAL JUSTICE. Media on the internet communicates (and exaggerates) our wealth and waste to underprivileged peoples who of course react with hostility or migration. I am certain that scarcity of resources, over-population and climate change will feed destructive and embittered use of the internet. Technology is not a neutral ‘utility’ (Zuckerberg) but a tool with immense social consequences. We got that wrong in the past 20 years.”

Rob Frieden, professor and chair in telecommunications and law at Penn State University, said, “The internet and, in particular, platform intermediaries exploit some of the worst weaknesses and predilections of people. It promotes the hecklers’ veto and the tyranny of the majority. It legitimizes some of the worst in humanity.”

Zoetanya Sujon, a senior lecturer specializing in digital culture at University of Arts London, commented, “Along with the development of the internet, sophisticated advertising techniques have also been developed… The public sphere as we know it is subject to commodification by corporations and manipulative control from government agents. In other words, although we have a greater sense of freedom, the internet is yet another capitalist space for an increasingly silent battle between freedom and control.”

Luke Stark, a fellow in the department of sociology at Dartmouth College and at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, wrote, “The proliferation of tracking and advertising to all sectors of everyday life.”

Michiel Leenaars, director of strategy at NLnet Foundation and director of the Internet Society’s Netherlands chapter, responded, “In its first 50 years, the internet has shown us that history is no longer written by those who win, but by those who can make themselves appear at the top of the list. The ‘winner takes all’ scenario contributes to global cultural impoverishment – the internet search engines, social networks, repositories, content stores and news feeds are always ready to present the lowest hanging fruit. Critical review by experts has been marginalised.”

Simeon Yates, director of the Centre for Digital Humanities and Social Science at the University of Liverpool, said, “Putting people in contact – the world is more open and visible to all. For some this has reinforced prejudice and fears and created aggressive introspective groups.”

William Dutton, Oxford Martin Fellow at the Global Cyber Security Capacity Centre and founding director of the Oxford Internet Institute, commented, “The use of the internet has created far more opportunities for surveillance and the loss of personal privacy, one of many aspects of an Orwellian future that could come to be through poor policy and regulatory responses.”

Matt Belge, founder and president of Vision & Logic, said, “The repressors are also using the net. For example, people who plan mass shootings or those who organize racist marches to intimidate others.”

Walid Al-Saqaf, senior lecturer at Sodertorn University, member of the board of trustees of the Internet Society (ISOC) and vice president of the ISOC Blockchain Special Interest Group, commented, “Perhaps it made the digital natives rely more on technology and less on traditional means of interaction. In case of a major electricity blackout for example, they will find it tough to adapt.”

Robert D. Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, wrote, “The internet has reduced civility, coarsening public dialogue.”

Marina Gorbis, executive director of the Institute for the Future and author of “The Nature of the Future: Dispatches from the Socialstructed World,” responded, “We have created a total-surveillance society of the kind previous dictatorships, East Germany and the Soviet Union, only dreamed of creating.”

Dan Schultz, senior creative technologist at Internet Archive, responded, “Individuals’ capacity for empathy, compassion and understanding is severely throttled in digital communications.”

Kathy Brandt, a respondent who provided no identifying details, commented, “Online bullying.”

Valarie Bell, a computational social scientist at the University of North Texas, commented, “Social media and YouTube have to be the worst thing because now people are obsessed with documenting every insignificant aspect of their lives as if it’s history-textbook-worthy. Everyone is a budding TV star or social media socialite with fans and followers. All of this simply motivates people to engage in extreme behaviors and spew vitriol in order to get more and more followers and attention. The viral video and tweet phenomenon means everyone is more concerned with style than substance, so the internet has mostly devolved into a battle of the morons pushing an agenda.”

Ramon Lopez de Mantaras, director of the Spanish National Research Council’s Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, said, “It allowed a very fast propagation of fake news and manipulation of the public opinion. It also allowed some very well-known corporations to achieve high levels of power that often exceeds (and influences) that of democratically elected governments.”

Ian O’Byrne, an assistant professor at the College of Charleston whose focus is literacy and technology, said, “The opportunity to have any group or individual express themselves; this also means that any group or individual may express themselves… regardless of how this impacts larger societal narratives.”

Sonia Katyal, co-director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, a member of the inaugural U.S. Commerce Department’s Digital Economy Board of Advisors, said, “The demise of net neutrality [in the U.S.] underscores how law and policy can deeply affect opportunities and entitlements for others, creating persistent inequalities.”

Michael Wollowski, associate professor of computer science and software engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, wrote, “The expectation of an immediate response to any communication.”

Ryan Sweeney, director of analytics at Ignite Social Media, commented, “Those who have access to the internet are able to benefit from it. Many have built companies around the internet, but those who could not afford a computer lost out on the economic arms race.”

Vian Bakir, a professor of political communication and journalism at Bangor University, responded, “It has made it very easy for authoritarian states to spy on civil society.”

Shannon Ellis, a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, said, “The internet allows for anonymity inherently, which has led to bullying and people feeling they can say things they wouldn’t say if the person they were commenting to were across from them. I hope, but am not hopeful, that this culture changes going forward.”

Tom Worthington, an Australian internet pioneer and adjunct senior lecturer in the Research School of Computer Science at Australian National University, said, “The internet has afforded scammers and aggressors a new way into people’s lives. The internet is now a routine part of fraud, blackmail and war.”

Richard Forno of the Center for Cybersecurity and Cybersecurity Graduate Program at the University of Maryland – Baltimore County, wrote, “1) Due to democratized internet technology like YouTube and social media, people seem to be obsessed with superficial creation and consumption of very short-lived information designed to entertain and distract more than anything else. I fear this will lead to a further dumbing down of society, shorter attention spans and the diminishment of the critical thinking and in-person social skills needed for humankind to evolve successfully. 2) That anyone can ‘reach out and touch anyone’ in the world via the internet can facilitate social instability through the types of propaganda, ‘fake news,’ etc., that we’re encountering these days.”

Pamela Rutledge, director of the Media Psychology Center, responded, “The internet has created a new set of opportunities for many things, including illegal, corrupt, destructive and abusive behaviors, and the connectivity enables a quick means of creating scale. The ability of ISIS to recruit globally and election-tampering are examples.”

Raimundo Beca, partner at Imaginacción, formerly a member of the ICANN board, said, “The internet has raised new privacy challenges.”

Stuart A. Umpleby, a professor and director of the research program in social and organizational learning at George Washington University, wrote, “A major change for the worse has been the destruction of tested news sources and the proliferation of deliberately faked news sources.”

Joly MacFie, president of the Internet Society New York Chapter, commented, “If ignorance is bliss, bliss may be a little harder to come by.”

John Markoff, former technology journalist for the New York Times and author of “Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots,” wrote, “It fostered anonymous interaction.”

Michael Pilos, chief marketing officer at FirePro, said, “Phenomena such as populism and egocentrism are deriving from the internet phenomenon as well. Not a great side effect.”

Ian Rumbles, a quality-assurance specialist at North Carolina State University, said, “It drastically increases distractions for people, which leads to dangerous driving and breakdowns in relationships.”

Frank Tipler, a mathematical physicist at Tulane University, commented, “The internet has reduced intellectual diversity.”

Thornton May, technology futurist, author and educator, said, “The worst thing that ever happened to the internet is LinkedIn. Never automate a broken business process. Relationship creation/relationship management, crucial to the future of our species, are broken business processes.”

Randall Mayes, a technology analyst and author, wrote, “Cybercrime.”

Sam Lehman-Wilzig, associate professor and former chair of the School of Communication, Bar-Ilan University, Israel, wrote, “The internet has enabled the worst human traits to exploit themselves to the fullest (bullying, racism, ethnocentrism, lying/disinformation/‘fake news,’ etc. Anonymity emboldens previously ‘cowardly’ people to let loose without worry of negative social consequences.”

Marc Noble, a respondent who provided no identifying details, commented, “Unfortunately, crime and political manipulation have skyrocketed due to the speed of communication and the ability to hide an identity. I’ve seen progress as far as identity management, but a lot needs to be done in that area.”

Stephen Abram, principal at Lighthouse Consulting Inc., wrote, “Falsified information and the empowerment of bad actors (racists, Nazis, etc.).”

Vassilis Galanos, a Ph.D. student and teaching assistant actively researching future human-machine symbiosis at the University of Edinburgh, commented, “The ability to construct turned into the ability to make excessive profit out of free labour (see the dreams about Web 2.0 and how such hopes remained empty). Differences often became reasons for dispute, and similarities reasons for boredom.”

Roland Benedikter, co-director of the Center for Advanced Studies at Eurac Research Bozen, South Tyrol, Italy, responded, “Anonymity and ad personam defamation.”

Steve King, partner at Emergent Research, said, “Just as the internet has enabled new forms of communications and commerce, it’s also enabled new forms of crime.”

Steven Polunsky, director of the Alabama Transportation Policy Research Center, University of Alabama, wrote, “Clearly, privacy concerns are number-one on the ‘bad internet’ list. The internet is the product here, and while we tend to blame the consumer for not reading the terms of service, leaving devices unprotected, using ineffective passwords and clicking where they shouldn’t, the mechanism and the industry have an obligation to address breaches beyond what we’ve seen so far.”

Seth Finkelstein, consulting programmer at Finkelstein Consulting, commented, “Anyone in the world can connect with you for negative reasons: Hear from strangers who hate your opinions. Get undercut by businesses or workers in other countries. Be targeted by a social media mob where distance is no barrier. Have much of the world’s distractions available for temptation.”

Rich Ling, a professor of media technology at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, responded, “The internet has allowed for the development of alternative forms of ‘the truth’ and their amplification. Just as the printing press facilitated the growth of astronomy and chemistry, it facilitated the growth of astrology and alchemy. We are seeing the same process in the development of the internet. This means that we need to develop new systems with which to verify information.”

Steven Miller, vice provost and professor of information systems at Singapore Management University, said, “1) Cybercrime, and everything that goes with this, 2) managing the distribution – especially the unintended distribution and unauthorized (as in not-permissioned usage) of our personal data, and 3) harmful and pernicious effects.”

Ray Schroeder, associate vice chancellor for online learning at the University of Illinois – Springfield, wrote, “The internet has allowed people to choose news and information sources that are not broadly validated or subjectively truthful. In the past, newspapers and the limited number of radio and television news outlets were forced to some level of objectivity and balance in order to maintain viable audience size. Now, biases are fed by selective choice of sources that are not balanced or broadly vetted.”

Mark Crowley of the Institute for Complexity and Innovation at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, wrote, “Nothing. Privacy is an issue but it always has been under any system; it is not worse now than it used to be given the scale of civilization.”

Edward Tomchin, a retiree, said, “For the worst? The only way I can answer this is to note that as easy as it is for me to communicate with someone of a like mind anywhere in the world, it will also be that easy for the wicked among us to communicate with their counterpart.”

Norton Gusky, an education technology consultant, wrote, “Every day we have to be aware of the attacks on our digital self.”

David Sarokin, author of “Missed Information: Better Information for Building a Wealthier, More Sustainable Future,” commented, “Social media has an uncanny capacity for magnifying the uglier aspects of human nature. It is not the root cause of the hostility that characterizes so much of public discussions. But it is a big contributor.”

Mauro D. Ríos, an adviser to the eGovernment Agency of Uruguay and director of the Uruguayan Internet Society chapter, responded, “It is wrong to think that giving access to the internet will change – by itself and positively – the reality of people in impoverished contexts or of groups of citizens without access to education, or that it will reverse the desertion of education systems.”

Marc Brenman, managing partner at IDARE LLC, said, “The decrease in privacy.”

Lane Jennings, a recent retiree who served as managing editor for the World Future Review from 2009 to 2015, wrote, “The ease of self-publishing and the lure of self-promotion have muddied the waters of information on the internet particularly with regard to up-to-the-minute ‘news.’ In place of the few newspapers, magazines, networks and spokesmen like Walter Cronkite that were consulted by millions and trusted by the vast majority of people, it is all too easy now to hear and view news stories and opinions of people anywhere – with or without experience or credentials – and increasingly many people now choose to access only stories and opinions from sources with whom they already agree. I see this problem getting steadily worse as new tech makes it easier to fabricate video and sound tracks as well as simply print falsehoods.”

Alistair Knott, an associate professor specializing in cognitive science and AI at Otago University, Dunedin, New Zealand, wrote “Social media is quite pernicious. I love communication between individuals – but I dislike ‘push’ communication protocols, where a person broadcasts information to a whole group. Humans don’t naturally communicate this way; natural conversation normally takes place in a small group of participants.”

Francisco S. Melo, an associate professor of computer science at Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, Portugal, responded, “People are increasingly more dependent on online information and are, for the most, less cognizant.”

Pedro U. Lima, an associate professor of computer science at Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, Portugal, said, “It is leading to an increase of inequality between a very few super-rich and an increasing number of not-so-rich or poor people.”

Meryl Alper, an assistant professor of communication at Northeastern University and a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, wrote, “Automate propaganda and propagate hatred for the Other, while diminishing the rewards of empathy and love for the Other.”

Jaak Tepandi, a professor of knowledge-based systems at Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia, commented, “Amplifies lies.”

Stavros Tripakis, an associate professor of computer science at Aalto University (Finland) and adjunct at the University of California – Berkeley, wrote, “Just like TV hasn’t lived up to the expectation of becoming a major force of information, instead of misinformation, the internet has been under the control of big players and has become primarily a source of misinformation.”

Following are responses to the prompt:

What one thing has surprised or shocked you the most about the evolution and impact of the internet the past 50 years?

Vint Cerf, co-inventor of the original Internet Protocol, Internet Hall of Fame member and vice president and chief internet evangelist at Google, wrote, “The biggest surprise was the rapid influx of content into the internet once the World Wide Web showed up. I did not anticipate the desire the users had to share what they knew, usually without compensation. Bad behaviors were also a surprise although I suppose I should not have been shocked that there were people out there who did not have people’s best interests at heart.”

Divina Frau-Meigs, professor of media sociology at Sorbonne Nouvelle University, France, and UNESCO chair for sustainable digital development, responded, “The amount of people’s good will to contribute online has surprised me. A treasure like Wikipedia and its modus operandi has made me feel part of the Renaissance as understood by Diderot and D’Alembert. Its translation across languages and borders is to me proof that the human mind hungers for knowledge and exchange, and that there is an ‘information commons’ out there that clamours to develop. What shocks me is that some trolls are trying to destroy such beautiful projects and that knowledge could be construed just as ‘opinions’ if we let this happen. That’s why I would like to call for a ‘legion of elves’ to continue expanding the information commons, to defeat the armies of trolls that defile it.”

Lindsey Andersen, an activist at the intersection of human rights and technology for Freedom House and Internews now doing graduate research at Princeton University, said, “As someone who largely grew up with the internet, it’s hard to find any development shocking. In the moment, it all felt very natural. Perhaps most surprising is the transition to companies in playing roles traditionally reserved for government. Facebook, Google, Apple, etc., are all now conduits of speech, expression and communication. Companies are not designed to provide public services and defend human rights and do not conceive of themselves in this way. It’s therefore no surprise that they have found themselves in hot water over their data and content-management practices.”

Perry Hewitt, a marketing, content and technology executive, wrote, “The most delightful surprise, as someone old enough to remember the sinking feeling of a thick, printed telephone bill arriving in the mail as costly punishment for international long distance, is the global, free, instantaneous communications connectivity. This week alone I was able to enjoy one of the few last conversations I will have with a critically ill friend in Australia; WeChat with a colleague traveling in China; see a friend’s baby in England take her first, tenuous steps. The biggest thing I got wrong? The concept that this connectivity would cause the work-talent pool to spread out as geography became less relevant. 1998 me was certain that ubiquitous connectivity would distribute jobs to lower-cost areas as well as enable more individuals to work from home. In some places and firms, like Automattic, the dream of effective remote work has been realized. But we have skyrocketing real estate costs and talent gluts in cities like New York and San Francisco as the power of human connection to fuel creativity remains paramount.”

Andrew Tutt, an expert in law and author of “An FDA for Algorithms,” said, “The most shocking thing to me about the evolution and impact of the internet has been how slowly it has gone given its potential. We are still only barely scratching the surface of the internet’s potential to revolutionize the world. That we still do not have a pervasive ‘Internet of Things’; that we still do not have widely-shared, immersive, persistent virtual worlds; that we still do such a poor job organizing the massive trove of information stored in the world’s old books; that we still do so little commerce on the internet – these things are all shocking to me. The internet can be so much more than it is, and it will be. But given all that it can be, it is surprising that it has only come this far since 1969.”

Bob Metcalfe, Hall of Fame co-inventor of Ethernet, founder of 3Com, now a professor of innovation and entrepreneurship at the University of Texas – Austin, said, “The single most important new fact about the human condition is that we are connected, suddenly, over the past 50 years. And we are still trying to figure out how to handle all of this connectivity. But already looming is the imminent arrival of the augmented, video, mobile, gigabit Internet of Things.”

Craig Partridge, chief scientist at Raytheon BBN Technologies for 35 years and Internet Hall of Famer, currently chair of the department of computer science at Colorado State University, wrote, “I was surprised at how tightly the internet became tied into our personal lives. It was clear from fairly early that it was going to be important in our work lives. But that we would manage our home lighting, our music-listening, our social lives, via the net was unexpected to me.”

Oscar Gandy, emeritus professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania, responded, “I could not have predicted the power and influence of social media like Facebook and Twitter, nor the consequences for social relations that have been distorted by their emphasis on self-promotion rather than cooperative social activities.”

Betsy Williams, a researcher at the Center for Digital Society and Data Studies at the University of Arizona, wrote, “I have been surprised at how smartphones have largely closed gaps in access to the internet. While there are still important digital divides, it is heartening to see how many people are authoring information available around the world, often thanks to a smartphone and Twitter or Facebook or YouTube. Although misinformation, bots and trolls are serious problems, the internet now gives a voice to many more people, useful especially in building communities, sharing aspects of life that are not depicted on television or experienced by the more powerful and documenting mistreatment.”

Andrew Wycoff, the director of OECD’s directorate for science, technology and innovation, wrote, “For me it has been the shift to mobile devices whose design requires that much of the data storage, content access and processing takes place elsewhere. We have come full circle back to the days of the mainframe with terminal devices being tethered to some central computer (albeit now there are many ‘central computers’). As someone who heralded the independence of the PC, I’m not completely comfortable with it.”

Eileen Donahoe, executive director of the Global Digital Policy Incubator at Stanford University, commented, “One big thing that has surprised me about the evolution of the internet is the extent to which all of our infrastructure and all of the hard material things of life have become connected, and with that connectivity has come significant new society-wide security vulnerabilities for which we have not been prepared.”

Barry Chudakov, founder and principal of Sertain Research and author of “Metalifestream,” commented, “The invisibility of complexity. As Thomas Friedman has written, with the rise of software and internet connections ‘suddenly complexity became fast, free, easy and invisible.’ Because it is not visible, people ignore it, pretend it is not there and may be inclined to fall prey to foolish notions, overly simplistic nostrums and easy answers that are empty rhetoric. Our tools are designed to be simple, quick, instantaneous. We have (or abide) limited word counts in messages and articles. This in the face of the greatest onslaught of complexity the world has ever known. It seems the more complexity we build into our tools and platforms, the more people exercise a retreat to delusion – the more they want the world to be simpler, easier, less varied. Instead, we should be preparing our children and ourselves to understand a world growing more complex by the minute.”

Esther Dyson, entrepreneur, former journalist, founding chair at ICANN and founder of Wellville, wrote, “I’m not surprised or shocked as much as disappointed: Up until now, users have shown surprisingly little interest in control of their data, and companies have predictably taken advantage of that. We need to help them learn how to manipulate themselves, rather than be manipulated.”

Gerry Ellis, founder and digital usability and accessibility consultant at Feel The BenefIT, responded, “Shockingly bad is how uneven the spread of access to technologies has been across the world. This is not just as a result of poverty, but because technology is usually designed and developed by young, intelligent people who do not understand the needs of groups that are different from them, e.g., people with disabilities. Shockingly good is the fact that there have been occasional sudden leaps forward in access to and use of technologies in poorer areas of the world. Foremost in these is the use of smartphones. This has improved remote access to education, basic health and other services as access to these does not require the absolutely newest and most expensive technology to work.”

Jennifer J. Snow, an innovation officer with U.S. Air Force USSOCOM Donovan Group and SOFWERX, wrote, “The lengths that people will go to online to be unnecessarily cruel to other people that they disagree with. We have lost the art of debate and discussion. This has led to an ever-widening gap, polarization between groups of people who should be talking and engaging but who aren’t, making the issues at hand more painful and dangerous. Any individuals who try to bridge the groups are automatically targeted by fake news or weaponized information from political rivals or external actors intent on corrupting and undermining trust in government and our leaders. This dangerous activity continues to get stifled instead of raised in the public eye, enabling it to remain an effective tool for cowards and covert actors.”

Alex Halavais, an associate professor of social technologies at Arizona State University, wrote, “Wikipedia. I have told my young students their grandkids will ask them how they helped build the modern equivalent of the Library of Alexandria, an amazing, extensive, freely available source of knowledge built largely by volunteers and without substantial resources.”

Leonard Kleinrock, Internet Hall of Fame member and co-director of the first host-to-host online connection, professor of computer science, University of California – Los Angeles, said, “The most shocking development of the internet in its first 50 years has been the explosion and dominance of interaction among people in the form of social networks.”

Steve Crocker, CEO and co-founder of Shinkuro Inc., internet pioneer and Internet Hall of Fame member, responded, “The extraordinary effect of Moore’s Law, a factor-of-10 improvement in cost/performance every five years, has caused improvements even beyond my expectation 50 years ago, so there’s been some surprise, but no shock.”

Henning Schulzrinne, co-chair of the Internet Technical Committee of the IEEE, professor at Columbia University and Internet Hall of Fame member, said, “I have been surprised by the emergence of a small number of hyper-scale companies dominating the internet.”

Paul Vixie, an Internet Hall of Fame member known for designing and implementing several Domain Name System protocol extensions and applications, wrote, “Making every man a publisher exposed a growing iron-age fundamentalist tribalism that we largely thought had shrunk and would continue to shrink.”

Michael M. Roberts, internet pioneer, first president and CEO of ICANN and Internet Hall of Fame member, responded, “Seamless scaling. I remember discussions with Vint Cerf in the late 1980s about preferred methods for expanding the internet’s numbering system to accommodate vastly larger numbers of active nodes. The IETF thought it was being visionary, but no one contemplated the system we now have. And no one thought that all telephones would be wireless and their own internet nodes! Or that amazingly complex applications could be downloaded in seconds.”

Lawrence Roberts, designer and manager of ARPANET, the precursor to the internet, and Internet Hall of Fame member, commented, “The most surprising thing to me is the limited change that has occurred in the design of the internet. The change has mainly been in the expansion of the net.”

Teus Hagen, Netherlands internet pioneer, former chair and director of NLnet and member of the Internet Hall of Fame, commented, “Social, political and commercial life and recreation are nearly impossible today without internet connectivity. Unfortunately, the internet’s IPv4 technology did not take society’s security in mind and it has become too complex, resulting in a situation similar to the biblical Towers of Babel.”

Michael Dyer, an emeritus professor of computer science at the University of California – Los Angeles, commented, “As a computer scientist, I used the internet far before other people. However, as long as computer science people ran the internet it was boring (used mainly to download software remotely). It was only when ‘regular’ people started using the internet that it became transformed. What shocked me the most was the huge success of Wikipedia. How could there be so many people willing to spend much of their time contributing to it?”

Devin Fidler, futurist and founder of Rethinkery Labs commented, “In the United States, there has been relatively little focus on integrating digital networks into the ‘operating system’ level of our social institutions. Instead of designing a new generation of companies and public sector tools that diverge from our industrial systems, we have mostly focused on the ‘application layer’ with less-visionary companies taking the lead within our traditional economic operating systems. The exception here is the distributed autonomous organization (DAO) advocates within the blockchain movement, but here again players seeking a quick payday have often taken precedence over projects that might build working new tools and expand this thinking beyond just the blockchain.”

Kyle Rose, principal architect, Akamai Technologies, responded, “The surprising thing about the evolution of the internet is how well it has scaled by so many orders of magnitude; the same protocols, with mostly minor tweaks, have scaled from vanishingly small levels of traffic to handling the terabits per second of traffic the backbone sees today.”

James Hendler, a web pioneer and professor of computer, web and cognitive sciences and director of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for Data Exploration and Application, wrote, “Those of us involved in internet and/or web development were largely engaged in cooperative activities and in developing ways to change the world for the better. I am shocked, looking back, by our naiveté in not realizing that commercial monopolies, vendors of misinformation and exploiters of personal information would be able to use these technologies for their purposes as well.”

Christian Huitema, internet pioneer and consultant focused on privacy online, previously Internet Architecture Board president, chief scientist at Bell Research and Microsoft distinguished engineer, commented, “The big surprise was the advertisement-based business model evolving toward full-scale surveillance. In hindsight, we should have known better.”

Jonathan Grudin, a principal design researcher at Microsoft, commented, “I was surprised at how rapidly it shifted from being non-commercial to overwhelmingly commercial in the 1990s.”

Judith Donath, author of “The Social Machine, Designs for Living Online” and faculty fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman-Klein Center for Internet and Society, commented, “Its transformation into a pervasive and one-sided surveillance system. That governments and business would read one’s published words was not shocking. But their hoovering up private behaviors – recording each click, measuring the seconds spent on each page – is (or should be). With the Internet of (Spying) Things, the collection of intricately-detailed information grows explosively: not just where you went, but how vigorously you braked getting there, an attempt to algorithmically know you in a manner so intimately invasive as to be nearly biblical. Shocking, too, is the one-sidedness. There are no data portraits that would enrich online discourse. Nor are there data mirrors; your information is unavailable to you – and it may well be used against you.”

Jerry Michalski, founder of the Relationship Economy eXpedition, said, “How it blew through one old assumption after another. Long-distance calls are expensive. Handheld devices can’t have connectivity, a color screen and computing power. How will I find anything? How will I host videos I make? How can I tell the world about my idea? All blown away.”

Charlie Firestone, communications and society program executive director and vice president at The Aspen Institute, commented, “The social media’s accumulation of such a great deal of the digital advertising dollar to the extent that news services are having to turn to alternative business models.”

Jeff Johnson, computer science professor at the University of San Francisco, previously with Xerox, HP Labs and Sun Microsystems, responded, “The vulnerability of computer systems connected to the internet and the number of ‘bad actors’ worldwide who are taking advantage of that.”

Ian Peter, a pioneer internet activist and internet rights advocate based in Australia, said, “The development I did not foresee was the surveillance of masses of accumulated personal data and the utilisation of such data to create a financial model for access that makes the user a commodity for utilisation by any party who can gain financially buy access to such data.”

Jonathan Taplin, director emeritus at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab, wrote, “That social media could morph into a tool for propaganda and disinformation so quickly. That democracy was so unprepared to deal with that problem.”

Geoff Arnold, CTO for the Verizon Smart Communities organization, said, “The willingness of social media providers to tolerate anonymous and unverified participation.”

Steven Thompson, an author specializing in illuminating emerging issues and editor of “Androids, Cyborgs, and Robots in Contemporary Culture and Society,” wrote, “I was surprised when the multinational corporations all got on board by 1997 and then changed the makeup, complexion, direction and overall purpose of the internet, moving it from a wild and free global experiment to an endless shopping mall.”

Baratunde Thurston, futurist, former director of digital at The Onion, co-founder of comedy/technology start-up Cultivated Wit, said, “The rise of shaming mobs online. I came up on the internet that celebrated expression and creativity, but we’re in a turn right now where mob mentalities and outrage are constantly weaponized. It’s far from what I initially expected though in hindsight not very surprising. People can be the worst when empowered to connect and be heard but stripped of eye contact and physical proximity and nuance, we’ve unleashed something very ugly in our nature that I didn’t see coming.”

Karen Oates, director of workforce development and financial stability for La Casea de Esperanza, commented, “Quite honestly, in the last two years I’ve been shocked that, as new and better forms of social media burgeon, communication appears to be devolving. It is appalling and heartbreaking to see how good technology can be used to encourage hatred, treat others contemptuously, and create such division in our country, our neighborhoods and even in families.”

Aaron Agien Nyangkwe, a respondent based in Africa, responded, “Unlike other technologies, the rate of internet penetration in the rural societies of the world is one of the most fascinating aspects. People’s ability to adapt to it quickly despite what appears to be a literacy handicap is amazing.”

Mike Meyer, chief information officer at Honolulu Community College, commented, “The most shocking thing has been the ease with which some governments – all to some extent – have been able to take control of an inherently open network system. This is part of the problem of maintaining valid and truthful information that people can refer to when in doubt. Many of us at the beginning of the internet and, specifically, the World Wide Web, assumed openness would be as self-correcting as it is in the scientific process. That assumed broad education and shared definitions of truth that were incredibly naïve.”

Robert Bell, co-founder of Intelligent Community Forum, wrote, “Facebook. From zero customers in 2004 to 2 billion in 2016 generating $28 billion in revenue. That is impossible and yet it happened. And then Facebook revealed how harmful the same success formula could be when it opens the door for human evil.”

Mícheál Ó Foghlú, engineering director and DevOps Code Pillar at Google, Munich, said, “I did not predict the growth of a fake news culture where the culture of intelligent journalism based on trying to discover the truth – however inconvenient – using factual evidence, has been undermined by baseless polemic and outright untruth, exploiting the click-bait social media mindset. The fact that this potentially undermines democracy, which is based on a free press, is most disturbing.”

Wangari Kabiru, author of the MitandaoAfrika blog, based in Nairobi, commented, “One of the most surprising or shocking things about the evolution and impact of the internet since 1969 is that with its pace, dynamism, adoption and the insatiable hunger for more development from and around it, there are entire populations left behind.”

Nigel Hickson, an expert on technology policy development who is based in Brussels, responded, “How governments’ viewing of the internet went from indifference (even contempt) to gradual interest to full desire to control.”

Robert M. Mason, a professor emeritus in the Information School at the University of Washington, responded, “Most shocking: how the internet has revealed – and seems to have amplified – the tribal heritage of human social interaction and its lack of shared humanity.”

Mark Surman, executive director of the Mozilla Foundation and author of “Commonspace: Beyond Virtual Community,” responded, ‘The phrase ‘Orwell was an optimist’ has been floating around for a while now. It surprises and saddens me that this is true. And the internet we all helped build is at the root of this truth.”

Greg Shannon, chief scientist for the CERT Division at Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, said, “Two things surprised me. The first, in 1993, was the realization that there really was no security built into the internet. It’s why I went into cybersecurity; I knew it would be a long, hard problem that would require lots of non-technical elements/innovations to solve. The second is the distance between what technologists think common users understand about the internet and what users really understand/think/imagine about the internet. Researchers have regularly had to recalibrate human-subject experiments for usability, security and privacy based on gross underappreciation of the size of this gap.”

James Gannon, global head of eCompliance for emerging technology, cloud and cybersecurity at Novartis, responded, “The lack of structured governance of such a critical asset.”

Christine Boese, digital strategies professional, commented, “The revenge of the walled gardens. There is a steady pendulum swing toward open systems and an equal and opposite reaction away from open, distributed systems and toward more-concentrated enclaves where platforms are owned, highly restricted and far less scalable. Jonathan Zittrain warned of this as pertains to hardware options and the network. But I didn’t expect the limitations of CompServ, Prodigy and America Online to return under the guise of Facebook, Instagram and even Google crawlers.”

Jillian C. York, director of international freedom of expression for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, commented, “The corporate takeover.”

Brad Templeton, chair for computing at Singularity University, software architect and former president of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, responded, “The rise and power of propaganda and reinforcement of violent fringe ideologies.”

Richard Forno, of the Center for Cybersecurity and Cybersecurity Graduate Program at the University of Maryland – Baltimore County, wrote, “1) I am stunned that in the two decades since the ‘modern’ internet took root in society, we still rush into embracing new technology and services before giving serious thought to what it means for our individual, organizational or societal security and resilience. The benefits or conveniences of such innovations indeed may be wonderful and of great use to the world – but at what cost, either now or in the future? We need to think critically before blindly embracing the latest technology products or services. 2) I am shocked that in the two decades since the ‘modern’ internet took root in society we continue to make the same cybersecurity mistakes over and over. It seems we never learn from history!”

Soroush Vosoughi, a postdoctoral associate at the MIT Media Lab and fellow at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University, said, “The ubiquity of the internet is something that has surprised me since its beginning in 1969.”

Michael Kleeman, a senior fellow at the University of California – San Diego and board member at the Institute for the Future, formerly a vice president with Boston Consulting and executive at Sprint, wrote, “Having contributed to building the core infrastructure on four continents what has surprised me is both the speed of expansion of the internet and the almost total ignorance of the underlying economics of the internet on the part of policy makers.”

Bill Woodcock, executive director at Packet Clearing House, the research organization behind global network development, commented, “We labored in happy obscurity prior to URLs becoming a thing. The biggest surprise to me has been that anyone beyond our initial, relatively small circle of academics and engineers should care about this, or pay money for it and the things it enables. And that’s essentially entirely the product of the World Wide Web, rather than the internet itself.”

Stuart A. Umpleby, a professor and director of the research program in social and organizational learning at George Washington University, wrote, “I have been most shocked by the lack of a theory-guided design of the internet. The internet today is a first draft with multiple patches. Society’s ‘nervous system’ is extremely vulnerable. See John Day’s book, ‘Patterns in Network Architecture: A Return to Fundamentals.’ There is a rush to use the current system, not to build a reliable system.”

Sherry Turkle, MIT professor and author of “Alone Together,” said, “We have allowed the internet to become the perversion of what it was dreamed to be. Dreamed as a force for democracy and individual expression, it is a place of surveillance, where the most useful skill is learning how to hide.”

John Markoff, longtime technology reporter for the New York Times and author of “Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots,” wrote, “It has become a significant force for the subversion of democratic governments.”

K. Stout, a respondent who provided no identifying details, said, “The most surprising impact of the internet is the change in life tempo. Solving an administrative problem in 1969 might have required a phone call and the exchange of letters, taking several weeks. Now we expect we can do that in an online interaction, at any time, and have it resolved in a half hour. We expect instantaneous answers – news updates, responses to social media, Googling questions. Time has changed.”

Ebenezer Baldwin Bowles, author, editor and journalist, responded, “Most shocking of all is the presence of surveillance cameras in the public realm. Seems simple, doesn’t it? But who could have imagined the underlying premise, that we are each and all criminals worthy of surveillance and monitoring at every turn.”

Andreas Kirsch, fellow at Newspeak House, formerly with Google and DeepMind in Zurich and London, wrote, “How pervasive and dominant advertising has become as a business model.”

Danil Mikhailov, head of data and innovation for Wellcome Trust, responded, “Just the tremendous scale of information now freely available online and the vast untapped potential this creates for further innovation. Even if nothing more is added, we will be mining this information for benefits for many years to come.”

Charles Ess, a professor expert in ethics with the Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo, Norway, said, “The rapid growth and ubiquity of the internet and its affiliated technologies and applications. When Marshall McLuhan enthused over an ‘electronic global village’ in the 1960s, an enthusiasm that drove many pundits and techno-evangelists in the early 1990s – it nonetheless seemed a bit wacky (perhaps because other bits of McLuhan also seemed wacky). But its development from a communication system for elite communities to the envelope and atmosphere of our lives 50 years later – with all the good and bad it brings in its train – remains staggering to me.”

Chao-Lin Liu, a professor at National Chengchi University, Taiwan, commented, “Mobility is extremely enhanced.”

Denise N. Rall, a professor of arts and social sciences at Southern Cross University, Australia, responded, “Social media. I was raised to believe that computers were for problem-solving, not propaganda.”

Ben Shneiderman, distinguished professor and founder of the Human Computer Interaction Lab at University of Maryland, said, “The prevalence of misleading information, rise of conspiracy theories and extremist positions.”

Erik Huesca, president of the Knowledge and Digital Culture Foundation, based in Mexico City, said, “There are many things that have impacted each other, transforming a network of computers into the most important system of mass communication. The original idea of communicating in the diversity of operating systems of expensive and scarce computers was transformed in communicating in the diversity of cultures, human beings, converting English into the lingua franca of our time.”

David Wells, chief financial officer at Netflix, responded, “The narcissism inherent in social media.”

Bart Knijnenburg, assistant professor of computer science active in the Human Factors Institute at Clemson University, said, “In the beginning I felt like the internet was going to become a unifying force. It was bringing likeminded people together, and it felt like it was going to erase or at least reduce a lot of the divides in society. What saddens me is that the internet has become compartmentalized (both geographically and ideologically) and in some cases even serves as a catalyst of division. I hope this will change in the future.”

Barry Hughes, senior scientist at the Center for International Futures, University of Denver, commented, “Two things: The speed of its unfolding and the extent of my own use of it.”

Aneesh Aneesh, author of “Global Labor: Algocratic Modes of Organization” and professor at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, responded, “As I was one of the first to predict the importance of algorithms in social life in the late 1990s, the most surprising development has been the rise of web-based platforms governed not by middle managers but by algorithms.”

Danny Gillane, a netizen from Lafayette, Louisiana, commented, “I am shocked that the internet has not improved the lives of more people. I would have thought that it would have spread democracy beyond borders and given voice to the marginalized, but it hasn’t. I sometimes feel it has marginalized even more people.”

Paola Perez, vice president of the Internet Society chapter in Venezuela, and chair of the LACNIC Public Policy Forum, responded, “That the quality of life of individuals has improved but it has made us dependent on the tool.”

Brian Harvey, lecturer on the social implications of computer technology at the University of California – Berkeley, said, “Nothing exactly shocks me – in retrospect it should have been predictable – but I’m deeply saddened by the shift from democratic forms (email, Usenet) to corporate forms (the World Wide Web).”

Dalsie Green Baniala, CEO and regulator for telecommunications for Vanuatu, wrote, “Some people are so individualistic and could not connect with human interactions unless it is through internet.”

Ed Lyell, longtime internet strategist and professor at Adams State University, responded, “How slow the education industry has been to use the internet and other technology tools to help children and adults learn more effectively. I have concluded that K-12 educators are mostly against learning once tenured. All too many just punch in and punch out. All too many at the university level only care about their research and resent having to teach at all. In higher education they keep focusing narrowly on their research interests and do not keep up with the broader field as needed to teach at levels that help students.”

Dan Lynch, internet pioneer, founder and president of Interop and 1970s manager of the AI Center at Stanford Research Institute, said, “[I’m surprised] we are still alive.”

David Klann, consultant and software developer at Broadcast Tool & Die, responded, “The rate of adoption and connectivity of rural and wilderness areas of the world.”

Tomas Ohlin, longtime professor at Linköping and Stockholm universities in Sweden, responded, “That internet acceptance has taken so long.”

Adam Nelson, a software developer for one of the “big five” global technology companies, said, “The internet is so federated and yet it continues to thrive on governance models that are totally unused in the affairs of people.”

Mai Sugimoto, an associate professor of sociology at Kansai University, Japan, responded, “When my grandfather studied abroad alone in 1963, it was very difficult to communicate with family members in his home country. He just could send letters and packages. When I studied abroad last year, 2017, I made video calls via the internet to my grandfather in my home country. My grandfather was so impressed that the world is narrow now because of the internet.”

Christopher Leslie, lecturer in media, science and technology studies at South China University of Technology, wrote, “When I was young, advertisements about modems providing the possibility to communicate with people all over the world captivated my attention. I never dreamed the way these conversations would improve my sense of self and my competence as a human being as well as a professional. These ‘weak ties’ to people outside my immediate work and political sphere are extremely important to my worldview.”

Andrew Whinston, a computer science professor and director of the Center for Research in Electronic Commerce, University of Texas – Austin, said, “The internet has changed the role and potential of computing. We now have the cloud idea. The internet has security problems.”

Anirban Sen, a lawyer and data privacy consultant, based in New Delhi, India, wrote, “The drivers of technology need to think how to leave out the chaff from the digital grain. Responsible journalism was the way accurate news used to travel before. Now, nothing can generally distinguish between what is fact and what is someone’s opinion. And people still do not understand how to know the difference or distinguish between the patterns of truth and falsity.”

Warren Yoder, longtime director of the Public Policy Center of Mississippi, now an instructor at Mississippi College, responded, “Most shocking by far is the inadequacy of the polity to adjust to the new social and economic realities.”

R “Ray” Wang, founder and principal analyst at Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research, said, “How long it took for adoption and how quickly it took to become a force for evil instead of a force of good. Like all new technologies, the sin adoption curve (porn, gambling, money-laundering, etc.) took to this tech first and then everyone else jumped in.”

Fiona Kerr, industry professor of neural and systems complexity at the University of Adelaide, Australia, commented, “The lack of proactiveness in terms of push-back as an open system became corralled by a few large enterprises, largely for profit. Feeding into this has been our inability to agree as a globe on large, complex and long-term issues and trends, and the emergent behaviour which occurs as an outcome of the interaction between humans and technologies, especially when the attention economy is a chief driver.”

Christopher Yoo, a professor of law, communication and computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, responded, “The speed with which it has displaced traditional industrial powers. If you look at the lists of the 10 largest companies in the world, the companies that made up these lists were relatively stable and came from traditional industries, such as banking, petroleum, pharmaceuticals and traditional telecommunications. The list is now dominated by internet companies, many of which are only 10 or 20 years old and were started by students with a dream. It is also shaking up quiet, non-innovative sectors such as hotels and taxicabs. That is likely to spread to other areas such as financial services.”

Angelique Hedberg, senior corporate strategy analyst at RTI International, said, “The internet enabled a culture of expecting VALUE for free (no exchange of currency) enabling new market ecosystems that challenge the post-World War II systems of order before the emergence of World War III.”

Benjamin Kuipers, a professor of computer science at the University of Michigan, wrote, “The ability of bad actors to ‘weaponize’ information on social networks in order to deliberately undercut the trust that members of the society must have in each other for the society to be viable. The Cambridge Analytica scandal is a particularly clear example of this: using a personality questionnaire to identify particularly gullible and paranoid people and then feeding them false information to encourage their beliefs in conspiracy theories and counting on their communications among each other to amplify a message of fear and failure of trust.”

Luis Pereira, associate professor of electronics and nanotechnologies, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal, responded, “I was positively surprised by the technological developments of hand-held devices and cloud computation.”

Juan Ortiz Freuler, a policy fellow, and Nnenna Nwakanma, the interim policy director for Africa, at the Web Foundation, wrote, “The power an open network affords to creative ideas. We have become accustomed to a large swath of incredible online services that were impossible to imagine before they came to be. The open network allowed those with fantastic ideas to make them available to huge amounts of people, and eventually hit with an audience. The speed at which innovation is taking place because of this openness is unprecedented. The degree to which policy-makers struggle to understand the value of an open internet (and the need to protect it) is something that certainly leaves us in awe.”

Lane Jennings, a recent retiree who served as managing editor for the World Future Review from 2009 to 2015, wrote, “The spread and complacent acceptance of false or misleading information posted by individuals and groups and accepted at face value by internet users.”

George Kubik, president of Anticipatory Futures Group, wrote, “Surprise: Increasingly rapid numbers of participants involved in information exchanges; lack of judgement in adopting and applying information.”

Daniel Riera, a professor of computer science at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, commented, “The Arab Spring.”

Matthew Henry, chief information officer at LeTourneau University, Longview, Texas, said, “The World Wide Web rose so fast. This connection engine the internet was designed for became the world’s life-knowledge broker.”

Steve Chenoweth, an associate professor of computer science at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, said, “That new modes of communication, like texting, changed the nature of human interaction – it’s colder than face-to-face. And political discourse is now more segmented.”

Jennifer Jarratt, owner of Leading Futurists consultancy, commented, “The possibility that most people can neither understand nor use effectively most of the information they have access to. And some people can, unfortunately.”

Francisco S. Melo, an associate professor of computer science at Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, Portugal, responded, “The wide availability of mobile internet services that allow us to access media content any place, anywhere.”

Pedro U. Lima, an associate professor of computer science at Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, Portugal, said, “The impressive ability to access daunting huge amounts of information, that has even changed our daily operation (e.g., using our memory, navigating).”

Meryl Alper, an assistant professor of communication at Northeastern University and a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, wrote, “The lack of connection for wide swaths of Americans and the extreme inequality of reliable internet access within the same large city centers.”

John Laird, a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan, responded, “Its ubiquity resulting from the elimination of technical and economic barriers of use, which has led to its commercial explosion.”

Toby Walsh, a professor of AI at the University of New South Wales, Australia, and president of the AI Access Foundation, said, “I remember back in the late 1980s when you couldn’t do anything commercial on the internet, and everyone thought it would spoil the atmosphere of the place. And yet, opening up the internet to commerce has brought about an amazing cornucopia of services that we could never have dreamt about that are set to transform our lives.”

Alan Bundy, a professor of automated reasoning at the University of Edinburgh, wrote, “I was quite unprepared for the World Wide Web, browsers, email, etc., when they first appeared, but soon learnt to take advantage of them all.”

Andrea Romaoli Garcia, an international lawyer active in internet governance discussions, commented, “The lack of communication is surprising me. The internet has expanded communication, and social networks have emerged to provide social interaction. The result: People don’t communicate anymore. Human beings have created social rules for not communicating. This is the next challenge: to get people to communicate [in-person] again. The lack of communication between people hinders diplomacy and this generates wars.”

Bert Huang, an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech focused on machine learning, wrote, “I can’t think of an answer because I’m now realizing that rapid change of the internet and its role in society are normal. I hope this is a good thing.”

Denis Poussart, a consultant in advanced technologies with expertise in computer architecture and AI, commented, “Probably the speed with which we have moved into a meme-prevailing world, to the point that a super-powerful tool is often abused rather than promoting human values.”

Ken Birman, a professor in the department of computer science at Cornell University, responded, “The very first time I was shown a web browser – during a visit to a laboratory run by Xerox Parc – I honestly had no idea of the significance of what I was seeing, even though the tour leader ‘got it’ and explained. This is the thing that has most astonished me: the amazing power of the internet as we take it to higher levels of abstractions (because what is a web browser if not a higher-level layer over the network?). Next time I won’t be so narrow-minded: The potential of the internet to host ever-greater advances really seems to be unbounded. And I believe it is, literally, unbounded.”

Anthony Judge, author, futurist, editor of the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential, former head of the Union of International Associations, said, “The failure to make full use of capabilities to facilitate inter-sectoral dialogue – whether between academic faculties, political parties, religions or ‘progressives’ – notably in conference environments, and despite the development of groupware. More shocking is the careful avoidance of consideration of such possibilities – presumably recognized as disruptive of business as usual, however dysfunctional.”

Karine Perset, an economist in OECD’s digital economy policy division, responded, “What has surprised me the most about the internet’s evolution has been the rise of social media and the willingness of people of all origins, age groups and walks of life to share information about themselves, their personal lives, so widely online.”

Dave Burstein, editor and publisher at Fast Net News, said, “Two-thirds of internet users are in the Global South and I’m seeing a trend for power to follow. I hope I’m not fooling myself.”

Micah Altman, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and head scientist in the program on information science at MIT Libraries, wrote, “The speed of the expansion of the network and the deluge of data that is produced and communicated is, in retrospect, astounding.”

Justin Amyx, a technician with Comcast, said, “The pace of technological growth. I would also say I am very surprised at the large amount of people who have found themselves addicted to social media.”

Bryan Johnson, founder and CEO of Kernel, a leading developer of advanced neural interfaces, and OS Fund, a venture capital firm, said, “I expect blind spots to exist among individuals in certain circumstances, but the scale at which society allowed the exploitation of the default human brain was surprising to me. There was a lack of thoughtfulness about the inevitable impact of tech designed to exploit attention. We designed tools to push us into irrelevance – sort of a surprise, but then again, maybe not.”

Dan Geer, a respondent who provided no identifying details, commented, “The degree to which it followed the historical pattern of television.”

Rik Farrow, editor of “;login:” a publication of USENIX Association, wrote, “Our continued lack of security. Nation-states routinely invade other nations’ computers and networks to throw an election or to investigate what happened and to steal intellectual property. Criminals have advanced to stealing from banks, while hospitals and other organizations get locked out of their own networks. Thought we’d have fixed this by now…”

E. Ohlson, a respondent who provided no identifying details, commented, “That so many people continue to be shocked about the change and impact of the internet, and the increasing rate of change.”

Andrian Kreye, a journalist and documentary filmmaker based in Germany, said, “The speed of technological progress in the past 50 years is still surprising. The lack of political and societal will to battle the negative effects is shocking.”

Alf Rehn, a professor of innovation, design and management in the school of engineering at the University of Southern Denmark, commented, “The one thing that has surprised me is how quickly we went from all being producers and consumers to merely being consumers. The internet became one more medium controlled primarily by media corporations faster than I saw coming.”

Bryan Alexander, futurist and president of Bryan Anderson Consulting, responded, “I was surprised that openness won out in many ways over commerce and government, starting with the release of the web and moving on to well-known triumphs like Wikipedia, Linux, the blogosphere, Librivox, etc.”

Johanna Drucker, professor of digital humanities in the department of information studies at the University of California – Los Angeles, said, “We have come to understand in a terrifying and palpable way how addictive symbolic exchange and engagement are for individual human beings.”

Arthur Bushkin, an IT pioneer who worked with the precursors to ARPANET and Verizon, wrote, “No one I know predicted the prevalence or the impact of wireless technology.”

Charles Zheng, a researcher into machine learning and AI with the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health, commented, “I was surprised that media companies were largely successful in reducing internet piracy. However, this is a good thing because it means that the internet was less disastrous for the integrity of intellectual property than people may have feared.”

Bebo White, managing editor of the Journal of Web Engineering and emeritus associate of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, said, “Shocked by the weaponization of the internet.”

Adam Powell, senior fellow at the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy, wrote, “The surprise for so many of us is how quickly totalitarian regimes have discovered they can use the internet for repression and control.”

Anthony Picciano, a professor of education at the City of New York University Interactive Pedagogy and Technology program, responded, “The way it has been adopted by the masses for basic communication services (i.e., telephone, television, education, etc.).”

Alex Smith, partner relationship manager at Monster Worldwide, said, “How much it’s impacted our global politics. Who would have ever thought that we would be discussing how fake news stories created by a foreign government for the goal of electing a president would be part of our news today. But it happened.”

Avery Holton, a clinical/translational scholar and professor expert in digital and social media at the University of Utah, commented, “The building up of communities for swift (and perhaps frequently unwanted) forms of social change. In the last several years alone, we have seen a rise in analytics and technologies that help people build communities around the inconsequential as well as the transformative in ways that are often too difficult to keep up with. Community-building moves so quickly now and it is built around issues.”

Benjamin Shestakofsky, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania specializing in digital technology’s impacts on work, said, “Far-flung, poorly paid contractors employed by privately owned corporations have become unlikely arbiters of free speech.”

Jamais Cascio, research fellow at the Institute for the Future, wrote, “Shocking at the time, not shocking now (but quite disappointing) is the ability of conventional institutions of power to push back against the decentralizing and flattening effects of the internet. The modern commercial internet treats independent thought as damage and routes around it.”

Amy Webb, founder of the Future Today Institute and professor of strategic foresight at New York University, commented, “It’s shocking to me that so few people foresaw what the internet might become – our primary communications network powering government, business, academia and everyday life. Foresight would have led to smarter business and governance strategies, and the internet would have been treated as a utility (like electricity and water) rather than a politicized technology.”

Amali De Silva-Mitchell, futurist, responded, “Slower development than expected.”

Edson Prestes, a professor and director of robotics at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, responded, “The possibility to interact with anyone in the world. In fact, I changed my life due to interaction via chats with people across Brazil.”

Anita Salem, systems research and design principal at SalemSystems, wrote, “Manipulation of behaviors and attitudes from the use of big data.”

Alan Mutter, a longtime Silicon Valley CEO and cable TV executive, now a teacher of media economics and entrepreneurism at the University of California – Berkeley, said, “The speed and power with which this technology was adopted – and how profoundly it is changing human thought and interaction.”

David Bray, executive director for the People-Centered Internet Coalition, commented, “No longer do we have five to 10 years to assess the impact of a technology and then incorporate norms, laws, etc. Now we have to operate on a six-month or three-month time horizon which, when combined with the media’s tendency to dramatically over-simplify news articles and reduce complications in narratives about what is occurring, risk over-simplifying for the public the issues at hand, polarizing different groups and creating an ever-increasing number of ‘wedge issues’ in societies.”

David Cake, an active leader with Electronic Frontiers Australia and vice-chair of the ICANN GNSO Council, wrote, “The best surprise is how quickly the internet managed to avoid the gatekeepers of all forms of government regulation. The most shocking is how quickly the open-web era collapsed to the walled-garden, vertically-integrated oligopoly of the social media era.”

Estee Beck, assistant professor at the University of Texas and author of “A Theory of Persuasive Computer Algorithms for Rhetorical Code Studies,” responded, “How the United States ended up in the giant mess of allowing the erosion of personal privacy online.”

Adam Popescu, a writer who contributes frequently to the New York Times, Washington Post, Bloomberg Businessweek, Vanity Fair and the BBC, wrote, “That it’s still not regulated.”

Alex Simonelis, computer science faculty member, Dawson College, Montreal, said, “Its speed and pervasiveness (at least in the developed world).”

David J. Krieger, co-director of the Institute for Communication & Leadership in Lucerne, Switzerland, wrote, “Network effects and the power of internet monopolies that demand a new form of corporate social responsibility.”

Craig Mathias, principal at Farpoint Group, an advisory firm specializing in wireless networking and mobile computing, commented, “Nothing. I’ve been working on computing and communications technologies for over 40 years.”

David A. Banks, an associate research analyst with the Social Science Research Council, said, “I’ve been shocked at how otherwise socially progressive critical thinkers are easily taken by ‘digital wellness’ sorts of arguments that are nothing more than scolding users for acting just as the technologies are designed to make them act.”

Bernie Hogan, senior research fellow at Oxford Internet Institute, wrote, “What surprises me the most is how poorly we translate our will into innovation. We think we want a ‘second life’ or a ‘virtual life’ when we really just wanted a way to more easily contact those who are far away. Facebook does the job without creating a virtual reality space. Similarly, I thought I wanted a flying car. Turns out a mobile phone is a lot easier to manage and still enables me to stay connected easily.”

Alexey Turchin, existential risks researcher at Foundation Science for Life Extension and founder of the Russian Transhumanist Party, responded, “The speed of miniaturisation of devices and speed of growth of bandwidth. Internet addiction as new norm; but it didn’t make us happy.”

David Brake, senior lecturer in communications at the University of Bedfordshire, U.K., said, “It has surprised me how quickly society appears to normalise the changes in our behaviour that are being driven by technology and tech companies. Few could have anticipated the extent to which we share pictures of ourselves and our families and our whereabouts and activities comfortably with acquaintances and strangers.”

Jennifer King, director of privacy at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, said, “I am surprised at how much the evolution of the internet has hinged on and affected social aspects rather than pure technological aspects.”

Fred Davis, mentor at Runway Incubator in San Francisco, responded, “The impact of social media on individuals and society.”

Gene Crick, director of the Metropolitan Austin Interactive Network and longtime U.S. community telecommunications expert, wrote, “Facebook. I’m astounded to discover that so many professional colleagues and friends, otherwise thoughtful, even erudite, find it necessary to keep me informed of their traffic status and dinner plans.”

Kenneth R. Fleischmann, an associate professor at the University of Texas – Austin School of Information, responded, “The most surprising thing about the development of the internet has been the rate at which mobile computing has been adopted globally; specifically, activities such as mobile banking are extremely widespread in the developing world, while many individuals in developed nations do not use these features due to economic considerations, lack of familiarity or concerns about security.”

Hank Dearden, executive director at ForestPlanet Inc., said, “While I’m certainly amazed at the myriad impacts of the internet I can’t say I am surprised by any of it since I had/have no pre-conceived notions of what it should or shouldn’t be.”

Hume Winzar, associate professor and director of the business analytics undergraduate program at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, wrote, “Democratisation of media has not resulted in a better-educated and knowledgeable population. The opposite has occurred. Polarised ideology and crackpot ideas have become normal.”

Kenneth Cukier, author and data editor for The Economist, commented, “The net was intended to be a decentralized network, and in theory it is, but in practice it is far more centralized and concentrated than anything that ever existed offline. The winner-take-all aspect of internet traffic and user attention affects everything from e-commerce to media. It’s astounding and problematic.”

Lou Gross, professor of mathematical ecology and expert in grid computing, spatial optimization and modeling of ecological systems at the University of Tennessee – Knoxville, said, “How it has allowed entire new industries to arise that it was not clear any science fiction writer pre-1960 had ever foreseen. Just the fact that we aren’t too great at prognostication is a lesson.”

João Pedro Taveira, embedded systems researcher and smart grids architect for INOV INESC Inovação, Portugal, wrote, “As a father of internet has stated, ‘If his team didn’t invent the internet, someone would.’ I grew up when the internet was not available in every home or everywhere as it is now. I can’t imagine how life would be without it. ‘Boost’ is the best word to describe how the internet changed evolution.”

Jeff Jarvis, director of the Tow-Knight Center at City University of New York’s Craig Newmark School of Journalism, commented, “I suppose I’m most surprised that the internet has perhaps not so much changed us but has begun to reverse a change wrought by printing, beginning to return us – in fits and difficult starts – to a society based more on community and conversation. The creators of the theory called the Gutenberg Parenthesis, Tom Pettitt and Lars Ole Sauerberg, argue that the era of print – of the container, of content, of media – was a five-century exception in how society operates. We shall see.”

John Willinsky, professor and director of the Public Knowledge Project at Stanford Graduate School of Education, said, “What continues to surprise me is the ways in which the internet can be used to amplify human foibles and virtues.”

Joshua Loftus, assistant professor of information, operations and management sciences at New York University and co-author of “Counterfactual Fairness in Machine Learning,” commented, “The low-level infrastructure originally had the potential to be truly revolutionary. I’ve been shocked by how much its evolution has been constrained and captured by platform monopolies, leaving so much of that original potential unrealized.”

Joseph Potvin, executive director at the Xalgorithms Foundation – creating specifications and components for an “Internet of Rules” – responded, “I’m most surprised by what hasn’t changed substantively. The noosphere has more information and also more noise, but the homo sapiens sapiens [the anatomically-modern human] and the physical world around us operate by the same principles.”

Frank Kaufmann, president of Filial Projects and founder and director of the Values in Knowledge Foundation, said, “Its remarkable and relentless growth in size and in speed.”

Garland McCoy, founder and chief development officer of the Technology Education Institute, wrote, “For the most part, the internet has become a platform for carrying out Ben Franklin’s saying of ‘doing well by doing good.’”

Larry Lannom, internet pioneer and vice president at the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI), an expert in digital object architecture, said, “Its rapid and universal spread. It is now difficult to imagine life without it.”

Henry E. Brady, dean of the school of public policy at the University of California – Berkeley, wrote, “I am shocked by the degree to which it has empowered extremist groups and legitimated hatred. I am shocked by the degree to which a presence of some terrible actors on the internet has given them leverage and the ability to find kindred spirits.”

John Lazzaro, retired professor of electrical engineering and computer science, University of California – Berkeley, commented, “As a computer-science graduate student in the 1980s, using the internet via VT-100 terminals hooked up to a VAX-780 I was able to participate using the ‘first draft of history’ when it comes to internet services: Telnet, mail, Usenet, Talk, ping and friends. I was quite certain that Talk was an evolutionary dead end, and near-synchronous typing of short messages as a form of communication would not survive the birth of voice-over-IP. I could not have been more wrong!”

Manoj Kumar, manager at Mitsui Orient Lines, responded, “Those in the developed world were shocked and surprised at the loss of opportunities due to digitilisation so much against their wishes. Now they are the ones looking to break its base or provide the controlling direction.”

Karl M. van Meter, faculty of social sciences at Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, and author of “Computational Social Science in the Age of Big Data,” said, “My social and political science research, work and publishing has been greatly simplified and expanded. It has become far more independent of local power structures because of the internet.”

Gary Kreps, distinguished professor of communication and director of the Center for Health and Risk Communication at George Mason University, wrote, “I have been pleasantly surprised at how swiftly the internet has been adopted, embraced and improved since its inception. I am hopeful that these positive trends will continue over time.”

Frank Feather, futurist and consultant with StratEDGY, commented, “I am surprised that the internet has been poorly understood in terms of its basic extension of humanoid abilities, and also that it has not advanced faster and for more productive purposes.”

Gary Arlen, president of Arlen Communications, wrote, “Actually, not much has been surprising, given the long gestation period (1969 to mid-1990s when the web emerged). The me-too mind of corporations and the bandwagon similarity of applications has created fascinating business developments (mergers; winners-vs.-losers – such as Facebook vs. MySpace). The only surprise was that it took so long.”

Jim Belanich, of the Institute for Defense Analyses Science and Technology Division, responded, “How dependent we have become on the internet. It would be like losing electricity and indoor plumbing to live without it.”

Jerome Glenn, executive director of the State of the Future reports for the Millennium Project, said, “How much it has been used for criminal purposes.”

Helena Draganik, a professor at the University of Gdansk, Poland, responded, “The various forms of monetization of internet communication and information dissemination.”

Robert K. Logan, chief scientist at sLab and OCAT and professor emeritus of physics at the University of Toronto, Canada, said, “No surprises – Marshall McLuhan described the changes in the 1960s.”

Glenn Grossman, principal consultant for Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO), wrote, “I don’t think those who invented the internet could imagine it would play such a big role in commerce. It is a good thing; many of our jobs are now based on it.”

John Leslie King, computer science professor, University of Michigan, and a consultant on Cyberinfrastructure for the NSF CISE and SBE directorates for several years, commented, “Business-to-consumer electronic commerce took off much faster than I thought it would. This is tied to changes in order entry, order fulfillment, transportation, advertising, etc.”

Lee McKnight, an associate professor in the school of information studies at Syracuse University, commented, “In 1969, I was an 11-year-old suburban Jersey kid far more aware of the significance of the Moon landing, the Vietnam War and neighborhood pals’ older siblings going off to Woodstock, than computer-to-computer communications systems. Only as a grad student in the 1980s did my priorities and perceptions change. By 1985, it was clear from my MIT vantage point the future was digital and that it would impact everything. Eventually. Nothing has truly surprised me since then.”

Greg Lloyd, president and co-founder at Traction Software, responded, “The bottom-up, decentralized, incredibly rapid evolution of the simplest imaginable hypertext technology over an internet platform designed for researchers and computer geeks.”

José Estabil, director of entrepreneurship and innovation at MIT’s Skoltech Initiative, commented, “My main surprise about the internet is that the primary mechanism of access is a keyboard!”

Jan Schaffer, founder and executive director of J-Lab – The Institute for Interactive Journalism, responded, “What has most surprised and distressed me is the extent to which people perversely find ways to use it for evil ends at great cost to civil society.”

Fred Baker, independent networking technologies consultant, longtime leader in the Internet Engineering Task Force and engineering fellow with Cisco, commented, “My world has become both larger and smaller. Growing up, the seemingly interminable 45-minute drive across Cleveland to my grandparents’ house meant that I didn’t see them very often. In the 1990s, my mother (in Ohio) discovered that she could send emails to her grandchildren (in California), and they would respond to them. I find myself today engaged with people and businesses in many countries on many continents that my teenage self would never have dreamed of meeting.”

Liz Rykert, president at Meta Strategies, a consultancy that works with technology and complex organizational change, responded, “The addition of social media and the power of these tools to help people build and maintain connections. The downside of the is the power of the same tools to spread fake news and destroy people and ideas.”

Guy Levi, chief innovation officer for the Center for Educational Technology, based in Israel, wrote, “The elimination of space and the minimizing of time.”

Kenneth Grady, futurist, founding author of The Algorithmic Society blog and adjunct and adviser at the Michigan State University College of Law, responded, “The one thing I find most shocking about the internet is the continuing gap between how it is used and how it could be used. As much as it has become a tool for giving access to and sharing information, it still has an enormous number of blind spots and silos. They exist not because of technical issues, but because individuals and organizations are reluctant to share. We need to break through artificial barriers (while still respecting privacy) to free the data.”

Ashok Goel, director of the Human-Centered Computing Ph.D. Program at Georgia Tech, wrote, “The most surprising (and exciting) aspect of the internet since 1969 is the degree to which it has brought humanity closer together.”

Geoff Livingston, author and futurist, commented, “The destruction of truth. For me, the great strength of the internet is the access to knowledge. I never thought propagandists could use it to destroy many people’s perception of truth. It scares me to see facts dismissed so easily.”

John Sniadowski, a director for a technology company, wrote, “The sheer scale of cyberattacks and all the evolving mechanisms on the internet that make it toxic to the individual.”

Gianluca Demartini, a senior lecturer in data science at the University of Queensland, Australia, wrote, “The availability of the internet on mobile devices.”

Fernando Barrio, director of the law program at the Universidad Nacional de Rio Negro, Argentina, commented, “There are many surprising or shocking things about the evolution and impact of internet since 1969. One that stands out is the interaction between well-willed creators and inventors, the huge corporations with greed that surpasses the wildest dreams of the robber barons and the national governments that allow and encourage those developments in order to have more and better tools of social control.”

Paul Jones, professor of information science at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, responded, “1968 was the Year of Youth Revolution. How could 1969 top that? I was 19 and somehow aware that I wanted to work on computers and communications. I wake up each morning today astounded by the speed at which that crude science and engineering experiment has grown to become part of what we expect to work in our daily lives.”

John Laudun, a respondent who provided no identifying details, commented, “The thing that has surprised me the most is the sheer proliferation of communication platforms. I remember first using email, through PINE I think, in the 1980s and realizing how instantaneous written communication changed everything. In some ways, the promise of that is somewhat undermined by all the private vendors of communication. The distribution was not supposed to be of ourselves!”

Joseph Konstan, distinguished professor of computer science specializing in human-computer interaction and AI at the University of Minnesota, said, “I’m shocked at how long we’ve gone without either the crises or the solutions to bring real security to the internet. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised – we’re not good at protecting other critical infrastructure – but securing the internet is easier than securing power, water or transportation systems and we’re still not taking it seriously.”

Timothy Leffel, research scientist, National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, said, “The incredibly rapid improvement of hardware and its associated implications for AI architectures.”

Jonathan Swerdloff, consultant and data systems specialist for Driven Inc., wrote, “The single biggest surprise to me was the growth between 1998 and 2018 of the web and its accessibility to so many people. That presidents, popes and the people could use the same tools to communicate directly and in turn did so? Amazing.”

John Verdon, a retired futurist and consultant, wrote, “The stunning realization that information-knowledge is an anti-rival good, that the digital environment has also enabled the domestication of DNA.”

Leonardo Trujillo, a research professor in computing sciences at the Instituto Tecnológico de Tijuana, Mexico, responded, “That it has been able to keep its open and mostly free nature. This, of course, is quickly ending due to new laws and policies, particularly the end of net neutrality.”

James Scofield O’Rourke, a professor of management at the University of Notre Dame specializing in reputation management, commented, “Since my college graduation in 1968 I have come to realize that nothing is secret and no one is anonymous anymore. You cannot simply step ‘off the grid’ anymore. Who you are, what you’ve done and where you’ve been are part of the permanent record.”

Laurie Orlov, principal analyst at Aging in Place Technology Watch, wrote, “The role and significance of online search for individuals and industries – particularly Amazon.”

Jay Sanders, president and CEO of the Global Telemedicine Group, responded, “My access to knowledge outside my area of expertise has dramatically improved because of the ease of access that I have to it now.”

Barrack Otieno, general manager at the Africa Top-Level Internet Domains Organization, wrote, “The model that was adopted for the internet’s development has ensured that there will always be room for continuous development of the internet.”

Yvette Wohn, director of the Social Interaction Lab and expert on human-computer interaction at New Jersey Institute of Technology, commented, “That the core functions of the internet and its uses have not really changed at all since its inception.”

Monica Murero, director of the E-Life International Institute and associate professor in sociology of new technology at the University of Naples Federico II, Italy, commented, “The thing that surprised me the most about the internet since 1969 is that its development and rapid adoption has rapidly affected every sector of society.”

Ross Stapleton-Gray, principal at Stapleton-Gray and Associates, an information technology and policy consulting firm, commented, “The effects of the internet on U.S. politics, particularly the 2016 election. Still stunned.”

Michael R. Nelson, a technology policy expert for a leading network services provider who worked as a technology policy aide in the Clinton Administration, commented, “The slow adoption of end-to-end encryption and effective, interoperable, easy-to-use digital authentication.”

Michael Veale, a technology policy researcher at University College London, responded, “How easily the decentralised vision of the technology has been co-opted in such a wide variety of ways.”

Thomas H. Davenport, distinguished professor of information technology and management at Babson College and fellow of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, responded, “I have been shocked by the rise of intentionally divisive social media.”

Rob Frieden, professor of telecommunications and law at Penn State University, said, “Macro-economic impacts that belie the view that the internet empowers the individual. The ‘Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace’ by John Perry Barlow sadly has not panned out.”

Zoetanya Sujon, a senior lecturer specializing in digital culture at University of Arts London, commented, “Two things: First, the amount of government funding put into its early iterations and the privatization of the internet (e.g., following the NSFNET). Second, the ways in which the life of networked technologies follows life cycles established around products, knowledge and technologies (e.g., birth, development, maturity, obsolescence/decline/saturation/incremental change).”

Luke Stark, a fellow in the department of sociology at Dartmouth College and at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, wrote, “How naive the developers of the internet were regarding its authoritarian potential.”

Tracey P. Lauriault, assistant professor of critical media and big data in the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University, commented, “That it did not fulfill its promise of creating a more horizontal playing field. It in many ways has continued to reinforce inequalities even though there are many great social movements that have used social media platforms.”

Sasha Costanza-Chock, associate professor of civic media at MIT, said, “When social-movement networks like Indymedia and communities like early bloggers first created tools and practices of open publishing and demonstrated its power, most of us never imagined that our innovations would be captured and monetized by massive for-profit social network platform companies.”

Peter Levine, associate dean for research and professor of public affairs at Tufts University, wrote, “Portability. I don’t think I seriously imagined smartphones and other portable connected devices before they arrived on the market.”

Michiel Leenaars, director of strategy at NLnet Foundation and director of the Internet Society’s Netherlands chapter, responded, “The resistance of the internet against improvement, aka the ossification of the internet. We have been completely unable to improve the internet in fundamental ways despite its obvious many flaws, which has led to the browser vendors taking over much of the internet in terms of control. Even the dystopian revelations by Edward Snowden about mass surveillance have not been able to make real changes to the internet, although I do think the wheels are being set in motion as we speak. But that may take another 50 years.”

Eugene H. Spafford, internet pioneer and professor of computing sciences at Purdue University, commented, “I am surprised by the numbers of content producers, especially social media.”

Matt Belge, founder and president of Vision & Logic, said, “I never anticipated the Internet of Things, and the idea that billions of tiny devices would be connected.”

Walid Al-Saqaf, member of the board of trustees of the Internet Society (ISOC), commented, “The rate and magnitude of change.”

Robert D. Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, wrote, “I had expected that by now that global e-commerce would be much larger than it is today. Much of commerce has been digitized but is still national.”

Larry Rosen, a professor emeritus at California State University – Dominguez Hills expert on technology’s impacts on well-being, wrote, “I am surprised by the slow slide we have made into being obsessed with our smartphones. The smartphone is only about 10 years old, give or take a year or two, and we are spending countless hours a day peering at that tiny screen – often for no good reason. We no longer talk to those next to us, and our world has shrunk to a small box.”

Michael Muller, researcher in the AI interactions group for a major global technology solutions provider, responded, “I wish I were surprised by the Orwellian developments on the internet (propaganda, distortion). Alas, it is not very surprising. But it is shocking.”

Wendy Hall, professor of computer science at the University of Southampton, U.K., and executive director of the Web Science Institute, said, “How much self-harm society is able to do with it.”

Bob Frankston, software innovation pioneer and technologist based in North America, wrote, “The simple fact that the computing and communication capabilities that we first used in the 1960s have become part of everyone’s day-to-day lives. It actually happened!”

William Dutton, Oxford Martin Fellow at the Global Cyber Security Capacity Centre and founding director of the Oxford Internet Institute, commented, “How advances in the technology and use of the internet continue to surprise and impress users – we still have jaw-dropping moments about what we can do via this network of networks.”

Nicholas Beale, leader of the strategy practice at Sciteb, an international strategy and search firm, commented, “Irresponsible and serious harm done by business models that encourage polarisation, invective, fake news and loss of privacy.”

Marina Gorbis, executive director of the Institute for the Future and author of “The Nature of the Future: Dispatches from the Socialstructed World,” responded, “Privatization of the internet. It was envisioned as an open, peer-to-peer system of communication that was meant to decentralize the highly centralized telecommunications system of the time. Instead, it re-centralized and became co-opted by commercial interests, leaving hardly any truly-open non-commercial spaces open. Wikipedia may be the only open part of the internet today.”

Scott Burleigh, software engineer and intergalactic internet pioneer, wrote, “The emergence of an economy based on ‘sharing’ information. I can’t begin to understand it.”

Randy Marchany, chief information security officer at Virginia Tech and director of Virginia Tech’s IT Security Laboratory, said, “How much the internet has changed society in the past 25 years. Remember, most of society didn’t start connecting to the net until the mid 1990s.”

Peng Hwa Ang, professor of communications at Nanyang Technological University and author of “Ordering Chaos: Regulating the Internet,” commented, “I still remember the verdict in the 1996 ACLU vs. Reno case, when the court said that the internet was the greatest tool to promote democracy. How far today are we from that?”

Ramon Lopez de Mantaras, director of the Spanish National Research Council’s Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, said, “The fast adoption of this technology and the explosion of applications – particularly its strong impact on AI, especially during the recent years – that empowered deep-learning algorithms.”

Susan Mernit, executive director, The Crucible, co-founder and board member of Hack the Hood, responded, “The amazing growth and quality of mobile technology, how absolutely critical electricity is to life today, and how addicted we are to being always-on.”

Michael H. Goldhaber, an author, consultant and theoretical physicist who wrote early explorations on the digital attention economy, said, “In about the mid-1990s, I did not foresee the extent to which the internet would end up being dominated by a few large corporations whose chief goal is profit.”

Sam Ladner, a former UX researcher for Amazon and Microsoft, now an adjunct professor at Ontario College of Art & Design, wrote, “The degree to which we have held onto the written word, albeit with unusual and unexpected discursive innovation, such as the hashtag, for example. Despite the enormous increase in bandwidth and capacity for image and video data, we still have a robust written language.”

Peter Reiner, professor and co-founder of the National Core for Neuroethics at the University of British Columbia, Canada, commented, “The big surprise for me is the seductive allure of social media, and the myriad ways in which it has grown and expanded in the last decade or two of the past 50 years.”

Theodore Gordon, futurist, management consultant and co-founder of the Millennium Project, responded, “Its speed of development.”

Mike O’Connor, a retired technologist who worked at ICANN and on national broadband issues, commented, “The ease with which it can be used to manipulate public opinion.”

Ian O’Byrne, an assistant professor at the College of Charleston whose focus is literacy and technology, said, “I thought with the advent of these new technologies, groups would find and develop affinity spaces, and be inclusive to other groups, parties and ideologies.”

Mark Maben, a general manager at Seton Hall University, wrote, “The rise of social media and its net-negative impact on individuals and societies.”

Vian Bakir, a professor of political communication and journalism at Bangor University, responded, “I am most shocked at how much can be known about a person from their use of the internet.”

Shannon Ellis, a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, said, “How willing people are to be cruel to one another when they don’t actually have to face the person. It’s been saddening and surprising. It has made me recalibrate my inherent thoughts on other humans.”

Mario Morino, chairman of the Morino Institute and co-founder of Venture Philanthropy Partners, commented, “The sheer velocity and volume of adoption post-1995 and again post 2006 – staggering levels of global scale reached.”

Tom Worthington, Australian internet pioneer and adjunct senior lecturer in the Research School of Computer Science at Australian National University, said, “It is a surprise how quickly the internet was adopted.”

Pamela Rutledge, director of the Media Psychology Center, responded, “The rapidity of public loss of trust in information and authorities and the attendant rise in tribalism has been depressing, if not shocking. This is a reflection of the amplification of political use/abuse of information channels afforded by the internet.”

Raimundo Beca, partner at Imaginacción, formerly a member of the ICANN board, said, “I have been surprised by the speed of the internet deployment.”

Joly MacFie, president of the Internet Society New York Chapter, commented, “That it works!”

Peggy Lahammer, director of health/life sciences at Robins Kaplan LLP and legal market analyst, commented, “I am most surprised by the change in social interactions. I’ve been surprised by our ability to develop relationships through online social tools without the need to travel or know other languages.”

Michael Pilos, chief marketing officer at FirePro, said, “We all thought that the internet would have been the panacea of media and freedom. Now it seems that it’s just becoming another selective, localised and biased platform.”

Cliff Zukin, professor of public policy and political science at the School for Planning and Public Policy and the Eagleton Institute of Politics, Rutgers University, said, “I never thought it would expand so quickly and have such universal effects. In my area of survey research, in the last 10 years we have devolved to where there are no standards of quality in published work and no orthodox way of doing so after 50 years of consensus. Very much a paradigm shift for us, and paradigm shifts are quite rare.”

Sam Punnett, research and strategy officer at TableRock Media, wrote, “The thing that has shocked me the most is the continuous inability/reluctance by leaders and policymakers to grasp the significance and impacts of change.”

Stephen McDowell, a professor of communication at Florida State University expert in new media and internet governance, commented, “The ubiquity and pervasiveness of the internet-based services would have been hard to predict in 1969, and also two decades later. The rate of expansion of the range of services offered and the devices which can be used is also significant.”

Serge Marelli, an IT security analyst, responded, “Shocked? Not much. A lot of it was predictable and predicted or not surprising.”

Hari Shanker Sharma, an expert in nanotechnology and neurobiology at Uppsala University, Sweden, said, “The ease of communication and transactions.”

Thad Hall, a research scientist and coauthor of “Politics for a Connected American Public,” wrote, “The fact that we are constantly connected, for better or worse, is surprising. It is very difficult to be away from the world, largely because we are all now addicted to our screens or to the information our screens provide. Even a person who plans a day out in the wilderness with a book likely uses Google Maps to get there!”

Ian Rumbles, a quality-assurance specialist at North Carolina State University, said, “The internet has brought about amazing abilities to connect with others and to obtain information, but the breakdown in relationships is a huge negative side effect.”

Thornton May, technology futurist, author and educator, said, “Ignorance is no longer a state of nature. It is a choice. I am surprised that many – perhaps due to laziness – remain willfully ignorant of the world around them.”

Randall Mayes, a technology analyst and author, wrote, “The number of billionaires from start-ups.”

Robin Burke, a professor at DePaul University’s College of Computing and Digital Media expert in artificial intelligence as applied to social computing, said, “The biggest shock has been the way that defense against cyber-criminals and cyber-attackers has lagged so far behind the loopholes that these folks can exploit.”

Thomas Streeter, a professor of sociology at the University of Vermont, said, “In 2014 I had no idea that Donald Trump could possibly become president of the U.S. The internet is only one small part of how that happened, but you cannot talk about the social consequences of the internet without taking into account the shocking 2016 U.S. elections.”

Miguel Moreno-Muñoz, a professor of philosophy specializing in ethics, epistemology and technology at the University of Granada, Spain, said, “Almost complete access to online content and services from mobile devices and the projection of human interactions to online platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. Also, the dimensions of e-commerce and e-learning infrastructures. The convergence of formats (text, image, sound) in the digital format and their transmission almost in real time.”

Michael J. Oghia, a Belgrade-based consultant active in internet governance activities and media-development ecosystems, commented, “How little attention has been paid to the sustainability of the internet – everything from the recyclability of devices/fiber/infrastructure to the energy needed to power it and its impact on the environment.”

Michel Grossetti, a sociologist expert in systems and director of research at CNRS, the French national science research center, wrote, “That it ultimately didn’t matter as much as I might have imagined when I was young. Today’s world is more impacted by global warming and economic deregulation than by technical changes.”

Simon Biggs, a professor of interdisciplinary arts at the University of Edinburgh, said, “Just how selfish and narcissistic the human species is.”

Douglas Rushkoff, a professor of media at City University of New York, responded, “I was most shocked by how the internet turned from a people’s medium to a corporate one, from a socializing force to a de-socializing one, from a source of information to a source of fake facts.”

Martin Geddes, a consultant specializing in telecommunications strategies, said, “The death of the true vacation, when you were absolutely uncontactable for weeks, and work became a distant memory.”

Stephen Abram, principal at Lighthouse Consulting Inc., wrote, “The speed of change. From internet information networking to social networking in 50 years, maybe less.”

Roland Benedikter, co-director of the Center for Advanced Studies at Eurac Research Bozen, South Tyrol, Italy, responded, “The universality and transculturality of its penetrative force.”

Steve King, partner at Emergent Research, said, “How the increase in the availability and dissemination of information has led to increased tribalism.”

Steven Polunsky, director of the Alabama Transportation Policy Research Center, University of Alabama, wrote, “The widespread adoption of it throughout society and the world.”

Seth Finkelstein, consulting programmer at Finkelstein Consulting, commented, “The shock is not that the dream failed, but the extent of the nightmare. Monopoly. Centralization. The early and ongoing hype of creating distributed social utopia from a simplistic explanation of a technical networking protocol (‘end-to-end’) was utter nonsense from the start. Yet it was sold by shameless hustlers who knew a good con when they saw one, and it was bought by naive idealists who fantasized progress against power for no price. When winner-take-all network effects combined with policies of essential unregulated markets and extremely weak antitrust laws, the result was corporate behemoths on a global scale.”

Rich Ling, a professor of media technology at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, responded, “The most interesting development in the first 50 years of the internet is that it has become accessible through a small device in our pockets. This means that, at least in the Global North, potentially everyone has the ability to be contacted and to gather information regardless where they are.”

Steven Miller, vice provost and professor of information systems at Singapore Management University, said, “First off, I assume you are really referring to the combined evolution of both the internet (the physical network) and the World Wide Web (the means of accessing all the content, and the content itself). For me, it is the dark side, the pernicious side, the incredible well-focused and purposeful efforts that have gone into all the ‘bad stuff,’ cybercrime, exploitation of personal data, what we have seen with purposeful manipulation for sowing seeds of social and political dissent. Now, none of this is new to human nature. All we have to do is to read Shakespeare’s plot lines, and read other historical accounts, probably including the text of the original Old Testament of the Bible, and humanity’s tendency to do all these things is there in plain sight for us all to see. But I suspect no one really predicted how these aspects of human nature, of political manipulation and of purposeful societal destabilisation and malice implantation would also be amplified in unimaginable ways at speed and at scale. In retrospect, it all makes sense, and seems obvious that this aspect of human behaviour would also piggyback on all the affordances and features of the integrated internet and web – and everything that could be amplified on the good side would also be amenable to being amplified on the bad side. I suppose now we see it plain and clear. The internet and Web have given us new tools and new abilities and new ways to share and distribute, and there is no understating the good that this has enabled and achieved. But we also see that these technologies have not changed human nature and have not changed political agendas and greed. So here we are, with both the good and the bad equally benefiting from these new capabilities. While it is not a surprise at this moment – given what we have experienced in recent years – I would claim that if one were to think back 10 or 20 or 30 years ago, the situation we now find ourselves with is surprising.”

Ray Schroeder, associate vice chancellor for online learning at the University of Illinois – Springfield, wrote, “I began my experience online with the PLATO system (an early computer-based system that served as a model for some of the cornerstone applications of the internet). I was never surprised by the applications and utility of the internet, but I have been surprised at the ubiquity of the internet. Spanning communities rich and poor, rural and urban, in wealthy and poor nations alike, the internet is almost as widely seen as the sun or moon. It has become a shared experience for peoples of the world.”

Mark Crowley, an assistant professor expert in machine learning and core member of the Institute for Complexity and Innovation at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, wrote, “The fact that most people access the internet via a multimedia supercomputer in their pocket would have surprised me if you told me in the 1980s or early 1990s.”

Norton Gusky, an education technology consultant, wrote, “How quickly the evolution has happened.”

Mauro D. Ríos, an adviser to the eGovernment Agency of Uruguay and director of the Uruguayan Internet Society chapter, responded, “The constant violation to the privacy of the people, on the part of companies or governments and that a simple way of solving it has not been found.”

Marc Brenman, managing partner at IDARE LLC, said, “How quickly the idea that ‘information wants to be free’ has disappeared.”

Doug Schepers, chief technologist at Fizz Studio, said, “Neo-Nazis.”

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