How experts expected 2020 to look 10-15 years ago and how some who shared insights back then see it now, in the 2020s
Many forecasts were on the mark, while some did not fully anticipate many of the elements influencing the way networked technology might evolve. Experts who offered updated views said the internet鈥檚 overwhelming impact on humans鈥 intelligence and emotional condition was vastly underappreciated.
Background
December 28, 2020 – 乱伦视频鈥檚 Imagining the Internet Center and Pew Research Center have conducted 12 鈥淔uture of the Internet鈥 canvassings of experts since 2004, gathering forecasts about the evolution of networked technologies and the impact on digital life and societies. In four of those canvassings 鈥 2005-06, 2007-08, 2009-10 and 2011 鈥 the questions focused on what life would be like in the year 2020. We have chosen eight trend predictions recorded in those reports to examine in this report, looking at the experts鈥 original responses and exploring developments since to see how well those forecasts fared. We also interviewed nine of the experts in October/November 2020 for their thoughts on where they see trends moving as we move into 2021.
The database of experts who were canvassed over the years was developed from several sources. They are professionals and policy experts from government bodies, technology businesses, think tanks and networks of interested academics and technology innovators.
The expert canvassings represent only the opinions of the individuals who responded to queries we posed in a non-random sample. Results were and are not projectable to any other population. The canvassings were opt-in. Each of the reports emerged from different groups of expert respondents 鈥 some of whom were regular participants in several canvassings and some of whom were one-time participants. The number of respondents who participated in each canvassing varied. The methodology underlying each canvassing is elaborated in a methodology section in each of the original reports.
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Predicting the internet’s role and impact in 2020: The things experts said years ago about what digital life would be like today. How well did they see the future?
Since 2004, 乱伦视频鈥檚 Imagining the Internet Center and Pew Research Center have conducted . In four of those efforts between 2005 and 2011 the questions asked experts to imagine what digital life might be like in the year 2020.
- In and sought expert commentary about such things as the scale of internet adoption around the world, whether humans could control technology development and if some tech 鈥渞efuseniks鈥 might turn violent.
- In to explore how intellectual property might be treated in 2020 and whether voice and haptic interfaces for the internet would be widely embraced.
- In the 2009-10 canvassing (the first cycle in which we covered the experts鈥 responses in a series of separate reports), the questions covered such issues as , , , , and t.
- In 2011, the canvassing focused on predictions about the likely , , and .
In this analysis, we focus on eight predictions in those canvassings. For each, we very briefly summarize views expressed by some experts at that point in time and then outline a few of the related developments that have taken place in the realm of people-plus-technology to assess how those near-past predictions look today. We also interviewed some of the experts who made the original predictions to get their points of view today.
Following is a summary of the eight topic areas explored in this report. This section is followed by a more-detailed look at each of the eight.
1 – The impact of the internet on intelligence and emotion
In the 2009-10 canvassing, 81% of experts agreed with a statement that the internet would . Some experts argued that the impacts would likely affect individuals and groups differently. For the purposes of this new report looking back at earlier predictions, two key respondents shared their circa-2020 thoughts: Nicholas Carr and Jamais Cascio.
Nicholas Carr has long been known for his views that the internet is affecting people鈥檚 intelligence for the worse. Carr, the author of several acclaimed books on technology and culture, including “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains” (a Pulitzer Prize finalist), and “The Glass Cage: Automation and Us,” told us in an October 2020 interview: 鈥淪ome of the recent studies reinforce what was already becoming clear 10 years ago: that the net, and social media in particular, keeps us in a perpetual state of distraction, producing a 鈥榗ognitive overload鈥 that makes it harder to think critically, to engage in contemplation and reflection, and to place information into context鈥. The speed with which smartphones and social media have come to shape people’s moment-by-moment thoughts and behavior, and, more broadly to transform social norms and relations, has been stunning. I think it stands as one of the most dramatic and far-reaching cultural revolutions we鈥檝e ever seen.鈥
Jamais Casio, distinguished fellow at the Institute for the Future, an expert who challenged Carr鈥檚 views in the 2009-10 canvassing, now says he and most futurists did not anticipate a major part of the story. He told us in October 2020, 鈥淪omething I entirely missed [back then] was the impact of the internet on emotion鈥. That鈥檚 been a notable failing of foresight work, especially a decade ago 鈥 we too often pay insufficient attention to emotional and cultural complexities. We saw the internet as a technology of the mind and conflated 鈥榤ind鈥 with 鈥榠ntelligence鈥 鈥. Blogs, RSS feeds, and many of the other popular technologies of the time focused largely on making information easier to access. But it turns out that this obscured a deeper reality, one that the evolution of online life hinted at, if we鈥檇 been paying attention: The internet is an interaction-centric medium鈥. If Carr wrote his Atlantic essay now with the title 鈥業s Facebook Making Us Stupid?鈥 it would be difficult to argue 鈥楴o.鈥欌
2 – The fading chances for social tolerance
In the 2007-08 canvassing, 56% of experts due in great part to the internet.
Among those who expected that social tolerance would not advance over time was Christine Boese, a digital strategy professional. In a November 2020 interview she told us about how life in the last decade since the bleak prediction she made back in 2007-08 has 鈥Greatly surprised鈥 her because things became worse than she foresaw. She explains, 鈥淚 could project an increase in rhetorical polarization, authoritarianism and an extremist ethos, but I did not predict the bifurcated realities in the face-to-face world we see now鈥. Our authoritarian fellow citizens whose disassociation from reason and proof in a bifurcated reality could lead us to nothing less than a decline of civilization, to a new know-nothing dark age of plagues and wealth inequalities that are positively medieval.鈥
3 – The fraught relationship between tech firms and governments
In our 2011 canvassing, 51% of experts said . Nine years later, tech firms and governments have complicated, cooperative and sometimes contentious relations.
One of those who accurately saw this complexity and complicity between governments and tech firms in 2011 was Stowe Boyd, founder and managing director of Work Futures. In an October 2020 interview he said, 鈥淭he internet has fallen into a patchwork quilt of government-constrained internets, that are not at all equivalent. In many of those internets, tech companies openly work with repressive governments to surveil citizens and block their access to information and connections considered dangerous to the state. States employ hackers and cyber-hucksters to disrupt and influence foreign interests. Even in more enlightened countries, internet use can be perverted by political interests, like the unemployment insurance system engineered by the GOP in Florida to intentionally make applying for benefits maddeningly difficult or impossible. Some parts of this state of affairs can be fixed by better governance, but we can anticipate a long stretch of bad road ahead.鈥
4 – The fate of culture and languages on a balkanized internet
Also in the 2011 canvassing, 57% of experts disagreed with the statement that the English language would be so indispensable in communicating online by 2020 that it would have .
One of the key resisters to the idea that English would overtake other languages as the internet grew was David Clark, senior research scientist at MIT and internet pioneer. In the canvassing, he argued that while English would be common online, local languages would grow online and translation would increasingly be used for some kinds of encounters. Reflecting in a November 2020 interview about what has happened since, he says, 鈥淓ven then it was clear to me that for most internet users, the experience they had on the internet would be localized to their cultures and their language. Putting it sort of bluntly, it鈥檚 easier for 1,000 entrepreneurs to translate a webpage into Chinese than it is to have a billion Chinese learn English. I was pretty confident that what we were going to see on the internet for most users was going to be domestic and localized in terms of culture and language. Once the internet is available to the core populations of different countries, you have to deal with people in their own language鈥. I knew there would be a natural resistance to intrusions from other cultures 鈥 and American hegemony on the internet. People were going to fight to preserve their cultures and they are doing that aggressively in the age of globalization. They wanted to challenge the dilution of their cultures.鈥
5 – The future of virtual and augmented realities
In the and canvassings, experts responded to questions about the spread of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) and the prospects for those technologies being attractive to many users and even addictive. Both technologies have reached bigger user bases since then, but they are not as mainstream as some experts thought they might be by 2020. VR gaming and AR experiences are still emerging slowly into the mainstream marketplace.
A cutting-edge analyst then and now is Susan Mernit, director of The Crucible, formerly an executive with Yahoo and America Online. She was among those who were skeptical of mainstream adoption of these technologies, writing in 2007-2008 that VR and AR appealed 鈥渢o the geeks and the gamers among us, but 鈥 it鈥檚 elitist and too far out of the mainstream for many Americans, especially those with less free time.鈥 In a December 2020 interview Mernit told us that 鈥減rocessing capacity and platform tools drive user behavior more than user behavior drives those tools.鈥 听She observed that she has seen lots of brilliant ideas for which there was no technical capacity at the time to really build it. 鈥淭he major insight is that the big innovations come from the blend of technologies and the platforms that convey them 鈥 you need the technologies and the platforms in place first and then the innovations are built on them.鈥
6 – The impact on the balance between professional and personal life
In the 2007-08 canvassing, 56% of the responding experts agreed with the statement that by 2020 鈥溾
In that canvassing, 鈥橤benga Sesan, executive director for Paradigm Initiative, a pan-African digital rights organization based in Nigeria, argued professional and personal life would run simultaneously with mobile phones playing a key role in this blurring process between work life and home life. Asked in a November 2020 interview about how he sees things now, he wrote that blended time is 鈥 and will be 鈥 the norm: 鈥淓specially in the Global North, people will be able to determine when to work, when to rest, when to play. During the day when there is sunshine, they want to move around and be more healthy, rather than being in offices. Then, in the evening people will do the work for the tasks set before them.鈥
7 – The rise and meaning of mobile connectivity
In the 2005-06 canvassing, 56% of experts backed the statement that a worldwide, interoperable network would exist and that .
The implications of this move towards mobile connectivity were well anticipated by Louis Nauges, the current chief strategy officer at Wizy.io and longtime internet strategist, who spoke then about today鈥檚 Internet of Things and about the connectivity changes being rolled out under . In an October 2020 interview he said, 鈥淯niversal, cheap access to very fast networks could help developing economies grow faster. Fast internet access will be a great equalizer of opportunities worldwide. Where I live will no longer be a barrier to high-value jobs. This is possible, but not certain: political resistance, corruption, denial of access to specific groups of people could block the potential benefits of technology and create huge disruptions in the world.鈥
8 鈥 The growth of more-responsive organizations
Also in the 2005-06 canvassing, 72% of experts agreed with a statement that predicted by 2020 the internet would lead to .
These days, customers and citizens have conflicted views about the responsiveness and accountability of organizations and one major analyst who saw this dynamic playing out in the future was Stephen Downes, senior research officer,听National Research Council, Canada. Asked in a November 2020 interview about how he sees things now when it comes to organizational responsiveness and change, he said, 鈥淚 was surprised how slowly it has all happened. For all the talk about future is quickly arriving and affecting organizational change, it actually moves quite slowly. I look at this as a 20- or 30-year process and we鈥檙e not there yet. It鈥檚 going to be another 10 years before we鈥檙e clearly, identifiably there鈥. [We are seeing] first signs now that we鈥檙e moving towards this self-serve, DIY culture, even though it鈥檚 still not mainstream for organizations鈥. It鈥檒l be another 10 years before we鈥檙e in a distributed governance mode. The change will come first at the local organizations 鈥 communities, companies, co-ops. National organizations will be the last to change because they鈥檙e national organizations and inherently centralized.鈥
Deeper details:
Eight 2005-11 Predictions About Digital Life in 2020
1 – Human intelligence
In mid-2008, Nicholas Carr wrote a piece for The Atlantic titled 鈥溾 He argued that the ease of online searching and distractions of browsing through the web were possibly limiting people鈥檚 capacity to concentrate. 鈥淚鈥檓 not thinking the way I used to,鈥 he wrote, in part because he was becoming a skimming, browsing reader, rather than a deep and engaged reader.听A year later, Jamais Cascio wrote a rebuttal to Carr in The Atlantic titled 鈥,鈥 arguing that while the proliferation of technology and media can challenge humans鈥 capacity to concentrate, there were signs that tech-enabled people were developing 鈥渇luid intelligence鈥攖he ability to find meaning in confusion and solve new problems, independent of acquired knowledge.鈥
These articles were the inspiration behind the one of the 10 2020 scenarios posed to tech experts in 乱伦视频 and Pew鈥檚 2009-2010 canvassing. The vast majority (81%) agreed with the following scenario:
By 2020, people鈥檚 use of the internet has enhanced human intelligence; as people are allowed unprecedented access to more information, they become smarter and make better choices. Nicholas Carr was wrong: Google does not make us stupid. ().
Only 16% of the experts selected the following scenario as the most likely option:
By 2020, people鈥檚 use of the internet has not enhanced human intelligence and it could even be lowering the IQs of most people who use it a lot. Nicholas Carr was right: Google makes us stupid.
The issue has progressed since then in a complex way. Of course, 鈥渋ntelligence鈥 is a nebulous concept with a no standard definition. IQ tests have been used since the early 1900s to measure intelligence. However and have been found to hold and biases. In 1983, proposed that there are : linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic and existential (added in 1999). This theory revealed that apart from mere book smarts, there are many forms of intelligence someone may possess. In addition, the American Psychological Association points out that . Of course, 鈥渋ntelligence鈥 is generally perceived by mainstream society to be seen through a prototypical IQ-test-based or scholastic achievement-based lens.
Differences in definition arose in the two original pieces and continue to color conversations of intelligence today. A 2019 article published in World Psychiatry explored . This overview article took note of signs that the internet may be negatively affecting attentional processes, in line with Carr鈥檚 argument. However, Cascio鈥檚 assertion that the internet allows humans to go beyond their acquired knowledge is also supported in by this research overview.
Large quantities of information are accessible to humans because of the ease of searching the internet, and people are using the internet effectively to retrieve information (however, the information is often not from an unbiased, informed and reliable source).
In October of 2020 we revisited the debate with the main protagonists. In the 2009-2010 canvassing, Carr, also the author of several acclaimed books on technology and culture, including “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains,” a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and “The Glass Cage: Automation and Us,” had said that not just IQ scores would be affected by the effects of the internet but other types of intelligence as well. He wrote back then, 鈥淭he net鈥檚 effect on our intellectual lives will not be measured simply by average IQ scores. What the net does is shift the emphasis of our intelligence, away from what might be called a meditative or contemplative intelligence and more toward what might be called a utilitarian intelligence. The price of zipping among lots of bits of information is a loss of depth in our thinking.鈥
In an email interview on October 21, 2020, Carr shared an update on his thoughts with us:
Imagining the Internet Center (ITI): In the past decade what new insights do we have about how the internet affects human intelligence? What do you think are the most important findings since then?
Carr: In 2010, research on the internet鈥檚 cognitive, psychological and cultural effects was in its infancy. We know a lot more today, thanks to the work of many sociologists, psychologists and neuroscientists around the world. I wish I could say that the research has proved me wrong, but, alas, it provides broad new support for my argument that the net impedes deep, considered thinking and pushes us toward superficial, scattered thinking.
Some of the recent studies reinforce what was already becoming clear 10 years ago: that the net 鈥 social media in particular 鈥 keeps us in a perpetual state of distraction, producing a “cognitive overload” that makes it harder to think critically, to engage in contemplation and reflection, and to place information into context.
But we鈥檝e also begun to see even more troubling findings. Work by scholars like University of Texas cognitive psychologist has revealed that our ever-present smartphones exert a constant, debilitating pull on our attention, leading to what Ward calls a 鈥渂rain drain.鈥
Experiments show that the mere presence of a phone, even when it鈥檚 not in use, actually shrinks people鈥檚 available working memory and degrades their fluid intelligence and problem-solving abilities. The research also suggests that our phone鈥檚 grip on our mind may be taking an emotional toll, increasing stress and anxiety, eroding empathy and making our personal relationships shallower.
ITI: Has anything surprised you about the way things have unfolded between then and now?
Carr: The speed with which smartphones and social media have come to shape people’s moment-by-moment thoughts and behavior, and, more broadly, to transform social norms and relations, has been stunning. I think it stands as one of the most dramatic and far-reaching cultural revolutions we鈥檝e ever seen.
The technologies provide plenty of benefits, which is why we鈥檙e so enamored with them, but because they’re so addictive and distracting, and so easily exploited by bad actors, we鈥檙e now facing a raft of cultural, political and social problems that are proving extraordinarily difficult to solve. These problems extend well beyond the cognitive and intellectual toll that the technologies take, but I would argue that most of the problems stem from the same source: the tendency of digital media to encourage superficiality, bias and emotionalism and discourage rigorous, rational and open-minded thought. I think we鈥檙e paying a very heavy price for the Silicon Valley brand of technological enthusiasm that held society in its sway during the early years of this century.
ITI: Where do you see things going in the next decade when it comes to the effects of the internet on human intelligence?
Carr: Once a technological system becomes deeply embedded in a society鈥檚 norms and processes it takes on what the late historian Thomas Hughes termed 鈥渢echnological momentum.鈥 At that point, it becomes very difficult if not impossible to back up and take a different route. The technology begins to shape society, rather than vice-versa.
I think that鈥檚 where we are with the internet today. We still, as individuals and as a society, have the ability to make certain beneficial changes 鈥 and I would suggest we begin with a thoroughgoing reassessment of the role of computers in education. But I don鈥檛 think we鈥檙e going to be able to alter the net鈥檚 fundamental reshaping of our lives and thoughts. We鈥檝e made our bed, and we鈥檙e going to be sleeping in it for a good long while.
Jamais Casio, distinguished fellow at the Institute for the Future, was in the thick of this argument a decade ago. He offered updated thoughts in an email interview October 28, 2020.
Imagining the Internet Center (ITI): How have things evolved from that era and what do you think are the most important insights since then?
Cascio: In some ways, the evolution since then has been a straightforward acceleration of trends already visible at the time: mobility, increased bandwidth, video, that sort of thing. At the same time, we鈥檝e seen a fundamental transformation of what we use the internet for. In the 2000s, you could make a persuasive argument that the internet was an information-centric medium. Blogs, RSS feeds and many of the other popular technologies of the time focused largely on making information easier to access. But it turns out that this obscured a deeper reality, one that the evolution of online life hinted at, if we鈥檇 been paying attention: The internet is an interaction-centric medium.
The pre-web days of the internet were a period of explosive growth, but we sometimes forget about the proliferation of communication tools. Beyond email, there was ICQ, AIM, IRC and even before that Unix write and talk (and much, much more). I don鈥檛 think we recognized just how critical these tools were.
This points to what turns out to be, for me, the most important insight, and it鈥檚 something I entirely missed: the impact of the internet on emotion. This is, far and away, the key story of the evolution of the internet over the 2010s, and it was not on most people鈥檚 foresight radar at the time. That鈥檚 been a notable failing of foresight work, especially a decade ago 鈥 we too often pay insufficient attention to emotional and cultural complexities. We saw the internet as a technology of the mind and immediately conflated 鈥渕ind鈥 with 鈥渋ntelligence.鈥 The mind is the center of how we think, yes, but it鈥檚 also the center of how we feel. And as good as the internet is at illuminating knowledge, it鈥檚 even better at manipulating emotion. Google (or the internet writ large) may or may not be making us stupid, but it certainly seems to be making us angry.
It turns out that Google wasn鈥檛 the real villain in the story, anyway. Facebook (and, to a lesser extent, Twitter and other mass-audience social media) has turned out to be far more impactful 鈥 and dangerous 鈥 for the human mind and human behavior than Google could ever have hoped to be. I recall discussions at the time [a decade ago] fearful that Google organizing humankind鈥檚 information would lead to a kind of uniformity of thought; while I didn鈥檛 think that would happen, I could certainly understand how that fear could arise. But rather than a global alignment of information in 2020, we have this cascade of alternative facts and conflicting realities, driven to a significant degree by the spread of social media.
That divergence between the effects of information-centric media and interaction-centric media needs to be kept in mind when looking at research studies on the impact of the internet on our brains. Information-centric media can certainly be attention sinkholes (as anyone who has checked TVTropes.com can attest), but interaction-centric media are attention tyrants. They demand we give them attention. So, when we look at how the internet changes us, we need to ask what part of the internet do we mean? Having fingertip access to information may (for example) reduce time spent deep thinking, but having relentless interruptions by social platforms with responses or alerts is very likely far more disruptive, especially if those messages are perfectly designed to provoke strong reactions.
Following a Wikipedia rabbit-hole is far less likely to corrupt my ability to think than would arguing with someone on Facebook or doom-scrolling on Twitter.
If Carr wrote his Atlantic essay now with the title 鈥淚s Facebook听Making Us Stupid?鈥 it would be difficult to argue in favor of 鈥淣o.鈥
ITI: Has anything surprised you about the way things have unfolded between then and now?
Cascio: The intensity of resistance to unwelcome facts across the social spectrum is unexpected and disheartening. I wrote a piece for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists a few months ago noting that people rarely (if ever) included a large part of the population simply refusing to believe that an unmistakable global disaster was really happening. It鈥檚 ridiculous 鈥 and it鈥檚 real. We have more access to information and facts than at any point in human history, and we seem to be fighting against shared knowledge harder than ever.
It wouldn鈥檛 surprise me if those two data points were somehow connected, but thinking too much about how they鈥檙e linked is just depressing.
The persuasive gravity of authoritarian, nationalist and neo-fascist voices that grew so rapidly over the past decade also came as a surprise. It turns out that a lot of us a decade ago were simply too optimistic. One of the fundamental errors many of us made back in the 2000s was taking the (arguably correct) claim that 鈥渢he internet allows marginalized groups and suppressed voices to connect with each other and form communities鈥 to be an inherently good thing. We let ourselves forget, for the most part, that some groups and voices are marginalized and suppressed because they are actively harmful. I wouldn鈥檛 want to have pulled back on the freedoms enabled by the internet for everyone just because of the dangerous few, but it would have been good to really think about this possibility before it bit us hard.
A more pleasant surprise has been the explosion of creativity the various internet platforms have enabled. Younger people in particular are far more actively making content 鈥 whether via Twitch-streaming, TikTok videos, even 鈥渕emes鈥 鈥 than any of us were back in the early days of the internet. Podcasts have an even wider demographic reach. For good and for bad, certainly, but this is the golden age of personal expression, made possible by the internet.
ITI: Where do you see things going in the next decade when it comes to the effects of the internet on human intelligence?
Cascio: My default answer for any forecast at this point is 鈥渨e鈥檙e doomed.鈥
I suspect that the dynamic that will shape the next decade at the nexus of internet and intelligence is filtering听– pre-culling or even re-envisioning the world around us to remove the unappealing, the inappropriate, the antagonistic. The growth of mixed- or augmented-reality technologies will engender a desire for an ability to control what we鈥檙e experiencing, especially as they become advertising platforms. As they become more advanced, those tools will let us place a layer over what we see to make it more beautiful, or amusing, or surreal. Imagine Snapchat filters for your perception of reality.
But with that comes an even greater ability to remove the aspects of reality that don鈥檛 match up with what we already believe or think we know. It might end up making things a bit more peaceful, I suppose, if two people can sit side-by-side and see themselves in entirely different (mutually incompatible) worlds. It will certainly further degrade our ability to have a meaningful conversation about complex problems.
I don鈥檛 think that artificial intelligence (machine learning, etc.) will be of much help, unfortunately. We finally seem to be recognizing that AI systems are human-designed systems, and therefore subject to very human foibles. And we鈥檒l probably learn what happens when a distinct ideological template gets added intentionally to a machine learning system to tweak how it understands its inputs. But that can鈥檛 be the whole story. I still believe that the increasing sophistication of human-machine hybrid minds will help us figure out how to grapple with some of the hideous complexities we鈥檙e facing going forward.
Maybe I鈥檓 still too optimistic. I still believe that there are people out there who see facts, even or especially unpleasant facts, as important. That we still have the ability to use these technologies of mind 鈥 both intellect and emotion 鈥 as enhancements to our humanity, not replacements for it or suppressants of it. That we still have a chance to fix things. Maybe we鈥檒l rise to the challenges we face.
2 – Social tolerance
In the United States, the 2008 election was dubbed the . Running on a platform of social acceptance and the slogan of 鈥淗ope,鈥 Barack Obama had effectively rallied support using the internet and more traditional campaigning strategies, becoming America鈥檚 first Black president. Some cultural commentators talked about a 鈥,鈥 while others against that notion.
Social tolerance has advanced significantly due in great part to the Internet. In 2020, people are more tolerant than they are today, thanks to wider exposure to others and their views that has been brought about by the Internet and other information and communication technologies. The greater tolerance shows up in several metrics, including declining levels of violence, lower levels of sectarian strife, and reduced incidence of overt acts of bigotry and hate crimes.
In subsequent years, experts have warned that the internet may be leading people to be and . While algorithms continue to deliver content that seems especially relevant to individual users, many worry that these highly curated online environments propagate a cycle of and which can result in .
The internet , but that can mean it brings together those who seek to harm or oppress others. As of early 2019, , according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. These groups have proven be to , even w.
Even in less extreme instances, many worry about the connections between internet use 鈥 particularly social media 鈥 and the risk of falling into (i.e., taking on more extreme viewpoints as people gather in online groups). Algorithms can supplement this psychological tendency by pushing people toward more extreme content when they engage with the initial suggestions. found that this was happening when people watched political content on YouTube. And a majority of Americans feel has been part of this dynamic.
In the 2007-2008 canvassing, Christine Boese, a digital strategy professional, argued the internet would enhance polarization and shrink the middle ground. She wrote then, 鈥淭here are aspects of both greater and lesser social tolerance online. If the technology tends to lead cultures in any particular direction, it is leading to greater polarization of extremes, and less of the middle. Does greater tolerance constitute the middle? Not in this case. The extremes find support for their views online, more so than in the less-connected, face-to-face world, so bigots find their views reinforced and even the far extremes of social relativists find their views reinforced鈥. Is everyone really entitled to his or her own opinion, or are there very real and socially-constructed methods to evaluate whether some opinions and views are indeed superior to others? I believe the latter. Perhaps we should all go back and read that dated .鈥
In a November 17, 2020, email interview, Boese responded to some questions about these issues:
Imagining the Internet Center (ITI): What do you remember about the period when we asked this question and you gave your answer?
Boese: This quotation takes me back! At the time, I was exactly 10 years out from completing my doctoral dissertation with a central research question about the polarization of extremes in online cybercultures. Here is what I wrote about it in the conclusion in 1998:
鈥淭he nerdish, divergent-thinking, outspoken fanatic is one of the most prominent stereotypes of inhabitants of cyberspace. This study still cannot tell us if the Internet spawns such characters, or if it simply attracts people who are already a bit extremist in their views, or if it reveals the common, if hidden, extremism in many of us. I have long been drawn to the apparent proliferation of highly polarized argumentative positions, of rhetorical polemic, in cyberspace. At first, I focused on the phenomenon of “flaming” as the most prominent manifestation of this polemic, but flaming itself proved too difficult to consistently define, and the term failed to distinguish between ad hominem abuse and the argumentative rant. I was also intrigued by the interaction of incommensurate views, or what happens when extreme and oppositional rhetorical positions occupy the same cultural and discursive spaces, in interactions which are very easy to document in cyberspace.鈥
I had speculated that a 鈥減aradox of insularity and interactivity鈥 led self-selecting groups online to polarize their rhetoric and amplify the extremism of insular groups.
鈥淭his seeming paradox of insularity and interactivity may help keep such Internet fringe groups thriving, for the people in the group have drawn together in their mutual interest, yet if the group faced no challenges from within or without, its insularity would leave little to discuss, since most members are in agreement.
鈥淭he paradox of insularity and interactivity plays out in cycles of retreat into insular enclaves and expansion back into interactive (and often polemical) engagement. The insular base of like-minded rhetors gives a rhetor strength to take and hold a polemical argumentative position, yet that position can never rest easy, for online there is always the potential for interactive challenge to that position. This cycle of insularity and interactivity helps to further polarize arguments in cyberspace.听 . . . [and], when combined, can be seen as partially responsible for some of the extremist rhetoric and polemical argumentative strategies that often make up the general ethos for certain online cultures鈥︹
In 2007-08, with the rise of social media, I saw a continuation of the patterns I鈥檇 documented in 1998: a pendulum-style movement from larger groups splintering into smaller, specialized groups, and then back into the larger groups again. Flame wars will splinter online groups just as small-town churches are periodically rift by differences over dogma and social issues.
In the face-to-face world in 2007-08, I also saw increasing rhetorical polarization, but nothing on the scale I鈥檇 documented online. I was still confident that online factors amplified the polarization and flame wars in ways face-to-face social niceties and manners generally block. Most Internet scholarship assumed the lack of eye contact and vocal tones contributed to misunderstandings that escalated flame wars. I added the 鈥減aradox of insularity and interactivity.鈥
I was working at CNN in 2006 when my network, 鈥淗eadline News,鈥 launched the primetime career of the racist radio fabulist, Glenn Beck. Few knew that Rachel Maddow had also been screen tested, taping a pilot at the same time. The network brass picked Beck over Maddow. They weighed the two against each other and chose Beck. I was in the newsroom town hall meeting when the decision was announced.
I knew Maddow鈥檚 intellectual pedigree, and I could no longer remain at a network that basically said, 鈥淏eck is the kind of voice we want to give a highly-promoted platform here.鈥 From that seemingly innocuous beginning, Beck eventually migrated to Fox News, and the unreality took hold. Conspiracy spaces had a definitive platform.
Barack Obama was elected president in 2008. Right-wing media had been in denial about the possibility of a Black president, but the 鈥渂irther鈥 movement did not gain real momentum until Obama鈥檚 campaign and election. That provided the essential turn that led some mass media properties to migrate the ethos of online flame wars into the non-Internet spaces wholesale, into ordinary people鈥檚 living rooms.
ITI: How confident were you in your prediction? What factors were you weighing as you wrote the answer you did?
Boese: Very confident, informed by my scholarly work with interactive media and my time in cable news, watching that mass media polarization, or 鈥渂ifurcating realities.鈥 What I鈥檇 originally observed online had escalated and migrated to mass media.
What did not exist as a powerful social force in 2007-08 was the concept of a 鈥渟ocial feed鈥 or algorithmic personalization. These feeds have almost completely replaced most other forum software for online communities.
I also saw the rise of authoritarianism, or 鈥渁rgument from authority鈥 as a debate style within Fox News, even previously, on CNN鈥檚 鈥淐rossfire.鈥
What informed my conclusion in 2008 was a sense that the Fox News-influenced universe embraced what William Perry calls an 鈥渋ntellectual retreat鈥 to authoritarianism, with argumentative positions as unsupported truisms or hasty generalizations, topics name-checked as tropes in insider discourse, without the kind of argumentative support required in first-year composition at U.S. universities for a passing grade.
ITI: Has anything surprised you about the way things have unfolded between then and now?
Boese: Between 2008 and now greatly surprised me. I could project an increase in rhetorical polarization, authoritarianism and an extremist ethos, but I did not predict the bifurcated realities in the face-to-face world we see now. I thought such phenomena needed the social disconnection of online spaces to escalate and amplify.
I could not have predicted the owners of a cable news property would double-down on propaganda-focused, right-wing authoritarianism and flame war-style provocations. Fox News developed the kind of social influence to create bifurcated realities, amplified by algorithmic, feed-driven, online forums that would insulate and distort U.S. civil society to the extent that people would elect and back a president with authoritarian or fascist leanings, informed by a closed loop of 鈥渂ig lie鈥 propaganda so gaspingly false that fact-checking simply doesn鈥檛 matter.
The concurrent rise of a global right-wing, fascist movement indicates to me how the extremism of insular and interactive online feeds and forums have migrated into the face-to-face world, not just as a presence, but with considerable and frightening influence.
Here is the puzzle of this right-wing bifurcated reality: those who fully embrace the Fox News universe (I count a number of those close to me in this group) express an impenetrable certainty in the rightness of their easily disproven beliefs. No counter-factual information makes any impression, and most is dismissed out of hand. Scholars refer to 鈥渃onfirmation bias,鈥 or discuss the link between authoritarian thinking and fear-based psychology as a source of that impenetrability.
But there is one other feature of our new, mass media and algorithmic social feed-based bifurcated realities: relativism. Relativism in the context of authoritarianism makes no logical sense, but it is observable and easily documented. It may be a right-wing manifestation of the condition of postmodernity – marrying absolute certainty in positions, principles, and beliefs with a lack of consistency and willingness to flip those beliefs on a dime if a revered authority calls for it.
I have called it 鈥Authoritarian Relativism.鈥 Orwell fans will note that this is another version of 鈥淥ceania is at war with Eastasia. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.鈥
Within the bifurcated, right-wing bubble, authoritarianism disregards logical consistency. Authorities who determine the orthodoxy and dogmas of this bifurcated reality change those orthodoxies with no concern about being a 鈥渇lip-flopper鈥 or containing contradictory multitudes.
In the reality distortion fields of the Trump Administration, God and patriarchal authorities are a named center of the universe. Believers must have a 鈥淪alvation Story,鈥 must know the Bible, must live righteous lives, must value human embryos, and save children from pedophiles. People on the left are criticized for not meeting this litmus test. Meanwhile, valued leaders on the right can have affairs, embezzle money, be involved with pedophiles, etc. and followers on the right find no incongruity (well-documented by journalist Sarah Posner in her book, 鈥淯nholy鈥).
Online, there is even a name for this: 鈥淚t鈥檚 OK if you鈥檙e a Republican,鈥 or IOKIYAR.
Marshall McLuhan predicted a Global Village of images, impressions, and logical inconsistency as a media effect, a world of orality without memories, where the only moment that matters is now. McLuhan would probably name 鈥淎uthoritarian Relativism鈥 as a 鈥渕edia reversal,鈥 where the far reaches of authoritarianism flip the foundationalist concept of capital-T Truth of authoritarianism into fluid, 鈥渁nything goes鈥 relativism.
ITI: Where do you see things going in the next decade when it comes to social tolerance and the internet?
Boese: Here鈥檚 a factor often missed by focusing on the dangers of fascism: tolerance of other once-fringe behaviors rejected by mainstream society has also increased. This is not the middle; it is acceptance of what was previously considered extreme, amplified through self-selected online communities with the paradox of insularity and interactivity.
Once gay marriage had been ruled legal, it swept the U.S. with such speed that social levers of homophobic repression were useless. LGBTQ people were not cowering in fear. Even as the right turns to fascism and dreams of more overt methods of oppression, tolerance is increasing on the opposite pole, growing quietly, and perhaps, pervasively. The edges are not racing to capture the uncommitted, homogenous middle. The middle is systematically migrating to the divergent, identity-affirming edges.
What fuels the right-wing side of this bifurcated universe is structural, systemic racism, with a white supremacist, Apartheid-like minority rule. This was the element of U.S. culture that the Nazis studied and sought to emulate with the Jews, the way that the American South held down those they sought to oppress with lower status (as documented in Isabel Wilkerson鈥檚 book, 鈥淐aste鈥).
Religious conservatives, with no attachment to logical consistency, seek to refuse services to people who offend their religious beliefs, seemingly unaware they are demanding a bigotry that has been illegal since John Lewis led the integration of lunch counters.
Online, groups are actively splintering, not just into the dark web of QAnon, 4chan/8chan, or even the odd sub-Reddits. Now, neo-fascist and white supremacist groups actively recruit online and show up heavily armed in face-to-face spaces. Their boogeyman is 鈥渁ntifa,鈥 a made-up foil that, like abortion activism, motivates the base, even though the Antifa or antifascist groups have no real organization or structures.
鈥淓nemy-blaming鈥 has its own precedent in Germany鈥檚 鈥淩eichstag Fire.鈥 At this point, with 鈥淏lack Lives Matter鈥 angry George Floyd demonstration violence amplified in a B-roll loop on right-wing mass media, we can reasonably name the symbiosis between far-right online media fringe groups and mass media propagandizing as a fully integrated system, both centralized and distributed, working on multiple fronts toward a stated goal of starting a race war, a second Civil War, in the United States.
And no, I could not have predicted that. I pray it will never occur.
ITI: So, what can we do now?
Boese: I鈥檓 reading Shoshana Zuboff鈥檚 鈥淭he Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power.鈥 I am working with data scientists to learn more about AI and machine learning from a user-experience standpoint. Like Zuboff, I believe that aggregated data paired with machine learning will determine the paths we are guided toward.
I鈥檝e never been a technological determinist, but reduced choices affect everyone. I continue to focus on the propaganda power being marshalled through this symbiotic relationship between interactive media (many-to-many) and mass media (one-to-many).
Among the many cultural shocks of 2020, I find the biggest shock is discovering the power and impenetrability of right-wing media propaganda in creating a truly bifurcated, MAGA-reality.
As I watched the rise of the right-wing mediasphere from the extremist polarization I鈥檇 first started observing online, I thought, 鈥淲here are their rallies? Where are their mass gatherings?鈥 I thought we would not be in danger until there were mass gatherings such as depicted in 鈥淭riumph of the Will.鈥 I was wrong.
MAGA rallies are not the same. They take place in the intimacy of living rooms, in front of televisions and on YouTube, with fragmented mass media audiences where the watchers can鈥檛 usually see other watchers. Audience conformity is presumed, with right-wing identity politics. And then, the online spaces offer solace, connection, as they always have, for those who are isolated in their face-to-face communities. Avid viewers are united around an organizing principle. They don鈥檛 feel alone in the dark, listening to the right-wing call-in radio host. They have their friends on Fox News and other networks now as well, Newsmax, OAN.
And, with the paradox of insularity and interactivity, the bubble they have constructed grows stronger. What reality can intrude to pop the bubble? Only one election result is accepted. Even COVID mortalities are denied. Morgue trucks are denied. Health care workers tell stories of COVID-sick MAGA believers abusing caregivers in the ER and ICU, denying the severity of their illnesses even as they struggle to breathe, right up to the moment they are put on ventilators.
As Zuboff would point out, responsibility also lies in what are truly 鈥渄ark UX patterns鈥 created through surveillance data aggregation, algorithms, AI, and machines that can process and act on data at scale toward outcomes that can鈥檛 explain –听yet!
Our authoritarian fellow citizens whose disassociation from reason and proof in a bifurcated reality could lead us to nothing less than a decline of civilization, to a new know-nothing dark age of plagues and wealth inequalities that are positively medieval.
3 – Tech firms and the government
After the events of 9/11, the Patriot Act was signed into law, giving the government greater ability to detect and deter terrorism. This law has drawn controversy since, with . One of the highly controversial elements of the Patriot Act is that the government can search third-party sources that hold users鈥 personal information w (Section 215). Early in 2011, a news story broke that the for user information, with more than 50,000 requests being sent each year. The subpoenas involved gag orders which prevented these companies from telling users what was happening. The story broke when associated with the WikiLeaks Twitter account and notable figures associated with WikiLeaks. Twitter fought the gag order and notified affected users. In May 2011, the U.S. government , including searches of third-party data sources of personal information.
In 2011, we presented tech experts with paired scenarios tied to each of eight issues and trends and asked what was most likely to happen in each realm by the year 2020. A plurality (51%) of experts selected that the following 2020 tech firms scenario might be most likely:
In 2020, technology firms with their headquarters in democratic countries will be expected to abide by a set of norms鈥攆or instance, the 鈥淩esponsibility to Protect鈥 (R2P)[1]听citizens being attacked or challenged by their governments. In this world, for instance, a Western telecommunications firm would not be able to selectively monitor or block the internet activity of protestors at the behest of an authoritarian government without significant penalties in other markets.
Conversely, 34% experts said the following would be the case:
In 2020, technology firms headquartered in democratic countries will have taken steps to minimize their usefulness as tools for political organizing by dissidents. They will reason that too much association with sensitive activities will put them in disfavor with autocratic governments. Indeed, in this world, commercial firms derive significant income from filtering and editing their services on behalf of the world鈥檚 authoritarian regimes.
Neither of these scenarios came to fruition of course. The 2020 reality is much more complicated in regard to relationships of tech companies, government agencies and users/citizens. In 2019, there were . Some social media companies have worked specifically with certain governments to . Yet in some circumstances tech companies are seen as providing outlets for free speech. In the U.S., and it is situational at times. The controversy over what should be considered free speech online is an ongoing issue. There is some worry over and practices on social media platforms. There has been a call by the public for the .
In addition, in the era of COVD-19, new concerns have been raised regarding the protection of tech users from unwanted data collection and sharing amongst tech companies and government entities. Tech companies have access to data that would in order to trace the potential spread of COVID-19, thus some . that would allow public health authorities to make their own apps to help notify people if they were exposed the COVID-19. However, .
In the 2011 canvassing, Stowe Boyd, founder and managing director of , argued experiences would differ greatly around the world and that civil unrest would play a key role in determining the outcome, writing, 鈥淭ech firms based in Western democratic countries will continue to support the compromises of political free speech and personal privacy that are, more or less, encoded in law and policy today. The wild card in the next decade is the degree to which civil unrest is limited to countries outside that circle. If disaffected youth, workers, students, or minorities begin to burn the blighted centers of Western cities, all bets are off because the forces of law and order may rise and demand control of the Web. And, of course, as China and other countries with large populations鈥攍ike India, Malaysia, and Brazil鈥攂egin to create their own software communities, who knows what forms will evolve, or what norms will prevail? But they are unlikely to be what we see in the West. So, we can expect a fragmented Web, where different regions are governed by very different principles and principals.鈥
In an email interview on October 19, 2020, Boyd was asked to update his thoughts:
Imagining the Internet Center (ITI): What do you remember about the period when we asked this question and you gave your answer?
Boyd: It was a time of , and the that blocked Facebook from making explicitly private information public. I coined the term 鈥榩ublicy鈥 in 2010 as the opposite of privacy, which I argued was the new reality: Our once private information would default to public, no matter what we say.
Civil unrest was growing across the world, as reported by many, like “” by Nicholas Kulish, who wrote in 2011:
“Increasingly, citizens of all ages, but particularly the young, are rejecting conventional structures like parties and trade unions in favor of a less hierarchical, more participatory system modeled in many ways on the culture of the Web.听In that sense, the protest movements in democracies are not altogether unlike those that have rocked authoritarian governments this year, toppling longtime leaders in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Protesters have created their own political space online that is chilly, sometimes openly hostile, toward traditional institutions of the elite.”
And, as we have seen, those protests led to (or paralleled) the rise of authoritarian regimes, the emergence of divisive populism, and – of course – the growing desire by governments to control what activists say and how they organize online.
ITI: How confident were you in your prediction? What factors were you weighing as you wrote the answer you did?
Boyd: I believed in the narrative of the scenario I laid out, and I tried to connect the threads. But for me thinking about the future is always more like science fiction than drawing a flowchart.
ITI: Has anything surprised you about the way things have unfolded between then and now?
Boyd: I am surprised that no one has tried very hard to break up Facebook, despite all the harm they鈥檝e caused and the monopolistic approach they鈥檝e taken. I was surprised by Trump. I wasn鈥檛 surprised that China has moved to curtail the freedoms that Hong Kong kind of enjoyed.
ITI: Where do you see things going in the next decade when it comes to the relationship among tech companies, government factions, and tech users/citizens?
Boyd: The internet has fallen into a patchwork quilt of government-constrained internets, that are not at all equivalent. In many of those internets, tech companies openly work with repressive governments to surveil citizens and block their access to information and connections considered dangerous to the state. States employ hackers and cyber-hucksters to disrupt and influence foreign interests. Even in more-enlightened countries, internet use can be perverted by political interests, like the unemployment insurance system engineered by the GOP in Florida to intentionally make applying for benefits maddeningly difficult or impossible. Some parts of this state of affairs can be fixed by better governance, but we can anticipate a long stretch of bad road ahead.
4 – The role of English online
The lingual diversity of the internet has been in flux for decades. While about , this rate in popularity . By 2005, English content only constituted about 45% of internet content. Still, that English could displace other languages online.
In late 2005-early 2006, we asked tech experts about seven scenarios about possible changes that might occur by the year 2020, one of them regarding the language of the internet; 57% disagreed with the following scenario:
In 2020, networked communications have leveled the world into one big political, social and economic space in which people everywhere can meet and have verbal and visual exchanges regularly, face-to-face, over the internet. English will be so indispensable in communicating that it displaces some languages.
In retrospect today in 2020, the experts who were wary of this prediction were somewhat accurate, but with large caveats. The internet has many active language communities. However, English remains the most common language online, both in terms of and websites鈥 content language. There are varying figures about the overall number of websites and active websites. Estimates for the total number of websites range from and estimates for number of active sites is reported to be .
As of December 2020, that 61% of all websites use English while Russian 鈥 the second most common language for websites 鈥 constitutes just 9% of all websites. By comparison, one estimate puts the share of Chinese language sites at and of the total number of Chinese sites puts it at around five million. By , Internet World Stats says that that about a quarter of users speak English, while about a fifth speak Chinese.
found that some individuals in emerging economies reported issues finding content available in their preferred language and that not being able to read at least some English was associated with issues in accessing and using mobile phones. Although English has not become ubiquitous online or necessarily diminished other languages鈥 content, the internet is largely tailored for English speakers, which results in many notable .
Some experts suggested in the 乱伦视频-Pew canvassing in 2005-06 that language-translation software would be perfected in the future, allow all to use their own language as they navigate the internet and eliminating the domination of any one language online. Indeed, Google Translate 鈥 a popular translation tool 鈥 was released only a few weeks after the canvassing was completed (). Although still imperfect, the constantly-improving translation tool and others allow users to understand words, phrases and even entire webpages in more than 100 different languages.
In the 2005-2006 canvassing, David Clark, senior research scientist at MIT and internet pioneer, argued that while English would remain common online the use of myriad local languages would grow online, and translation would increasingly be used for some kinds of encounters. He wrote: 鈥淓nglish is going to be the common language, but we will see an upsurge in use and propagation of local languages. For many users, their local language will still be the only language they use on the internet. And of course, for low-complexity uses, we will see more translation.鈥
In a November 25, 2020 interview with us, Clark provided updated remarks:
Imagining the Internet Center (ITI): What do you remember about the period when we asked this question and you gave your answer?
Clark: Sixteen years ago is forever and it was a completely different world. The internet was spreading rapidly. I remember a Middle East expert telling me around that time that the fastest growing language on the internet was Arabic.
My sense then was that we were going through a transformation that was really showing us the globalized character of the internet. Even then it was clear to me that for most internet users, the experience they had on the internet would be localized to their cultures and their language. Putting it sort of bluntly, it鈥檚 easier for 1,000 entrepreneurs to translate a webpage into Chinese than it is to have a billion Chinese learn English.
I was pretty confident that what we were going to see on the internet for most users was going to be domestic and localized in terms of culture and language. Once the internet is available to the core populations of different countries, you have to deal with people in their own language.
Even though much of the internet is now commercial 鈥 and you鈥檇 think that might push towards a 鈥渦niversal language鈥 鈥 it鈥檚 much more the case that even commercial interactions are shaped by local culture and customs. Beyond that, the dominance of local norms is even more evident in discourse. Conversations are shaped by local traditions and norms around discourse. Think of the similes that people draw on to explain things to others. They are subtle and particularly local.
That鈥檚 why I knew there would be a natural resistance to intrusions from other cultures 鈥 and American hegemony on the internet. People fight to preserve their cultures.They are doing it aggressively in the age of globalization. They want to challenge the dilution of their cultures.
ITI: How confident were you in your prediction? What factors were you weighing as you wrote the answer you did?
Clark: I was pretty confident because I have a particular view of what we should make of the internet. When we were building the internet, our aspiration was that it would be a platform where anyone could build anything they wanted. It shouldn鈥檛 surprise us that if you create a space in which you can do anything you want that different people will do different things.
I was excited then that the internet wasn鈥檛 becoming an English-language cultural hegemony. It was great that people around the world were doing what they wanted to do. They seized the empowerment for their own purposes. We might not be excited about everything that鈥檚 been done, but it鈥檚 the consequence of what we built, and we should be pleased with that.
What are the real implications of the generality of the internet? One that we鈥檙e struggling with today is that some people want to exploit that generality and be malicious. There are lots of ways to be a creative crook, if that鈥檚 what you want to be.
ITI: Has anything surprised you about the way things have unfolded between then and now?
Clark: A lot of it has to do with timing. We knew a long time ago, for example, that you could use the internet for streaming video. We had it in the mid-1980s. But the system just didn鈥檛 have the capacity to make it work as a commercial product. We knew it would work. We were just waiting for the infrastructure to catch up. That鈥檚 a good example of a lot of what you see on the internet. Our ideas outrun the capacity of the system to support them. Once the full system is built, it takes the bottleneck away and a lot of those pent-up ideas that people were waiting to do.
The explosion in the apps space is another example of the nice consequence of building out the infrastructure. It鈥檚 tied to the trend toward mobile connectivity. And then look at all the devices we can talk to now 鈥 tell them what we want them to do. None of this was really surprising because we knew it could be done.
What has been surprising is how quickly they took hold once we had the infrastructure to support them. The lesson of this is that you should be careful about assuming something won鈥檛 happen. The truth is that you should almost never be surprised because people will move into a space as soon as it鈥檚 available and start creating things.
ITI: Where do you see things going in the next decade when it comes to lingual diversity and other cultural issues online?
Clark: When we look to the future, the thing that distresses me is the possible balkanization of the internet. The first use of the term I can find is a paper written in 1997 by Marshall Van Alstyne and Eric Brynjolfsson, 鈥溾 It鈥檚 very forward looking. We are seeing forces now where the Russians are trying to create a Russian internet experience and the Chinese are trying to create a Chinese internet experience, the Great Chinese Firewall, and a lot of smaller countries would like to do the same but don鈥檛 yet know how to do it.
It鈥檚 not that they want to cut themselves off entirely, but the aim is to create a domestic internet experience entirely shaped by applications that were built inside the country. It鈥檚 designed to meet the language needs and state control needs and all the other things we associate with these regimes. Clearly that trend is going to amplify the localization and language experience of particular cultures. Part of what they are trying to do is control what people see 鈥 so that they aren鈥檛 tempted to go and find material that was created in other languages. When you think about this situation, you have to start by understanding that 鈥渨e ain鈥檛 them.鈥 And then try to understand the expectations and constraints of the regimes and the things that ordinary users are willing to undertake. When everyone is on the internet, the tools for using it have to be tailored to them.
We are struggling and we are at a fork in the road on these issues. It鈥檚 clear that globalization is triggering a nationalistic backlash. It鈥檚 happening in lots of countries, including in the United States now. At its worst, this could lead to an even more intentional desire to localize the experience for users. On the other hand, over the next 10 or 20, you might see a washing out of cultural differences. Will the internet become an American cosmopolitan experience? The tension here is between nationalistic resistance, on the one hand, and global mixing on the other hand. Nationalistic tendencies point in one direction, but a natural homogenization of culture also could unfold. I hope we don鈥檛 lose cultural diversity and become too homogenized. My guess is that we probably won鈥檛. But at the most positive edge of this, I also hope we become more cosmopolitan.
5 – The rise of virtual and augmented reality
, and that is starting to happen.
Virtual reality (VR) in the digital age generally refers to a computer-simulated experience. in from gaming to aeronautics, combat training to shopping. While t saw extensive growth in VR technology, the early 2000s saw a lull. Despite this downtick in innovation on the VR front, a majority of experts in late 2005 into early 2006 expected fairly vivid virtual realities would exist by 2020 and some even expected that some people would be addicted, spending a great deal of time in virtual realms and mostly eschewing 鈥渞eality.鈥
In late 2005-early 2006, the Pew Research Center and 乱伦视频鈥檚 Imagining the Internet Center asked tech experts to weigh in on seven differing scenarios tied to possible changes that might occur by the year 2020. Nearly six-in-ten experts (56%) agreed with the following scenario:
By the year 2020, virtual reality on the internet will come to allow more productivity from most people in technologically- communities than working in the 鈥榬eal world.鈥 But the attractive nature of virtual-reality worlds will also lead to serious addiction problems for many, as we lose people to alternate realities.
This prediction has not quite come to fruition 鈥 at least not as experts had initially expected. A virtual reality akin to 鈥淭he Oasis鈥 in Earnest Cline鈥檚 “Ready Player One,” remains science fiction. In fact, fully-realized VR has yet to find common mass-market use. Virtual reality gaming is to break into the . Still leading in popularity are the non-VR games that allow individuals to build simulated lives; these games have proven and have been found to lead some people to .
Augmented reality also saw some gains in the . Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience in which technology is used to enhance experiences in the current offline environment, such as using your camera to recognize your location to give you when you get lost, or using your camera to , 鈥渢ry on鈥 virtual clothing or see how new furniture might fit into your home.
In 2007-2008, when we asked tech experts about eight possible future trends that might occur by the year 2020, :
Many lives are touched by the use of augmented reality or spent interacting in artificial spaces. In 2020, virtual worlds, mirror worlds, and augmented reality are popular network formats, thanks to the rapid evolution of natural, intuitive technology interfaces and personalized information overlays. To be fully connected, advanced organizations and individuals must have a presence in the 鈥渕etaverse鈥 and/or the 鈥済eoWeb.鈥 Most well-equipped internet users will spend some part of their waking hours鈥攁t work and at play鈥攁t least partially linked to augmentations of the real world or alternate worlds. This lifestyle involves seamless transitions between artificial reality, virtual reality, and the status formerly known as 鈥渞eal life.鈥
This statement has not yet to come to fruition. While some may have a loyalty to , mode or and use them daily, most people are not using AR on a regular basis and a smaller share are devoted users of VR.
In the 2007-2008 canvassing, Susan Mernit, executive director of and formerly an executive with Yahoo and America Online, argued that while AR and VR may appeal to certain subcultures, it would take much longer for these technologies to go mainstream. She wrote: 鈥淭his 2020 scenario is appealing to the geeks and the gamers among us, but I don鈥檛 see the seamless transitions that this posits happening this quickly鈥攊t鈥檚 elitist and too far out of the mainstream for many Americans, especially those with less free time. Having said that, I do think there are sectors of society that will use the metaverse to play and to train in disproportionate numbers鈥攁nd that we will see a rise in virtual worlds as entertainment spaces outside of gaming (think sex, travel, historic simulations).鈥
In a December 1, 2020 interview, Mernit got another chance to reflect on this topic:
Imagining the Internet Center (ITI): What do you remember about the period when we asked this question and you gave your answer?
Mernit: In 2008, the memory of using a 300-baud modem was not that old. It was still pretty fresh in my memory. So much of what was possible was dictated by access to whatever speed the internet could provide. AR and VR were in their very early stages, but the computing power for them was really a question. Two of the things I couldn鈥檛 imagine at the time were today鈥檚 increase in computing power and the miniaturization of technology. Having a mobile phone with more computing power than I had on a computer when I answered those questions wasn鈥檛 something I could predict.
I didn鈥檛 see around those corners in 2008 so my answer was driven by the consumer behavior I saw around me. The internet is a hospitable home to all sorts of obsessive, niche networks.
There are lots of narrow and deep communities and some of them had an interest in AR and VR early on.
Now there are so many applications for AR and VR 鈥 telemedicine, virtual travel, arts communities like , the realty business, lots of the changes spawned by COVID-19. We see so many ways that people are integrating AR and VR as tools for everyday activities.
When I answered these questions, I worked at America Online. Soon after I was in a big layoff and tweeted about it (nobody really did that back then). Then, I went to TechStars in Boulder,
Colorado. I was in a startup that failed very quickly. But one of the other companies there was going to change history. It was Jeff Powers and Vikas Reddy with . They were developing the early technologies for Occipital VR and AR and not knowing what the best uses might be. They had this amazing technology, but they didn鈥檛 know its purpose 鈥 that it could become this 鈥渕iddleware鈥 that could serve thousands of companies and applications.
We can鈥檛 see around the corner to see what technologies are going to take hold. When we were at TechStars, they were not the favorite. I had no idea that these brilliant people that I was sitting next to were creating something that was a giant game changer.
ITI: How confident were you in your prediction? What factors were you weighing as you wrote the answer you did?
Mernit: What I did know then that is true today is that processing capacity and platform tools drive user behavior more than user behavior drives those tools. With Occipital, there was not a consumer or business problem they were trying to solve. Their interest was in creating capacity.
Over my long career in tech, I鈥檝e seen lots of brilliant ideas for which there was no technical capacity at the time to really build it. When I was starting to work with Wide Area Networks with Waze we were trying to build these big computing tables at a point when there was no World Wide Web. It was hard. Now, there is so much capacity, including on our phones, this is possible. The major insight is that the big innovations come from a blend of technologies and the platforms that convey them.
Look at in Oakland. They had a very innovative tagging platform for photography which then became a phenomenon with girls. But if those tools hadn鈥檛 been there, the capacity to build that niche wouldn鈥檛 have been possible. It鈥檚 easy for us to think that this cool game will drive usage or this celebrity will draw the audience we need. But it鈥檚 really the case that you need the technologies and the platforms in place first and then the innovations are built on them.
AR and VR technologies keep growing. The issue is: How do they capture your attention? How you become aware of them?鈥
ITI: Has anything surprised you about the way things have unfolded between then and now?
Mernit: I am always surprised 鈥 being outside the demographic that is most into this 鈥 at the incredible persistence and value of gaming. The amount of time people spend on gaming as a cultural experience is perhaps as great or greater than social media or watching and streaming media that we used to call TV. It鈥檚 become so endemic to the life experiences and thought processes of people who are 40 or younger. In 2008, gaming was something that kids did. I work with 35-year-olds now where gaming is a central part of their life. The same thing applies to some people and the social media platform that is central to their lives.
The other big shift is from the 鈥渁ttention economy鈥 to the 鈥渓ike economy.鈥 People鈥檚 need to feel personal validation and approval is striking and it ties to people being the owner of their own brand. Their brand brings them acceptance and celebrity 鈥 ideally 鈥 at a level equivalent to or greater than their peers. That starts with people at age 12. It鈥檚 core to how people experience themselves today. It was unimaginable in 2008.
ITI: Where do you see things going in the next decade when it comes to augmented and virtual realities?
Mernit: I鈥檓 excited about the idea of immersive environments. As someone who鈥檚 moved into a non-profit where we do very 鈥渉igh tech鈥 like blacksmithing and foundry testing metal and glass blowing, I鈥檓 wondering how we take these immersive experiences and create virtual ways that bring them really close for users to touch them.
It鈥檚 the same impulse that makes people want to do scans of places or monuments or places that they can鈥檛 visit directly. We are moving to a world where we will keep growing ways to have alternative experiences of locations and realities. The educational applications are powerful. For instance, you can teach people about the impact of trauma on a child, exploring (ACEs). These are tools to get people the chance to go deep on any subject that interests them.
Another thing I鈥檇 like in the future is for search technology to get a lot better. We haven鈥檛 yet solved search. Google is so dominant that it鈥檚 probably prevented a lot of innovation. Everyone struggles to find what they really want. The tools to save and bookmark what you really want are a pain.
The same goes for personal computing experiences. In the future it will be a lot more voice-driven 鈥 it鈥檚 getting better and better and smarter and smarter. There will be better ways to use computing that will be 鈥渇ingerless鈥 and much more helpful in the mobile environment.
The final thing I see as I鈥檓 getting older is assistive technologies for people who are aging. They will help people maintain their wellness and use tools to help them lead productive lives. And we鈥檒l see more things like what鈥檚 happening in Japan for artificial companionship. People will be able to feed simulacrums of their loved ones into technology and get approximations of those loved ones to spend time with.
6 – The line between home and work
In 2007, the internet was seeping into nondigital walks of life in ways which had not been seen before. Arguably, that was the year the internet 鈥溾 with the just as Facebook and Twitter were really starting to take off. Clearly, the seeds had been planted for work to more easily seep into home life. Whereas some other cellphones could connect to the internet in a limited fashion, the iPhone allowed people to use the internet and access constantly emerging new digital applications anywhere, anytime, all within the palm of their hand.
While had gained popularity with businesspeople for its work-on-the-go capabilities in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the iPhone appealed to a wider market. Suddenly, a more diverse group of Americans had work-capable devices on them at all times. In addition, video conferencing was on the rise. Skype, founded in 2003, had been purchased by eBay in 2005 and would go on to be owned by Microsoft in 2011. In 2010 . This free video-chat software that could be easily downloaded to any digital device allowed people to talk face to face without concern of location, specialty equipment access or costs. It made it easier for families and bosses and co-workers to stay connected at a distance; it allowed for work to be done from home.
During late 2007 into early 2008, we asked tech experts about eight possible scenarios that might occur by the year 2020. Some 56% of experts agreed with this scenario:
Few lines divide professional time from personal time, and that鈥檚 OK. In 2020, well-connected knowledge workers in more-developed nations have willingly eliminated the industrial-age boundaries between work hours and personal time. Outside of formally scheduled activities, work and play are seamlessly integrated in most of these workers鈥 lives. This is a net-positive for people. They blend personal/professional duties wherever they happen to be when they are called upon to perform them鈥攆rom their homes, the gym, the mall, a library, and possibly even their company鈥檚 communal meeting space, which may exist in a new virtual-reality format.
This prediction has become indisputably true in 2020, as the COVID-19 outbreak drove many Americans to work entirely from home. aided businesses in continuing to operate while employees carried out their work whether it be on their home computers or company-issued devices. Cellphones also blurred the work-home divide, as work calls could be made to personal devices and emails could be sent while on the go. Even before the COVID-19 outbreak, these behaviors were seen, though not on such a simultaneously global scale. While the overall sentiment of the prediction has held true, a few specifics did not come to fruition. Meetings are not held via a virtual or augmented reality environment. However, some video call services do provide levity through their augmented backgrounds and facial filters that change how a person looks.
In the 2007-2008 canvassing, 鈥橤benga Sesan, executive director for , based in Nigeria, argued professional and personal life would run simultaneously, with mobile phones playing a key role in this blurring process. He wrote: 鈥淓ven those who live in developing (or underdeveloped) nations will be able to overcome the barrier of geography through internet access and other connected devices. It may be 鈥榩lug-and-pray鈥 and not 鈥榩lug-and-play鈥 but it plugs anyway! It鈥檚 now 4:05 a.m. in Lagos, Nigeria, and I鈥檓 asking myself if everything I鈥檝e done in the last 5 hours will count as work, rest, play, or sleep-mode tasks. In 2020, professional and personal time will be as far from each other as fingers from the keys on a mobile phone. Multitasking will no longer mean driving and talking alone, but it will include work and play at the same time.鈥
In an interview on November 25, 2020, he shared new insights:
Imagining the Internet Center (ITI): What do you remember about the period when we asked this question and you gave your answer?
Sesan: When I was in high school in 1991 in Ondo State, Nigeria, there were two computers in the school and the teacher told me, 鈥淐omputers are not for people like you, you can鈥檛 understand how to use them.鈥 It was painful. I made up my mind that I am going to learn how to use computers and teach other people.
That led me to learn computers and start a group of young people online in a Yahoo! Group called 鈥淏lack Pioneers鈥 and then another group called 鈥淓-Nigeria.鈥 I went on to work for a nonprofit because I wanted to give back a year in thanks for the people who had taught me computers. But it turned into six years doing programs that straddled business education and information technology (IT). After that, I founded the Paradigm Initiative and we did lots of training of young people and then turned to policy advocacy. We are in six countries now, working on digital rights and digital inclusion.
The reason I gave the answer I did was that I was speaking from a place of hope. At the time, the big issue in Nigeria was access to the internet. I was thinking that maybe the day will come when we will all have good internet access and I wouldn鈥檛 have to be in DC or London or San Francisco to have access to the best tech opportunities.
I didn鈥檛 have a crystal ball, but a decade ago it was pretty predictable that work and leisure would be changing. Mobile devices were more widespread and getting smaller and smaller and more affordable. And they could do more things besides phone calls. My training in electrical engineering gave me confidence in Moore鈥檚 Law 鈥 that every 18 months the power of microchips would double and the price would fall. Phones were becoming as powerful as desktop computers. It only made sense that this would change how and where work gets done and leisure is enjoyed.
ITI: How confident were you in your prediction? What factors were you weighing as you wrote the answer you did?
Sesan: Blackberry phones were available then, but at work they were only used by the 鈥渂ig woman or man.鈥 You had to be a senior businessperson to have a Blackberry phone. I could see that the more people had these devices, the more likely it would be that they would send assignments for people to do in advance of meetings.
In Nigeria in those days all the workers got to the job at 8:00 a.m. and the boss would send instructions to them and then arrive at 10:00 a.m. and want to see how they had handled their tasks. The distinction between being at work and working, and working somewhere outside the office became irrelevant. It was only natural to note that the mobile phone was going to play a much bigger role in work and allow for work to be done anywhere, any time.
ITI: Has anything surprised you about the way things have unfolded between then and now?
Sesan: What could go wrong? One of the easiest things to do is predict the future you are going to work in. I was working in this space and was telling people that they would be able to work remotely in the future and not have to be in London, DC or San Francisco to work with the people who are there.
I confess I鈥檓 a big fiction fan and was excited when James Bond could whip out technology and do amazing things with it. I remember the Sandra Bullock movie, 鈥淭he Net,鈥 and everything that happened in that movie has eventually happened. So, my view is that if writers and Hollywood can think of it, then it鈥檚 probably going to happen.
It was still surprising to see the speed at which things happened. It took Nigeria about five years between 1995 and 2000 to get less than 100,000 internet users. In another five years we had almost 5 million more users, and between 2006 and 2010, the number of internet users quintupled. There were 4.5 million internet users in all of Africa in 2000 and that number has now grown to over 526 million.
Many analysts underestimated people鈥檚 appetite for technology. Everybody wants an easy life 鈥 wants to be comfortable. That鈥檚 one driver. Another is that sometimes we are forced to move quickly. The coronavirus hit, and human beings adapted quickly. That was what I was banking on 鈥 the selfishness and adaptability of humans.
ITI: Where do you see things going in the next decade when it comes to the distinction between personal and professional life?
Sesan: Three things come to mind for the future. One is that entertainment will become work. People will plant tasks inside entertainment. You will watch a movie and then solve a strategy problem. Scenario planning is another example. We will see businesses that allow people to have fun and in the midst of fun getting their work done. You see some things like that now. is an example. You go to a website and put in information to prove you are a human being. While you鈥檙e doing that you are solving part of a bigger problem. Many people don鈥檛 even know how captchas work, but I see the captcha-ization of real-life work.
The second change is a bit worrying for me is that social life is going to disappear. Introverts used to be forced to go to workplaces. Now that technology allows you to work from anywhere you will see lots of people looking for jobs that will allow them to be by themselves. They can determine the pace of their work. Work hours 鈥 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. 鈥 will be a thing of the past in many jobs. Especially in the Global North, people will be able to determine when to work, when to rest, when to play. During the day when there is sunshine, they want to move around and be more healthy, rather than being in offices. Then, in the evening people will do the work for the tasks set before them.
The third will be fun, if it happens. It will be an integration of virtual reality into people鈥檚 lives. It will allow me to play with my children and still be part of a meeting. My 3-D hologram will be at the meeting and speak for me. The biggest breakthrough, maybe not in 10 years, will be machines can translate thoughts into words. When I think it, you hear it. When that innovation happens, I will be one of the first customers. Imagine spending more time with your family and still being able to be part of serious meetings or conference panels. You could still speak with wisdom, while still feeding your two-year-old the egg that she doesn鈥檛 like for breakfast.
7 – Mobile connectivity
In late 2005 heading into early 2006 . The first iPhone would not be released until the summer of 2007, and the first Android wouldn鈥檛 come onto the scene until Fall 2008. Similarly, . It was the . Google had just recently dethroned Yahoo as the most popular search engine. The age of social media was in its infancy. was starting is meteoric rise and Facebook had just dropped the 鈥淭he鈥 from its name. Amidst all this change, we asked tech experts about seven scenarios about possible changes that might occur by the year 2020. Some 56% of these experts agreed this scenario would unfold:
By 2020, worldwide network interoperability will be perfected, allowing smooth data flow, authentication and billing; mobile wireless communications will be available to anyone anywhere on the globe at an extremely low cost.
Recent reports by the International Telecommunications Union report that to 3G mobile coverage or a faster service that allows smartphone users to access the internet in addition to being able to call and text. It says . But access does not guarantee usage. The ITU reported as of 2019, 53.6% of the world鈥檚 population used the internet and 3.6 billion people did not. have documented this same pattern of rapid but not universal internet adoption.
At the same time, it is important to note that . In some places each gigabyte of data costs less than $10, but people in some countries pay much more. The African continent has some of the largest price differences in a country-by-country comparison. Despite there being less than 600 miles separating their nearest boarders, residents of Zimbabwe pay $75.20 per gigabyte on average, whereas each gigabyte of data costs only $.88 cents in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
These disparities reflect one of the concerns of the experts who responded about this prediction more than 15 years ago. They noted that profit-driven businesses 鈥 especially those without competition 鈥 would be creating the infrastructure for connectivity and that this might impede consumer access, especially for those who might struggle to afford it.
Additionally, data flows over today鈥檚 internet are not always smooth. Governments have shut down the internet as a political act. The human-rights group , an increase from previous years, and in COVID-ravaged 2020 more could be likely.
In the 2005-2006 乱伦视频-Pew canvassing of experts, Louis Nauges, the current chief strategy officer at Wizy.io and longtime internet strategist, predicted, 鈥淢obile internet will be dominant. By 2020, most mobile networks will provide 1-gigabit-per-second-minimum speed, anywhere, anytime. Dominant access tools will be mobile, with powerful infrastructure characteristics (memory, processing power, access tools), but zero applications; all applications will come from the Net.鈥
In an email interview with us on October 28, 2020, Nauges discussed then and now:
Imagining the Internet Center (ITI): What do you remember about the period when we asked this question and you gave your answer?
Nauges: A time of tremendous innovations, lots of excitement about the potentials of technology and the internet. I was more focused on new technologies and less on their impacts on society.
ITI: How confident were you in your prediction? What factors were you weighing as you wrote the answer you did?
Nauges: I have always been curious about technology, since the beginning of my professional activities which have been in Information Technology (IT) since day 1. I spend an average of two hours per day looking for new ideas, new solutions, new providers. This may explain why my predictions were reasonably accurate.
ITI: When it comes to the spread of internet connectivity 鈥 especially via mobile devices – has anything surprised you about the way things have unfolded between then and now?
Nauges: I am surprised by the fact that the U.S. has lost its leadership in internet technologies and usage. Asia is now way ahead of the U.S. in mobile usage, in 5G deployments, low-cost access to internet, low-cost devices. I am also surprised by the collapse of many former leading companies like Nokia, Blackberry and the emergence of a duopoly: iOS and Android. iOS and Android did not exist in 2006!
ITI: Where do you see things going in the next decade when it comes to basic access to the internet and how digital technology will be used?
Nauges: Technology is no longer an issue. Individual usage and, even more importantly, enterprise usage are way behind what technology permits. I am now trying to forecast what could be the most important impacts of digital technology on our world, and here are my bets:
- Digital Technology will become the 鈥渂est friend鈥 of our planet. It will help reduce our energy consumption and CO2 emissions, thanks to a huge 鈥溾 of the economy. Some examples of this incoming 鈥淒igital Frugality鈥:
- Universal 3D printing of material, food and medical supplies will reduce the need for transportation of people and materials. Technology-based vertical farming will be everywhere, reducing the need for land for agriculture and animal breeding.
- Public cloud leaders AWS, Google, Azure, with efficient and carbon-neutral data centers, will replace 90% of legacy private data centers, reducing by more than 80% the use of carbon-based electricity.
- Travelling for business will be reduced by more than 80%, thanks to very high-quality tools for remote working.
- Worldwide distribution of work will explode, helping people living in remote places, developing countries, small cities have the same potential for success as people living in Silicon Valley, New York or Paris.
2. FLW (Front Line Workers) equipped with innovative digital tools and applications will become the key actors of the digital transformation of the economy. They represent more than 75% of workers in the world, and their essential roles will finally be recognized. The pyramid of power will be turned upside-down thanks to mobile technologies. Headquarters roles will diminish, the number of white-collar workers will shrink, and they will be at the service of FLW, not the reverse.
3. Universal, cheap access to very fast networks will help developing economies grow faster. Fast internet access will be a great equalizer of opportunities worldwide. Where I live will no longer be a barrier to high-value jobs. And, this is possible, but not certain: political resistance, corruption, denial of access to specific groups of people could block the potential benefits of technology and create huge disruptions in the world.
8 – Responsive organizations
There has been an irresistible urge among technology builders, scholars and other analysts since the earliest days of the internet to forecast the likely effects that digital connectivity would have on almost every conceivable aspect of life, including on organizations of all kinds.
In 2009-10, we asked tech experts about 10 scenarios and possibilities that could happen by the year 2020. A majority (72%) of experts agreed with the following scenario:
By 2020, innovative forms of online cooperation will result in significantly more efficient and responsive governments, business, non-profits, and other mainstream institutions.
Conversely, 26% experts said the following would be the case:
By 2020, governments, businesses, non-profits and other mainstream institutions will primarily retain familiar 20th听century models for conduct of relationships with citizens and consumers online and offline.
While the internet has made it easier for people to voice their questions, concerns and opinions directly with governments, businesses and other institutions, the ability of these groups to adequately respond to the mass amounts of feedback they get can be mixed, sometimes to no fault of their own. For instance, by using bots or spamming systems with misleading feedback.
While around the world as of 2019, research suggest that . Indeed, they have deep concerns about the bedrock trustworthiness of all kinds of , and .
In the 2009-10 canvassing, Stephen Downes, senior research officer with the听 in Canada, wrote about a larger kind of transformation that he thought organizations would go through by the year 2020: 鈥淭his question presupposes that 鈥榞overnments, businesses, non-profits, and other mainstream institutions鈥 will continue to exist, and will either be more responsive or not. In fact, by 2020, the changing nature of these institutions will have become clear, and we will be well into the process of replacing industrial-age institutions with information-age ones. It won鈥檛 even make sense to talk of these institutions as 鈥榚fficient鈥 or 鈥榬esponsive鈥 鈥 these are economists鈥 terms presuppose a client-server model of governance. But by 2020, it will be clear that people are governing, managing, educating, and supporting themselves, not waiting for some institution to be 鈥榚ffective鈥 or 鈥榬esponsive鈥 to these needs.鈥
In an interview with us on November 23, 2020, Downes looked back and forward:
Imagining the Internet Center (ITI): What do you remember about the period when we asked this question and you gave your answer?
Downes: In 2010 we鈥檇 been through the financial collapse and the failure of old institutions. It was a couple of years after and just before the MOOC hype hit. The core concept we were talking about was 鈥渘etworked learning,鈥 instead of learning being this mass phenomenon. The networked approach was different because the communication of ideas didn鈥檛 go from one individual source at the center to everybody all at once, but rather from community to community through a pattern of diffusion through a network.
That meant you鈥檇 need a different kind of organization that supported do-it-yourself kind of things. People need to do things for themselves and not depend on a single central source because the bottleneck would be incredible. That鈥檚 what I was thinking at the time 鈥 that a new kind of organization was better suited to learning.
ITI: How confident were you in your prediction? What factors were you weighing as you wrote the answer you did, especially when you think about the forces that might resist?
Downes: Every existing organization was going to be a force against it. Nothing changes without resistance. The MOOC was one step in an ongoing process of decentralization and distribution that people could see being applied to all kinds of goods and services. There were other things. Yochai Benkler鈥檚 鈥淲ealth of Networks鈥 had been out for a few years. It was before deep learning and artificial intelligence, but people knew that way of thinking and that the technology would soon be coming.
I actually wouldn鈥檛 call it 鈥渞esistance.鈥 It鈥檚 more inertia. People weren鈥檛 really against networked society. It was just not how things were done. And until people see a compelling reason to do it and unless doing it is easy to do, people were probably not going to change.
ITI: Has anything surprised you about the way things have unfolded between then and now?
Downes: I was surprised how slowly it has all happened. For all the talk about 鈥榯he future is quickly arriving and affecting organizational change,鈥 it actually moves quite slowly. I look at this as a 20- or 30-year process and we鈥檙e not there yet. It鈥檚 going to be another 10 years before we鈥檙e clearly, identifiably there.
That said, as I predicted, we鈥檙e beginning to see the first signs now that we鈥檙e moving towards a self-serve, DIY culture, even though it鈥檚 still not mainstream for organizations. Governments and companies are still centrally organized and managed, despite the spread of distributed sub-systems. Even the big technology companies are centrally managed systems.
But if you look at what鈥檚 happening in places like the and the trend toward , we begin to see movement. Things still have centralized management, but when we get to decentralized decision-making and management, the future I was describing 10 years ago actually takes hold. It鈥檒l be another 10 years before we鈥檙e in a distributed governance mode. The change will come first at the local organizations 鈥 communities, companies, co-ops. National organizations will be the last to change because they鈥檙e national organizations and inherently centralized.
ITI: Where do you see things going in the next decade when it comes to the effects of the internet on responsiveness and effectiveness of governments, businesses, and other institutions?
Downes: I鈥檓 looking for gradualism. The internet is funny and society is funny. You get these changes that are 20 years in the making and then they arrive in front of everyone overnight and 鈥渆verything has changed.鈥
The pandemic is a good example of that. All the stuff that made the pandemic possible was stuff that was 20 years in development. Looking back, you can see the precursors 鈥 Ebola, SARS, even HIV. You can see the way how our more interconnected society made a pandemic more and more likely. And then it happens 鈥渙vernight,鈥 and people say, 鈥淥h, this pandemic came out of nowhere.鈥
Distributed technology will roll out gradually, gradually, gradually, gradually, with a few blips. Blockchain was one of those blips. There were some elements of decentralized, distributed networked-based technology in blockchain and people said, 鈥淎ha, that鈥檚 the things that is going to change it all!鈥 But it wasn鈥檛. But you could see how people were ready to pounce on that. One thing will catch on and overturn an entire industry, and all of a sudden we will be in this age of decentralized, distributed technology management 鈥 and organization and governance.
When I started at NRC in 2001, they had everybody do an introductory lecture and my intro lecture was called 鈥渢he budget calculator.鈥 The calculator would be basically for the federal budget of Canada and everybody could use the budget calculator to create a budget 鈥 at a high level or at a really granular level. And it would be connected to all the social indicators and economic indicators like the inflation rate, price of oil and the price of wheat, etc. The system would make projections or for the previous government, or how your budget would have done if it had been implemented. Everybody could create their own, or form groups to create a collaborative budget, and the system would produce an overall report that is a 鈥渃onsensus budget.鈥
At a certain point in time when everybody can contribute to this consensus budget, it becomes very hard for a government to deviate from that consensus budget. They鈥檇 have to explain the deviations. Over time, the actual government mechanism for setting the budget of the country would become the consensus budget. This process would become the norm for how we make decisions. That will be the time when people say, 鈥淥h, now we鈥檙e in this new mode of governance and organization.鈥
I still haven鈥檛 built the budget calculator, but I want to. And one day, we will have been building it for 20 years and then it will have arrived 鈥渙vernight.鈥
Acknowledgments
We are extremely thankful for the contributions of the thousands of people who have participated since 2005 in the ongoing series of the Pew Research Center and Imagining the Internet Center canvassings of experts on digital life.
Special thanks to the folks who spoke with us again in 2020 about their earlier expert responses and how these issues and topics look today: Nicholas Carr, Jamais Cascio, Christine Boese, Stowe Boyd, David Clark, Susan Mernit, 鈥橤benga Sesan, Louis Nauges and Stephen Downes.
This report is a collaborative effort based on the input and analysis of the following individuals.
Primary researchers
Emily A. Vogels, Research Associate, Pew Research Center
Lee Rainie, Director, Internet and Technology Research at the Pew Research Center
Janna Quitney Anderson, Director, 乱伦视频鈥檚 Imagining the Internet Center