Janna Anderson, director of the Imagining the Future Center at Elon University

RALEIGH, NC – Right from the start, from its founders to its exploiters, from its builders to its consumers, the Internet has spawned a wealth of speculation on its future.

NC-based Elon University’s “Imagining the Internet” project, a sponsor of the FutureWeb Conference Wednesday and Thursday at the Raleigh Convention Center (April 28-29), has teamed with the PEW Internet & American Life Project to track those predictions past and present.

Janna Quitney Anderson, a professor in the Elon School of Communications and director of the Imagining the Internet Center, tells us the project got underway when Lee Rainie, director of the Pew project, visited Elon in 2000.

He suggested creating a database of Internet predictions similar to Sola Pool’s research work on “Forecasting the Telephone.”

Anderson, together with another Elon professor, Connie Ledoux Book, collaborated over a number of years to get the Imagining the Internet database, going from early predictive statements to ongoing data collected via its site and activities.

Early on, the researchers established certain persistent major themes:

• The Internet will transform society; it will transform economies;
• content will drive the Internet’s success; the Internet presents security and privacy concerns;
• the Internet’s growth is dependent on an efficient and reliable infrastructure; the Internet will spawn a new generation of hardware and software;
• it will create a smaller world; it will transform America’s schools;
• it will impact professions.

The results found in this work made it evident that the predictions research should be expanded upon, the researchers say.

Some early predictions right on

Anderson tells us that while some kooky predictions appear (such as, “The trees will whisper information”), many of the early Internet founders pinpointed the issues we face today. People like Tim Berners Lee and John Perry Barlow suggested we would have to reinvent our notions of privacy, ownership and “Lots of other things we talk about today,” says Anderson.

In 2003, Anderson used Book’s study as the base from which to launch a research initiative aimed at assembling a large, thorough, public database of thousands of the predictions made between 1990 and 1995. This comprehensive study targeted statements made by internet stakeholders and skeptics. These were mined through searches of the major books of the time, Internet sites, magazines, speeches, research presentations and newspaper articles.

Ongoing predictions collected

In 2004, and years to follow, experts quoted in the early 1990s database and many other technology leaders have been sent an e-mail invitation to participate in a web-based “Future of the Internet” survey that records their thoughts about anticipated changes to come in the years ahead. The responses are published along with an accompanying research report in the Predictions Survey section on the site.

The ongoing work included publishing books based on the research, video reporting by School of Communications students, and even a video documentary. The project has also collected thousands of predictions by hundreds of people and amassed a huge and growing database.

In 2007-08, Elon University recognized the ongoing work of the project by establishing the nonprofit Imagining the Internet Center, based in the School of Communications.

When the World Wide Web conference slated a Raleigh event, Anderson was invited onto the steering committee and expressed the idea that it might be effective to bring not only engineers and infrastructure experts here, but to also co-locate a conference exploring the social and political aspects of the Web, which became FutureWeb.

Imagining the Internet site address:
www,imaginingtheinternet.com

The Early ’90s database of predictions:
www.elon.edu/e-web/predictions/early90s/

The books:
www.elon.edu/e-web/predictions/publications.xhtml

Latest Future of the Internet survey:
www.elon.edu/e-web/predictions/expertsurveys/2010survey/default.xhtml

Share Your predictions:
www.elon.edu/predictions/RecentPredictions.aspx

By Allan Maurer

TechJournal South Editor Allan Maurer can be reached at: Allan at TechJournalSouth dot com.