Pew Study: The Future of the Internet II

Pew has released The Future of the Internet II, available as a 115 page PDF.

Highlights from the survey:

• Respondants believe that a low-cost global network will exist in 2020, accessible to most people globally.
• Global competition is a definite, with resistance from currently successful businesses.
• Respondants say that "humans will remain in charge of technology between now and 2020" (that's good to hear...) but that machines/processes will exceed human controlability at some point (can we say AI?).
• People will expose more information about themselves and continue to lose any sense of privacy in an increasingly networked environment.
• Economic status and technophobes (who will begin to organize and violently protest) will remain unconnected, even in 2020.  (OK, that sounds a bit scary.)
• Users will continue to dedicate more personal time to "sophisticated, compelling, networked, synthetic worlds by 2020."  "Addiction" was discussed at length.

[RJ]