Experts Optimistic About The Next 50 Years of Digi

Experts Optimistic About the Next 50 Years of Digital Life
Fifty years after the first computer network was connected, most experts say digital life will
mostly change humans’ existence for the better over the next 50 years. However, they warn this
will happen only if people embrace reforms allowing better cooperation, security, basic rights and
economic fairness
BY KATHLEEN STANSBERRY, JANNA ANDERSON AND LEE RAINIE
The year 1969 was a pivot point in culture, science and technology. On Jan. 30, the Beatles played
their last show. On July 20, the world watched in awe as Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin
become the first humans to walk on the moon. Less than a month later, nearly half a million
music fans overran a muddy field near Woodstock, New York, for what Rolling Stone calls the
“greatest rock festival ever.”
But the 1969 event that had the greatest global impact on future generations occurred with little
fanfare on Oct. 29, when a team of UCLA graduate students led by professor Leonard Kleinrock
connected computer-to-computer with a team at the Stanford Research Institute. It was the first
host-to-host communication of ARPANET, the early packet-switching network that was the
precursor to today’s multibillion-host internet.
Heading into the network’s 50th anniversary, Pew Research Center and Elon University’s
Imagining the Internet Center asked hundreds of technology experts, including Kleinrock and
fellow internet pioneers, how individuals’ lives might be affected by the evolution of the internet
over the next 50 years. Overall, 530 technology pioneers, innovators, developers, business and
policy leaders, researchers and activists in the nonscientific canvassing responded to this query:
The year 2019 will mark the 50th anniversary of the first host-to-host internet connection. Please
think about the next 50 years. Where will the internet and digital life be a half century from now?
Please tell us how you think connected technology, platforms and applications will be integrated
into people’s lives. You can tackle any dimension of this question that matters to you. You might
consider focusing on questions like this: What changes do you expect to see in the digital world’s
platform companies? What changes do you expect to see in the apps and features that will ride
on the internet? How will digital tools be integrated into everyday life? What will be entirely
new? What will evolve and be recognizable from today’s internet? What new rules, laws or
innovations in its engineering over the intervening years will change the character of today’s
internet?
Considering what you just wrote about your expectations for the next 50 years, how will
individuals’ lives be affected by the changes you foresee?
Some 72% of these respondents say there would be change for the better, 25% say there would
be change for the worse and 3% believe there would be no significant change.
This is a non-scientific canvassing based on a non-random sample. Thus, the results are not
projectable to any population other than the individuals expressing their points of view in this
sample. The respondents’ remarks reflect their personal positions and are not the positions of
their employers.
The optimists responding to the better-worse-no change question expressed hope that in the
next 50 years digital advances will lead to longer lifespans, greater leisure, more equitable
distributions of wealth and power and other possibilities to enhance human well-being. At the
same time, nearly all of these experts’ written predictions included warnings about the
possibilities of greater surveillance and data-abuse practices by corporations and governments,
porous security for digitally connected systems and the prospect of greater economic inequality
and digital divides unless policy solutions push societies in different directions.
In short, these experts argue the future is up for grabs and some argue key decisions need to be
made soon. The main themes in these hundreds of experts’ comments are outlined in this table.
Themes about the next 50 years of life online

CREATING A FAIR AND EQUITABLE DIGITAL FUTURE Humanity’s responsibility Digital life
will continue to be what people make of it. For a better future, humans must make responsible
decisions about their partnership with technology.
Public policy and regulation The age of a mostly unregulated internet will come to an end.
Elected officials and technology leaders will move ahead with regulatory frameworks aimed at
protecting the public good. The lawless alternative has caused dangerous disruptions across
society.
Internet of everything In 50 years, internet use will be nearly as pervasive and necessary as
oxygen. Seamless connectivity will be the norm, and it may be impossible to unplug.
Visions of the future From amazing advancements to dystopian developments, experts
imagine a wide array of possible scenarios for the world 50 years in the future.
HOPEFUL VISIONS
OF 2069 Living longer and feeling better Internet-enabled technology will help people live
longer and healthier lives. Scientific advances will continue to blur the line between human and
machine.
Less work, more leisure Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools will take over repetitive, unsafe and
physically taxing labor, leaving humans with more time for leisure.
Individualized experiences Digital life will be tailored to each user.
Collaboration and community A fully networked world will enhance opportunities for global
collaboration, cooperation and community development, unhindered by distance, language or
time.
Power by the people Expanded internet access could lead to further disruption of existing
social and political power structures, potentially reducing inequality and empowering individuals.
WORRISOME VISIONS
OF 2069 Widening divides The divide between haves and have-nots will grow as a privileged
few hoard the economic, health and educational benefits of digital expansion.
Internet-enabled oppression A powerful elite will control the internet and use it to monitor and
manipulate, while providing entertainment that keeps the masses distracted and complacent.
Connected and alone The hyperconnected future will be populated by isolated users unable to
form and maintain unmediated human relationships.
The end of privacy Personal privacy will be an archaic, outdated concept, as humans willingly
trade discretion for improved healthcare, entertainment opportunities and promises of security.
Misallocated trust Digital life lays you bare. It can inspire a loss of trust, often earns too much
trust and regularly requires that you take the plunge even though you have absolutely no trust.
“There is no
planet B” The future of humanity is inextricably connected to the future of the natural world.
Without drastic measures to reduce environmental degradation, the very existence of human life
in 50 years is in question.
PEW RESEARCH CENTER AND ELON UNIVERSITY'S IMAGINING THE INTERNET CENTER
Among the experts making the case that choices made now could affect whether the future turns
out well or not was Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy and
author of “Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future.” He wrote, “I don’t think the
right framing is ‘will the outcome be good, or bad?’ but rather it must be ‘how will we shape the
outcome, which is currently indeterminate?’ I’m hopeful that we will make the right choices, but
only if we realize that the good outcomes are not at all inevitable.”
Others echoed this point. David Bray, executive director for the People-Centered Internet
coalition, commented, “There will be a series of disruptions to our current way of living and
whether we, as humans, navigate them successfully for the benefit of all or, unfortunately, just a
few, remains to be seen…. What we are seeing is an increasing affordability and availability of
technologies that only were available to large nation-states 20 years ago. The commercial sector
now outpaces the technology development of nation-states, which means groups can have
advanced disruptive technologies that can be used for good or bad [and] that can massively
impact global events. This trend will continue and will challenge the absorptive capacity of
societies to keep up with such technology developments. No longer do we have five to 10 years
to assess the impact of a technology and then incorporate norms, laws, etc. Now we have to
operate on a six-month or three-month time horizon which, when combined with the media’s
tendency to dramatically oversimplify news and reduce complications in narratives about what is
occurring, risks oversimplifying for the public the issues at hand, polarizing different groups and
creating an ever-increasing number of ‘wedge issues’ in societies.”
Esther Dyson, entrepreneur, former journalist, founding chair at ICANN and founder of Wellville,
wrote, “The impact of the internet is not entirely inherent in the technology; it depends on what
we do with it. It’s so powerful that it has given us the opportunity to satisfy many of our short-
term desires instantly; we need to learn how to think longer-term. So far we have mostly done a
bad job of that: Individuals are addicted to short-term pleasures such as likes and other
acknowledgments (to say nothing of drugs and instantly available, online-ordered pleasures), to
finding friends rather than building friendships (and marriages); businesses to boosting quarterly
profits and to recruiting ‘stars’ rather than investing in their own people; nonprofits to running
programs rather than building institutions; and politicians to votes and power. Do we have the
collective wisdom to educate the next generation to do better despite our own poor example?”
Susan Etlinger, an industry analyst for Altimeter Group and expert in data, analytics and digital
strategy, commented, “In 50 years, what we know as our internet will be largely obsolete. Rather
than organizing information in the form of URLs, apps and websites, our digital interactions will
be conversational, haptic and embedded in the world we live in (even, to some extent, in
ourselves). As a result, the distinction between the physical and digital worlds will largely fall
away. Prosthetics, imaging, disease and pathogen detection, and brain science (identifying,
understanding and perhaps even modifying the workings of the brain) will all see advances far
beyond what we can imagine today. Our ability to understand weather and the natural world at
scale will be immensely powerful, driven by advances in machine intelligence and networking. Yet
all of these innovations will mean little if the algorithms and technology used to develop them
are not applied with the same attention to human consequences as they are to innovation. Even
today, the ‘Minority Report’ notion of ‘pre-crime’ is crudely possible using predictive policing
technology, yet it is just one example of how embedded bias can perpetuate and actually
intensify injustice. This is also true in education, health care, our financial system, politics and
really every system that uses data to generate predictions about the world and the future. This is
not at all to say that we should retreat, but rather that we should embrace the opportunity
intelligent technologies give us – to see and better understand our biases so we can optimize for
the world we want, rather than a more efficient version of the world we already have. We’ve
already seen this capability weaponized in the political sphere; the decisions we make now will
set a precedent for whether we are able to use intelligent technologies justly and ethically, or
whether in 50 years we have consigned ourselves to a permanent state of information (and
literal) warfare.”
Lindsey Andersen, an activist at the intersection of human rights and technology for Freedom
House and Internews, now doing graduate research at Princeton University, commented, “The
net benefits for people, in access to government services, information and quality of life, will
outweigh the net losses. That said, as with any major advancement, there will be winners and
losers. The losses will likely come in the form of jobs, autonomy and even freedom. But, perhaps
for the first time, we are in a position to mitigate these losses because we can predict them. And
if we begin solving the problems we have with technology today, it will help address the
problems of the future.”
Alex Halavais, an associate professor of social technologies at Arizona State University, wrote,
“The development and diffusion of new technologies have had a net-positive effect on our
society over time. Certainly, there have been several near-cataclysmic events over the last two
50-year cycles, and we are currently undergoing the slow-moving technologically motivated
disaster of the anthropocene. But over time these technologies have helped to enable more
freedom than oppression, more abundance than deprivation and more creation than destruction.
I would bet on that future.”
Fiona Kerr, industry professor of neural and systems complexity at the University of Adelaide,
commented, “People love bright, shiny things. We adopt them quickly and then work out the
disadvantages, slowly, often prioritizing on litigious risk. The internet has been a wonderful
summary of the best and worst of human development and adoption – making us a strange
mixture of connected and disconnected, informed and funneled, engaged and isolated, as we
learn to design and use multipurpose platforms shaped for an attention economy.”
Joly MacFie, president of the Internet Society’s New York Chapter, said, “We are still in digital
society’s adolescence. Maturity will bring ubiquity, understanding, utility, security and
robustness.”
Randy Marchany, chief information security officer at Virginia Tech and director of Virginia Tech’s
IT Security Laboratory, said, “The human-machine interface will be where I think we’ll see the
biggest change. In the beginning, keyboard-based devices were the primary way of
communicating with a computer. Today, natural-language devices (Watson, Alexa, Siri) are
becoming the norm. The younger generations are using more and more conversational methods
to communicate with their devices. Descendants of the Google Glass-style devices displaying info
using augmented reality techniques will become the normal way of accessing and inputting
information. I suspect that governments will find themselves at odds with the corporations that
collect this data. For example, if Facebook can influence an election, does a government fear it,
partner with it, or take it over completely? Technology will create societal disruptions a la
previous ‘industrial revolutions’ as older technologies and their jobs disappear, and the workforce
needs to be trained in the new technologies. This disruption will cause fundamental changes in
governments, attitudes and way of life. There will be a polarization of views between the new
tech and old tech worlds. How we deal with this polarization will determine whether the
transition is peaceful or not.”
Richard Forno, of the Center for Cybersecurity and Cybersecurity Graduate Program at the
University of Maryland-Baltimore County, wrote, “A few thoughts: 1) I see the future internet as
more commercialized and locked-down in response to corporate/government interests over IP
controls, cybersecurity and perhaps public discourse – to include enacting national borders in
cyberspace. 2) Continued Balkanization of the future internet as people embrace various new
tech – which Internet of Things platform will they use? Which ‘smart’-whatever platform will
become dominant? Will we have many separate ecosystems with as-yet undefined lifespans
and/or vendor support cycles that lead to forced upgrades? What problems will that pose? 3)
Current questions raised over how internet tech like social media, mobile devices, everything-on-
demand impacts society may well set the stage for radical rethinking about what the future
internet will look like – and I suspect it’ll be far removed from the romantic ‘informational
equality’ of the 1990s and early 2000s. The bottom line: The future internet will reflect future
humankind. Humans are a chaotic and fallible species – so how we will develop/embrace future
tech within our global society is not something easily predicted other than to say it will reflect
contemporary views, mores and interests.”
John McNutt, a professor in the school of public policy and administration at the University of
Delaware, responded, “Not every technology is a good idea, and every advance should be
carefully considered in terms of its consequence. On balance, technology has made much human
progress possible. This is likely to continue. We will always have false starts and bad ideas. People
will misuse technology, sometimes in horrific ways. In the end, human progress is based on
creating a future underpinned by knowledge, not ignorance.”
Experts Optimistic About the Next 50 Years of Digital Life

Fifty years after the first computer network was connected, most experts say digital life will
mostly change humans’ existence for the better over the next 50 years. However, they warn this
will happen only if people embrace reforms allowing better cooperation, security, basic rights and
economic fairness
The year 1969 was a pivot point in culture, science and technology. On Jan. 30, the Beatles played
their last show. On July 20, the world watched in awe as Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin
become the first humans to walk on the moon. Less than a month later, nearly half a million
music fans overran a muddy field near Woodstock, New York, for what Rolling Stone calls the
“greatest rock festival ever.”
But the 1969 event that had the greatest global impact on future generations occurred with little
fanfare on Oct. 29, when a team of UCLA graduate students led by professor Leonard Kleinrock
connected computer-to-computer with a team at the Stanford Research Institute. It was the first
host-to-host communication of ARPANET, the early packet-switching network that was the
precursor to today’s multibillion-host internet.
Heading into the network’s 50th anniversary, Pew Research Center and Elon University’s
Imagining the Internet Center asked hundreds of technology experts, including Kleinrock and
fellow internet pioneers, how individuals’ lives might be affected by the evolution of the internet
over the next 50 years. Overall, 530 technology pioneers, innovators, developers, business and
policy leaders, researchers and activists in the nonscientific canvassing responded to this query:
internet?
Some 72% of these respondents say there would be change for the better, 25% say there would
be change for the worse and 3% believe there would be no significant change.
This is a non-scientific canvassing based on a non-random sample. Thus, the results are not
projectable to any population other than the individuals expressing their points of view in this
sample. The respondents’ remarks reflect their personal positions and are not the positions of
their employers.
The optimists responding to the better-worse-no change question expressed hope that in the
next 50 years digital advances will lead to longer lifespans, greater leisure, more equitable
distributions of wealth and power and other possibilities to enhance human well-being. At the
same time, nearly all of these experts’ written predictions included warnings about the
possibilities of greater surveillance and data-abuse practices by corporations and governments,
porous security for digitally connected systems and the prospect of greater economic inequality
and digital divides unless policy solutions push societies in different directions.
In short, these experts argue the future is up for grabs and some argue key decisions need to be
made soon. The main themes in these hundreds of experts’ comments are outlined in this table.
Themes about the next 50 years of life online

CREATING A FAIR AND EQUITABLE DIGITAL FUTURE Humanity’s responsibility Digital life
will continue to be what people make of it. For a better future, humans must make responsible
decisions about their partnership with technology.
Public policy and regulation The age of a mostly unregulated internet will come to an end.
Elected officials and technology leaders will move ahead with regulatory frameworks aimed at
protecting the public good. The lawless alternative has caused dangerous disruptions across
society.
Internet of everything In 50 years, internet use will be nearly as pervasive and necessary as
oxygen. Seamless connectivity will be the norm, and it may be impossible to unplug.
Visions of the future From amazing advancements to dystopian developments, experts
imagine a wide array of possible scenarios for the world 50 years in the future.
HOPEFUL VISIONS
OF 2069 Living longer and feeling better Internet-enabled technology will help people live
longer and healthier lives. Scientific advances will continue to blur the line between human and
machine.
Less work, more leisure Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools will take over repetitive, unsafe and
physically taxing labor, leaving humans with more time for leisure.
Individualized experiences Digital life will be tailored to each user.
Collaboration and community A fully networked world will enhance opportunities for global
collaboration, cooperation and community development, unhindered by distance, language or
time.
Power by the people Expanded internet access could lead to further disruption of existing
social and political power structures, potentially reducing inequality and empowering individuals.
WORRISOME VISIONS
OF 2069 Widening divides The divide between haves and have-nots will grow as a privileged
few hoard the economic, health and educational benefits of digital expansion.
Internet-enabled oppression A powerful elite will control the internet and use it to monitor and
manipulate, while providing entertainment that keeps the masses distracted and complacent.
Connected and alone The hyperconnected future will be populated by isolated users unable to
form and maintain unmediated human relationships.
The end of privacy Personal privacy will be an archaic, outdated concept, as humans willingly
trade discretion for improved healthcare, entertainment opportunities and promises of security.
Misallocated trust Digital life lays you bare. It can inspire a loss of trust, often earns too much
trust and regularly requires that you take the plunge even though you have absolutely no trust.
“There is no
planet B” The future of humanity is inextricably connected to the future of the natural world.
Without drastic measures to reduce environmental degradation, the very existence of human life
in 50 years is in question.
PEW RESEARCH CENTER AND ELON UNIVERSITY'S IMAGINING THE INTERNET CENTER
Among the experts making the case that choices made now could affect whether the future turns
out well or not was Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy and
author of “Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future.” He wrote, “I don’t think the
right framing is ‘will the outcome be good, or bad?’ but rather it must be ‘how will we shape the
outcome, which is currently indeterminate?’ I’m hopeful that we will make the right choices, but
only if we realize that the good outcomes are not at all inevitable.”
Others echoed this point. David Bray, executive director for the People-Centered Internet
coalition, commented, “There will be a series of disruptions to our current way of living and
whether we, as humans, navigate them successfully for the benefit of all or, unfortunately, just a
few, remains to be seen…. What we are seeing is an increasing affordability and availability of
technologies that only were available to large nation-states 20 years ago. The commercial sector
now outpaces the technology development of nation-states, which means groups can have
advanced disruptive technologies that can be used for good or bad [and] that can massively
impact global events. This trend will continue and will challenge the absorptive capacity of
societies to keep up with such technology developments. No longer do we have five to 10 years
to assess the impact of a technology and then incorporate norms, laws, etc. Now we have to
operate on a six-month or three-month time horizon which, when combined with the media’s
tendency to dramatically oversimplify news and reduce complications in narratives about what is
occurring, risks oversimplifying for the public the issues at hand, polarizing different groups and
creating an ever-increasing number of ‘wedge issues’ in societies.”
Esther Dyson, entrepreneur, former journalist, founding chair at ICANN and founder of Wellville,
wrote, “The impact of the internet is not entirely inherent in the technology; it depends on what
we do with it. It’s so powerful that it has given us the opportunity to satisfy many of our short-
term desires instantly; we need to learn how to think longer-term. So far we have mostly done a
bad job of that: Individuals are addicted to short-term pleasures such as likes and other
acknowledgments (to say nothing of drugs and instantly available, online-ordered pleasures), to
finding friends rather than building friendships (and marriages); businesses to boosting quarterly
profits and to recruiting ‘stars’ rather than investing in their own people; nonprofits to running
programs rather than building institutions; and politicians to votes and power. Do we have the
collective wisdom to educate the next generation to do better despite our own poor example?”
Susan Etlinger, an industry analyst for Altimeter Group and expert in data, analytics and digital
strategy, commented, “In 50 years, what we know as our internet will be largely obsolete. Rather
than organizing information in the form of URLs, apps and websites, our digital interactions will
be conversational, haptic and embedded in the world we live in (even, to some extent, in
ourselves). As a result, the distinction between the physical and digital worlds will largely fall
away. Prosthetics, imaging, disease and pathogen detection, and brain science (identifying,
understanding and perhaps even modifying the workings of the brain) will all see advances far
beyond what we can imagine today. Our ability to understand weather and the natural world at
scale will be immensely powerful, driven by advances in machine intelligence and networking. Yet
all of these innovations will mean little if the algorithms and technology used to develop them
are not applied with the same attention to human consequences as they are to innovation. Even
today, the ‘Minority Report’ notion of ‘pre-crime’ is crudely possible using predictive policing
technology, yet it is just one example of how embedded bias can perpetuate and actually
intensify injustice. This is also true in education, health care, our financial system, politics and
really every system that uses data to generate predictions about the world and the future. This is
not at all to say that we should retreat, but rather that we should embrace the opportunity
intelligent technologies give us – to see and better understand our biases so we can optimize for
the world we want, rather than a more efficient version of the world we already have. We’ve
already seen this capability weaponized in the political sphere; the decisions we make now will
set a precedent for whether we are able to use intelligent technologies justly and ethically, or
whether in 50 years we have consigned ourselves to a permanent state of information (and
literal) warfare.”
Lindsey Andersen, an activist at the intersection of human rights and technology for Freedom
House and Internews, now doing graduate research at Princeton University, commented, “The
net benefits for people, in access to government services, information and quality of life, will
outweigh the net losses. That said, as with any major advancement, there will be winners and
losers. The losses will likely come in the form of jobs, autonomy and even freedom. But, perhaps
for the first time, we are in a position to mitigate these losses because we can predict them. And
if we begin solving the problems we have with technology today, it will help address the
problems of the future.”
Alex Halavais, an associate professor of social technologies at Arizona State University, wrote,
“The development and diffusion of new technologies have had a net-positive effect on our
society over time. Certainly, there have been several near-cataclysmic events over the last two
50-year cycles, and we are currently undergoing the slow-moving technologically motivated
disaster of the anthropocene. But over time these technologies have helped to enable more
freedom than oppression, more abundance than deprivation and more creation than destruction.
I would bet on that future.”
Fiona Kerr, industry professor of neural and systems complexity at the University of Adelaide,
commented, “People love bright, shiny things. We adopt them quickly and then work out the
disadvantages, slowly, often prioritizing on litigious risk. The internet has been a wonderful
summary of the best and worst of human development and adoption – making us a strange
mixture of connected and disconnected, informed and funneled, engaged and isolated, as we
learn to design and use multipurpose platforms shaped for an attention economy.”
Joly MacFie, president of the Internet Society’s New York Chapter, said, “We are still in digital
society’s adolescence. Maturity will bring ubiquity, understanding, utility, security and
robustness.”
Randy Marchany, chief information security officer at Virginia Tech and director of Virginia Tech’s
IT Security Laboratory, said, “The human-machine interface will be where I think we’ll see the
biggest change. In the beginning, keyboard-based devices were the primary way of
communicating with a computer. Today, natural-language devices (Watson, Alexa, Siri) are
becoming the norm. The younger generations are using more and more conversational methods
to communicate with their devices. Descendants of the Google Glass-style devices displaying info
using augmented reality techniques will become the normal way of accessing and inputting
information. I suspect that governments will find themselves at odds with the corporations that
collect this data. For example, if Facebook can influence an election, does a government fear it,
partner with it, or take it over completely? Technology will create societal disruptions a la
previous ‘industrial revolutions’ as older technologies and their jobs disappear, and the workforce
needs to be trained in the new technologies. This disruption will cause fundamental changes in
governments, attitudes and way of life. There will be a polarization of views between the new
tech and old tech worlds. How we deal with this polarization will determine whether the
transition is peaceful or not.”
Richard Forno, of the Center for Cybersecurity and Cybersecurity Graduate Program at the
University of Maryland-Baltimore County, wrote, “A few thoughts: 1) I see the future internet as
more commercialized and locked-down in response to corporate/government interests over IP
controls, cybersecurity and perhaps public discourse – to include enacting national borders in
cyberspace. 2) Continued Balkanization of the future internet as people embrace various new
tech – which Internet of Things platform will they use? Which ‘smart’-whatever platform will
become dominant? Will we have many separate ecosystems with as-yet undefined lifespans
and/or vendor support cycles that lead to forced upgrades? What problems will that pose? 3)
Current questions raised over how internet tech like social media, mobile devices, everything-on-
demand impacts society may well set the stage for radical rethinking about what the future
internet will look like – and I suspect it’ll be far removed from the romantic ‘informational
equality’ of the 1990s and early 2000s. The bottom line: The future internet will reflect future
humankind. Humans are a chaotic and fallible species – so how we will develop/embrace future
tech within our global society is not something easily predicted other than to say it will reflect
contemporary views, mores and interests.”
John McNutt, a professor in the school of public policy and administration at the University of
Delaware, responded, “Not every technology is a good idea, and every advance should be
carefully considered in terms of its consequence. On balance, technology has made much human
progress possible. This is likely to continue. We will always have false starts and bad ideas. People
will misuse technology, sometimes in horrific ways. In the end, human progress is based on
creating a future underpinned by knowledge, not ignorance.”
2. Internet pioneers imagine the next 50 years

People who have had the internet at their fingertips since birth can find it difficult to imagine a
world in which information and communication are not readily available with a quick click or
swipe or voice command to a phone. The following insights come from respected pioneers –
many of them inductees to the Internet Hall of Fame – who were present during the birth and
infancy of the internet.
‘Pervasive global nervous system’ comes from the ‘Internet of Invisible Things’
Leonard Kleinrock, Internet Hall of Fame member and co-director of the first host-to-host online
connection and professor of computer science, University of California, Los Angeles, said, “I
predict that the internet will evolve into a pervasive global nervous system. The internet will be
everywhere, available on a continuous basis, and will be invisible in the sense that it will
disappear into the infrastructure, just as electricity is, in many ways, invisible. The Internet of
Things will be an embedded world of the Internet of Invisible Things. We will be able to interact
with its capabilities via human-friendly interfaces such as speech, gestures, haptics, holograms,
displays and so on. No more will we be forced to interface with tiny, incompatible, awkward
keyboards, icons and clumsy handheld and desktop devices. These interfaces will be highly
customized to each individual and matched to their profile, preferences, privileges and
specifications in an adaptable fashion. My hope is that life will calm down and provide a more
balanced physical/digital presence. Screens will diminish considerably, bringing us back to
enriched human-human interaction, notwithstanding that a significant fraction of our interaction
will be enhanced with software agents, avatars and AI devices (robots, embedded devices, etc.).
We will no longer be adjusting to the awkward software and hardware interfaces we currently
endure, but the customization of these interfaces will be better matched to what we desire and
expect as individuals. Such interactions will enable humans and AI devices to participate in a joint
exchange far more easily than is the case today where it is either human or AI device, but not
easily both.”
‘Beyond Mars and down to molecules’

Bob Metcalfe, Hall of Fame co-inventor of Ethernet, founder of 3Com and now a professor of
innovation and entrepreneurship at the University of Texas, Austin, said, “In 50 years people will
not have to type in IP numbers…. The internet is not merely a network of networks. It is a
network of networks of networks. The ARPANET was a network. In 1973 at Stanford, Vint Cerf
wanted to network ARPANETs around the world in a network of networks. Meanwhile, I wanted
to use the ARPANET to network Ethernets inside buildings. Both of us were right, and we got a
network of networks of networks. This simultaneous growing up and down will continue, beyond
Mars and down to molecules, somehow.”
An international ‘law of the net’ treaty might be needed to solve challenges

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

Lawrence Roberts, designer and manager of ARPANET, the precursor to the internet, and Internet
Hall of Fame member, commented, “Within 50 years we will have the technology for embedding
internet transceivers into human brains. This could greatly speed up information transfer and
allow great advances. However, the flood of advertising would need to be controlled and security
would need to have improved greatly for anyone to take the risk. The internet has evolved little in
the last 50 years except to grow bigger. With so much invested in the current design, it is hard to
see the underlying transport changing fast. A great number of jobs will be able to be done totally
over the internet. That could be from home or from the brain implant. Robots will do the
majority of the physical jobs often with a remote person overseeing the activity, but largely
managed with AI. Most commuting will cease, and roads will be used for driverless transport of
goods or pleasure. AI will incorporate logic and rules to make it safe, not just deep learning neural
networks.”
Centralization of personal data will be irreversible in an ‘information hegemony’

Paul Vixie, an Internet Hall of Fame member known for designing and implementing several
Domain Name System protocol extensions and applications, wrote, “The most active force
vectors in the humanity equation right now all relate to the acquisition and preservation of
power. We will have passed peak-cloud in 50 years. Azure grows faster than Amazon Web
Services, and billions of dollars are being invested in private data centers and private cloud.
However, the centralization of retail transactions and personal information will be irreversible
due to the extreme cost of creating a viable competitor in an information hegemony in which
corporations, churches and foreign governments know more and have more influence than
anything that can be understood by a democratically elected government.”
‘We will need a whole new social paradigm to deal with this’
Elizabeth Feinler, the original manager of the ARPANET Network Information Center and an
Internet Hall of Fame member, said, “It will be interesting to see whether the internet and
computers augment our intelligence and lives, or whether they replace them. Surely, many more
things will be automated, which will mean that jobs will be lost and humans will be less involved
in the daily performance of their lives. We will need a whole new social paradigm to deal with
this. The internet is technically complex. It is also the underpinning for a great deal of American
industry, business and finance, not to mention our democracy. More and more it controls our
infrastructure. We cannot expect our elected lawmakers to understand all of this as they try to
come up with reasonable laws affecting the internet. We need a multilateral body (or bodies) of
internet/computer experts, elected among themselves, to serve as an independent authority to
provide technical guidance and expertise to the government.
Watch the rise of multi-stakeholder organizations

Steve Crocker, CEO and co-founder of Shinkuro Inc., internet pioneer and Internet Hall of Fame
member, responded, “It was evident at the very beginning of the ARPANET that network
connections would become commonplace. Everyone would want their computer connected.
With the creation of the internet and the opening to commercial connections in the 1990s, the
pace of interconnection accelerated. Today, half or more of the world’s population is continuously
connected. I think the internet will start to be built into devices and systems, more or less below
the surface. People will stop referring to the internet and take it for granted, much as the
developed world takes electric power for granted. This will take a fair amount of engineering,
standards development and improved operational practices, of course, but that’s just a
continuation of the path we’ve been on for 50 years. Laws and regulations will be under pressure
to keep up. The existing boundaries between countries and between states in the U.S. will be
hurdles. Cooperation across these jurisdictions will evolve, partly through multilateral
agreements and partly through the increased use of multi-stakeholder organizations.”
Brain-computer interfaces will emerge, as will nightmares about privacy

Wendy Hall, professor of computer science at the University of Southampton, UK, and executive
director of the Web Science Institute, said, “I really don’t think we will have an internet as we
know it today in 2069. Think back to 1969 – most of the technologies we take for granted today
(including a global information system such as the web) were just science fiction then. I believe
the biggest factors that are leading to the fragmentation of the internet today are the geopolitical
factors and the potential weaponization of the internet. So, its future is by no means certain. But
the development of technology continues apace. I believe that by 2069 the brain-machine
interface will be fully developed, and if we think the applications of AI might be terrifying for the
future of humanity, then brain-computer interfaces are the stuff of nightmares if the legal and
ethical frameworks under which they are used are not carefully considered from the outset. I am
sure there will be other technologies, maybe developed by AI, that we don’t know about yet but
will dominate the world in 2069 like the internet does in 2019.”
Smart prosthetics and other smart things will be common

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

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

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

Ed Lyell, longtime internet strategist and professor at Adams State University, responded, “I was
one of the first to use ARAPNET as a graduate student at San Francisco State working with a
Stanford professor. We received grants to test using terminal-based connections to tutor inner-
city black youth in algebra and discovered that even the primitive terminal of ‘blue-screen’ DOS
was a better tutor than the white female teacher or a black college student coming into the
student’s home in the evening because the computer did not care how many mistakes were
made but forced you to continue to work until you obtained that competency. I wrote a master’s
thesis on the use of computer-assisted instruction in 1970 and predicted that they would
transform learning in just a few years. Yet a lifetime later not much has changed. I remain
optimistic, guided by some charter schools, DSST (credit-by-examination testing), and magnet
schools using technology to more dramatically improve student learning. The politics of
education (K-12 and higher education) shut down innovation. Thus, I could say that we might
create the kind of learning that I wrote about in ‘Nickelodeon’ magazine back in 1985, wherein
going to school would be 24/7 with a wristwatch computer on your wrist and the internet at your
fingertips.”
There will be ‘less privacy, less democracy, less individual self-esteem’

A member of the Internet Hall of Fame said, “In 1970, today’s internet could not have been
predicted. The election of a black president could not have been predicted 50 years before. All
one can do is linearly extrapolate from the present. For example, Edward Bellamy’s classic
‘Looking Backward’ did not come close to predicting the technologies of 50 years later. He just
extrapolated from his present. There are occasional geniuses such as Jules Verne, but such are
very, very sparse. One easy thing to predict is that 50 years from now the world will be coping
with massively changed weather. [I believe things will be worse in future because I expect] less
privacy, less democracy and less individual self-esteem.”
‘We had no idea where it would go’

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

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

The following sections share selections of comments from technology experts and futurists who
elaborate on the ways internet use has shaped humanity over the past 50 years and consider the
potential future of digital life. They are gathered under broad, overarching ideas, rather than
being tied to the specific themes highlighted above. Many of the answers touch on multiple
aspects of the digital future and are not neatly boxed as addressing only one part of the story.
Some responses are lightly edited for style and readability.
The cautious optimism expressed by many of the experts canvassed for this report grew out of a
shared faith in humanity. Many described the current state of techlash as a catalyst that will lead
to a more inclusive and inviting internet. Some of these comments are included below.
Micah Altman, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and head scientist in the program on
information science at MIT Libraries, wrote, “The late historian Melvin Kranzberg insightfully
observed, ‘Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.’ In the last 50 years, the internet
has been transformative and disruptive. In the next 50, information, communication and AI
technology show every sign of being even more so. Whether historians of the future judge this to
be good or bad will depend on whether we can make the societal choice to embed democratic
values and human rights into the design and implementation of these systems.”
Juan Ortiz Freuler, a policy fellow, and Nnenna Nwakanma, the interim policy director for Africa at
the Web Foundation, wrote, “Unless we see a radical shift soon, the internet as we know it will
likely be recalled as a missed opportunity. History will underline that it could have been the basis
for radically inclusive societies, where networked communities could actively define their
collective future. A tool that could have empowered the people but became a tool for mass
surveillance and population control. A tool that could have strengthened the social fiber by
allowing people to know each other and share their stories, but out of it grew huge inequalities
between the connected and not-connected, both locally and across countries.”
Steven Miller, vice provost and professor of information systems at Singapore Management
University, said, “Overall, the future will be mostly for the better. And if it is not mostly for the
better, the reasons will NOT be due to the technology, per se. The reasons will be due to choices
that people and society make – political choices, choices per how we govern society, choices per
how we attend to the needs of our populations and societies. These are people and political
issues, not technology ones. These are the factors that will dominate whether people are better
off or worse off.”
Paul Jones, professor of information science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill,
responded, “While the internet was built from the beginning to be open and extensible, it relies
on communities of trust. As we are seeing this reliance has strong downsides – phishing, fake
news, over-customization and tribalism for starters. Adding systems of trust, beginning with the
promises of blockchain, will and must address this failing. Will the next internet strengthen the
positives of individualism, of equality and of cooperation or will we become no more than
Morlocks and Eloi? I remain optimistic as we address not only the engineering challenges, but
also the human and social challenges arising. All tools, including media, are extensions of man.
‘We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us,’ as McLuhan is credited for noticing.
Nothing could be more true of the next internet and our lives in relation to information access.
Can we create in ways now unknown once we are less reliant on memorization and calculation?
Will we be better at solving the problems we create for ourselves? I answer with an enormous
‘Yes!’ but then I’m still waiting for the personal jetpack I was promised as a child.”
Ray Schroeder, associate vice chancellor for online learning at the University of Illinois,
Springfield, wrote, “On the scale of the discovery of fire, the wheel and cultivation of crops, the
interconnection of humans will be judged as a very important step toward becoming the beings
of the universe that we are destined to be.”
Charlie Firestone, communications and society program executive director and vice president at
the Aspen Institute, commented, “Fifty years from now is science fiction. There really is no telling
with quantum computing, AI, blockchain, virtual reality, broadband (10G?), genetic engineering,
robotics and other interesting developments affecting our lives and environments…. It’s just too
far ahead to imagine whether we will be in a digital feudal system or highly democratic. But I do
imagine that we could be on our way to re-speciation with genetics, robotics and AI combined to
make us, in today’s image, superhuman. I understand that there are many ways that the
technologies will lead to worse lives, particularly with the ability of entities to weaponize virtually
any of the technologies and displace jobs. However, the advances in medicine extending lives, the
ability to reduce consumption of energy, and the use of robotics and AI to solve our problems are
evident. And we have to believe that our successors will opt for ways to improve and extend the
human species rather than annihilate it or re-speciate.”
Edward Tomchin, a retiree, said, “Human beings, homo sapiens, are a most remarkable species
which is easily seen in a comparison with how far we have come in the short time since we
climbed down out of the trees and emerged from our caves. The speed with which we are
currently advancing leaves the future open to a wide range of speculation, but we have overcome
much in the past and will continue to do so in pursuit of our future. I’m proud of my species and
confident in our future.”
Garland McCoy, founder and chief development officer of the Technology Education Institute,
wrote, “I hope in 50 years the internet will still be the Chinese fireworks and not become the
British gunpowder.”
Angelique Hedberg, senior corporate strategy analyst at RTI International, said, “If we choose a
future we want in 50 years, and work toward creating it, there is a nonzero probability we will
reach a version of that future. In that vein of thought, we will see waves of platform companies
that change the way we live and enjoy our lives. The platform companies that exist today will
fade, as will the ones that follow. This is not because they fail, but rather, because they succeed.
We will find a way to make decisions in a network of decisions. In 50 years, multiple generations
of a family will gather for dinner and share sights, smells, sounds, tastes and touches, even if they
are in different hemispheres, countries and time zones. You’ll be at a child’s social activity and
they will hear the voices [of] all of those who love (and critique) him. You will say goodbye to
aging loved ones, even if they cannot hear you. This will all happen with the assistance of
technology (some embedded in our brain) that know our wants and needs better than we know
our own. The definition of what it means to be human will evolve and the laws and regulation
will follow, albeit in a less than direct manner. We will value governments in new and different
ways, and we will expect more from our technology platforms. The deluge of data will provide
new inputs into the decision models for platforms, bringing greater clarity to the short-term
benefits and long-term risks, in return making the financial decisions more social, environmental
and moral. Where laws and regulations can put a bottom line, they will. Where law and
regulations cannot, the planet will step in and regulate the excess.”
Daniel Riera, a professor of computer science at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, commented,

“Everything will be connected; automation will be everywhere; most of the jobs will be done by
machines. Society will have fully changed to adapt to the new reality: Humans will need to realize
the importance of sustainability and equality. In order to reach this point, technology, ethics,
philosophy, laws and economics, among other fields, will have done a big joint effort. We have a
very good opportunity. It will depend on us to take advantage of it. I hope and trust we will.
Otherwise, we will disappear.”
Geoff Livingston, author and futurist, commented, “This is a great period of transition. The
internet forced us to confront the worst aspects of our humanity. Whether we succumb or not to
those character defects as a society remains to be seen.”
Brad Templeton, chair for computing at Singularity University, software architect and former
president of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, responded, “It’s been the long-term arc of
history to be better. There is the potential for nightmares, of course, as well as huge backlashes
against the change, including violent ones. But for the past 10,000 years, improvement has been
the way to bet.”
Mary Chayko, author of “Superconnected: The Internet, Digital Media, and Techno-Social Life”
and professor in the Rutgers School of Communication and Information, said, “The internet’s first
50 years have been tech-driven, as a host of technological innovations have become integrated
into nearly every aspect of everyday life. The next 50 years will be knowledge-driven, as our
understandings ‘catch up’ with the technology. Both technology and knowledge will continue to
advance, of course, but it is a deeper engagement with the internet’s most critical qualities and
impacts – understandings that can only come with time, experience and reflection – that will
truly come to characterize the next 50 years. We will become a ‘smarter’ populace in all kinds of
ways.”
Yvette Wohn, director of the Social Interaction Lab and expert on human-computer interaction at
New Jersey Institute of Technology, commented, “Technology always has and always will bring
positive and negative consequences, but the positives will be so integral to our lives that going
back will not be an option. Cars bring pollution, noise and congestion but that doesn’t mean
we’re going back to the horse and buggy. We find newer solutions, innovation.”
Bob Frankston, software innovation pioneer and technologist based in North America, wrote,
“For many people any change will be for the worse because it is unfamiliar. On the positive side,
the new capabilities offer the opportunity to empower people and provide solutions for societal
problems as long as we don’t succumb to magical thinking.”
Matt Mason, a roboticist and the former director of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon
University, wrote, “The new technology will present opportunities for dramatic changes in the
way we live. While it is possible that human society will collectively behave irrationally and
choose a path detrimental to its welfare, I see no reason to think that is the more likely
outcome.”
Stuart A. Umpleby, a professor and director of the research program in social and organizational
learning at George Washington University, wrote, “In the future people will live increasingly in the
world of ideas, concepts, impressions and interpretations. The world of matter and energy will be
mediated by information and context. Already our experiences with food are mediated by
thoughts about calories, safety, origins, the lives of workers, etc. Imagine all of life having these
additional dimensions. Methods will be needed to cope with the additional complexity.”
John Markoff, fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences at Stanford
University and author of “Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between
Humans and Robots,” wrote, “Speculation on the nature of society over timespans of half a
century falls completely into the realm of science fiction. And my bet is that science fiction
writers will do the best job of speculating about society a half century from now. As someone
who has written about Silicon Valley for more than four decades I have two rules of thumb:
technologies aren’t real until they show up at Fry’s Electronics and the visionaries are (almost)
always wrong. I actually feel like the answer might as well be a coin toss. I chose to be optimistic
simply because over the past century technology has improved the quality of human life.”
An executive director for a major global foundation wrote, “The internet will rank among the
major technology movements in world history – like gunpowder, indoor plumbing and electricity.
And like all of them (with the possible exception of indoor plumbing), its eventual weaponization
should have been less of a surprise.”
Bryan Johnson, founder and CEO of Kernel, a leading developer of advanced neural interfaces,
and OS Fund, a venture capital firm, said, “Humans play prediction games, but the exercise is
inherently unproductive. A more useful exercise would be to think about what deeply influential
technology can we invest our current time in that will give us the tools we need to thrive in such
a highly complex future. Forecasting to 2050 is thought junk food. It is what people most like to
daydream about, but is not what we should think about for the health of the species and planet.”
Ethics and the bigger picture loom large in the digital future
Optimistic and pessimistic respondents alike agree that human agency will affect the trajectory of
digital life. Many respondents said their biggest concern is that everyone’s future in the digital
age depends upon the ability of humans to privilege long-term societal advancement over short-
term individual gain.
William Uricchio, media scholar and professor of comparative media studies at MIT, commented,
“‘Changes in digital life’ are human-driven; technology will only amplify the social structures that
created it. My pessimism ensues from the polarization of power, knowledge and wealth that
characterizes much of the world at the start of the 21st century, and by the rapidly growing
pressures evident in population growth and ecological degradation. Digital technologies have the
capacity to be terrific enablers – but the question remains, enablers of what? Of whose vision? Of
what values? These, it seems to me, are the defining questions.”
Jonathan Swerdloff, consultant and data systems specialist for Driven Inc., wrote, “In the first 50
years of connected internet, humanity rose from no access at all to always-on, connected devices
on their person tracking their life signs. I expect the next 50 years will see devices shrink to tiny
sizes and be integrated within our very persons. Then there will be two inflection points. The first
will be a split between the technology haves and have-nots. Those who have the technology will
benefit from it in ways that those who do not are unable to. The more advanced technology gets
the more this will be the case. While I would like to believe in a utopic vision of AI fighting climate
change and distributing food and wealth so that nobody goes hungry – the ‘Jetsons’ future, if you
will – history doesn’t support that view. The second will be a moral evolution. Privacy as
conceived in the era before the advent of the internet is nearly dead despite attempts by the
European Union and California to hold back the tide. The amount of information people give up
about their most private lives is growing rapidly. A commensurate evolution of morals to keep up
with the technological developments will be required to keep up or chaos will ensue. Moral
structures developed when people could hide their genetics, personal habits and lives at home
are not aligned with an always-on panopticon that knows what someone is doing all day every
day. Human nature is nearly immutable – morals will need to catch up…. Anything that happens
in society can be magnified by technology. I hope that my pessimism is wrong. There is some
evidence of the moral evolution already – Millennials and the generation behind them freely
share online in ways which Boomers and Gen X look at as bizarre. Whether that will lead to a
significant moral backlash in 50 years remains to be seen.”
Susan Mernit, executive director, The Crucible, and co-founder and board member of Hack the
Hood, responded, “I am interested in how wearable, embedded and always-on personal devices
and apps will evolve. Tech will become a greater helping and health-management tool, as well as
take new forms in terms of training and educating humans. But I wonder how much humans’
passivity will increase in an increasingly monitored and always-on universe, and I wonder how
much the owners and overlords of this tech will use it to segment and restrict people’s
knowledge, mobility and choices. I want to believe tech’s expansion and evolution will continue
to add value to people’s lives, but I am afraid of how it can be used to segment and restrict
groups of people, and how predictive modeling can become a negative force.”
Charles Ess, a professor expert in ethics with the Department of Media and Communication,
University of Oslo, Norway, said, “My overall sense of the emerging Internet of Things and its
subsequent evolutions is of an increasing array of technologies that are ever more enveloping but
also ever more invisible (advanced technology is magic, to recall Arthur C. Clarke), thereby
making it increasingly difficult for us to critically attend to such new developments and perhaps
re-channel or obviate them when ethically/socially indicated.”
Stavros Tripakis, an associate professor of computer science at Aalto University (Finland) and
adjunct at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote, “Misinformation and lack of education
will continue and increase. Policing will also increase. Humanity needs a quantum leap in
education (in the broad sense) to escape from the current political and economic state. Fifty
years is not enough for this to happen.”
Kenneth R. Fleischmann, an associate professor at the University of Texas, Austin School of

Information, responded, “The key questions are, ‘Which individuals?’ and ‘Better/worse in which
ways?’ The impacts on different people will be different, and each person will interpret these
changes differently. One major factor is what people value or consider important in life. If people
value privacy and they are subject to a digital panopticon then, in that way, their lives may be
worse; however, they also likely value convenience, and may find substantial improvements in
that regard. Different people will make that tradeoff differently depending on what they value.
So, understanding the impact of the technology is not only about predicting the future of
technology, it is also about predicting the future of what we value, and these two considerations
are of course mutually constitutive, as technologies are shaped by values, and at the same time,
over time (especially generations), technologies shape values.”
Justin Reich, executive director of MIT Teaching Systems Lab and research scientist in the MIT
Office of Digital Learning, responded, “Shakespeare wrote three kinds of plays: the tragedies
where things got worse, the comedies where things got better, and the histories, with a
combination of winners and losers. Technological advances do little to change net human
happiness, because so much of happiness is determined by relative comparisons with neighbors.
The primary determinants of whether life for people improves will be whether we can build
robust social institutions that distribute power widely and equally among people, and whether
those institutions support meaningful relationships among people.”
Michiel Leenaars, director of strategy at NLnet Foundation and director of the Internet Society’s
Netherlands chapter, responded, “What the internet will look like in 50 years will greatly depend
on how we act today. Tim Berners-Lee in his 2018 Turing speech referred to the current situation
as ‘dystopian,’ and this seems like an adequate overall description. The industry is dominated by
extremely pervasive but very profitable business practices that are deeply unethical, driven by
perverse short-term incentives to continue along that path. A dark mirror version of the internet
on an extractive crash course with democracy and the well-being of humanity at large itself. That
is a future I’m not very eager to extrapolate even for another 10 years. My target version of the
internet in 50 years – the one I believe is worth pursuing – revolves around open source, open
hardware, open content as well as in helping people live meaningful lives supported by
continuous education and challenging ideas. Permissionless innovation is a necessary
precondition for serving the human potential, but so are critical reflection and a healthy social
dialogue avoiding personalized bubbles, AI bias and information overload. The openness of the
web and the mobile ecosystem in particular are abysmal, and attention and concentration are
endangered human traits. But that can be reversed, I believe. Every day we can start to re-
imagine and re-engineer the internet. The information age can and should be an era that brings
out the best in all of us, but this will not happen by itself. So, I hope and believe the internet in 50
years is going to be as challenging as the early internet – and hard work for many people that
want to see this future emerge.”
Simon Biggs, a professor of interdisciplinary arts at the University of Edinburgh, said, “Given our
history as a species, and our current behavio with the internet, I suspect that our activities
(within a more advanced form of the internet) will consist of virtual simulated sex (in the form of
interactive pornography – so not really sex but power-play) and killing virtual players in massive
online gaming environments (more power-play). In that sense things will be similar to how they
are now. Given current trends it is likely that the internet will no longer be ‘the internet,’ in the
sense that it was intended as the network of all networks. Networked information and
communications technology will be territorialized, broken up and owned, in walled environments
(this process is already well advanced). Access will be privileged, not for the consumer but for the
producer. The first period of the internet was marked by a democratization of access to the
means of production, but this will not be the case in the future. The vast bulk of internet users
will be passive consumers who are offered an illusion of agency in the system to deliver them as a
resource to those who profit from consumer playbour. We already see this with Facebook and
other companies. The manner in which user data from Facebook and elsewhere has been
exploited in the democratic process to affect the outcomes to the benefit of those paying for the
data is indicative of where the internet is going. I expect the internet to be far more pervasive
than it is today, our experience of our lived life mediated at all times. The only question is to what
degree our experiential life will be mediated. I suspect it will be more or less total by 2030.
Primarily, my reasoning is predicated on the expectation that human behaviour will lead to
negative consequences flowing from our technological augmentation. These consequences could
be quite severe. Do I think our survival as a species is threatened by our technological evolution?
Yes. Do I think we will survive? Probably, because we are a tenacious animal. Do I think it will be
worth surviving in a world like that? Probably not. Do I think the world would be better off if, as a
species, we were to not survive? Absolutely. That is one thing we might hope for – that we take
ourselves out, become extinct. Even if we are replaced by our machines the world is likely to be a
better place without us.”
Robert Bell, co-founder of Intelligent Community Forum, had a different view from Biggs,
predicting, “We created something that became a monster and then learned to tame the
monster.”
Jeff Johnson, computer science professor at the University of San Francisco, previously with
Xerox, HP Labs and Sun Microsystems, responded that it is important to take a broader view
when assessing what may be coming next. He wrote, “Technological change alone will not
produce significant change in people’s lives. What happens alongside technological change will
affect how technological change impacts society. The future will bring much-improved speech-
controlled user interfaces, direct brain-computer interfaces, bio-computing, advances in AI and
much higher bandwidth due to increases in computer power (resulting from quantum
computing). Unless national political systems around the world change in ways to promote more
equitable wealth distribution, the future will also bring increased stratification of society, fueled
by loss of jobs and decreased access to quality education for lower socio-economic classes.
Finally, rising sea levels and desertification will render large areas uninhabitable, causing huge
social migrations and (for some) increased poverty.”
An associate professor of computer science at a U.S. university commented, “Humans have

adapted poorly to life in a technological society. Think of obesity, time wasted on low-quality
entertainments, addictions to a whole range of drugs and more. As the noise in the information
stream increases, so does the difficulty for the average person to extract a cohesive life pattern
and avoid the land mines of dangerous or unhealthy behaviors. Genetics, cultural change, social
and legal structures do not change exponentially, but aggregate knowledge does. This mismatch
is a crucial realization. As Reginald Bretnor noted in ‘Decisive Warfare,’ kill ratios for weapons not
only increase, but so does their ability to be wielded by the individual. So it is with most things in
a technologically advanced society. But have people cultivated the requisite wisdom to use what
is available to better themselves? Looking at American society, I would generally conclude not.”
The chief marketing officer for a technology-based company said, “I am all-in for innovation and
improving the standard of living for all humanity. However … we need to become more vigilant
about our fascination with technology and self-indulgence. Yes, it does paint a darker picture and
forces a more cautious approach, but some of us are required to do this for the sake of a more
balanced and fair future for all humanity. I’m one of the lucky ones, born in Europe with a very
high standard of living. Same goes for the people behind this research. Let’s be vigilant of our
actions and how we shape the future. We have been in a constant battle with nature and
resources for the past 100 years. In historical terms it was a momentous leap forward in
education, connectivity, traveling, efficiency, etc. But, at the same time, we are all committing an
environmental suicide and behave like there is no tomorrow – only the instant pleasure of
technology. There will not be a tomorrow if we continue to ignore the cause and effect of our
unipolar obsession with technology and self-indulgence.”
Miguel Moreno-Muñoz, a professor of philosophy specializing in ethics, epistemology and

technology at the University of Granada, Spain, said, “Mobility and easy access to affordable
databases and service platforms for most citizens will become more important; e-government
systems, transparency and accountability will be improved. The development of certain
applications, if paralleled by the development of new types of intellectual property licensing and
management systems, can revolutionize education and access to knowledge and culture. But this
requires an open framework for international cooperation, which in many ways is now under
threat.”
Sam Gregory, director of WITNESS and digital human rights activist, responded, “My perspective
comes from considering the internet and civic activism. We are at a turning point in terms of
whether the internet enables a greater diversity of civic voices, organizing and perspectives, or
whether it is largely a controlled and monitored surveillance machine. We are also swiftly moving
toward a world of pervasive and persistent witnessing where everything is instantly watched and
seen with ubiquitous cameras embedded in our environment and within our personal
technologies, and where we are able to engage with these realities via telepresence, co-presence
and vicarious virtual experience. This is a double-edged sword. The rise of telepresence robots
will enable us to experience realities we could never otherwise physically experience. This
remote experiencing has the potential to enable the best and the worst in our natures. On the
one hand, we will increasingly have the ability to deliberately turn away from experiencing the
unmitigated pain of the world’s suffering. We might do this for the best of reasons – to protect
our capacity to keep feeling empathy closer to home and to exercise what is termed ‘empathy
avoidance,’ a psychological defense mechanism which involves walling ourselves up from
responding emotionally to the suffering of others. We may also enter the middle ground that
Aldous Huxley captured in ‘Brave New World,’ where narcotizing multisensory experiences,
‘feelies,’ distract and amuse rather than engage people with the world. Here, by enabling people
to experience multiple dimensions of others’ crises viscerally but not meaningfully, we
perpetuate existing tendencies in activism to view other people’s suffering as a theatrum mundi
played out for our vicarious tears shed in the safety of our physically walled-off and secure
spaces. On the other hand, we will increasingly be presented with opportunities through these
technologies to directly engage with and act upon issues that we care about. As we look at the
future of organizing and the need to better support on-the-ground activism, this becomes critical
to consider how to optimize. We also have a potential future where governments will thoroughly
co-opt these shared virtual/physical spaces, turning virtual activism into a government-co-opted
‘Pokémon Go,’ a human-identity search engine, scouring virtual and physical spaces in search of
dissidents. In a brighter future, virtual/physical co-presence has the exciting potential to be a
massive amplifier of civic solidarity across geographical boundaries, defying the power of
national governments to unjustly dictate to their citizens.”
Marc Rotenberg, director of a major digital civil rights organization, commented, “There is no
question that the internet has transformed society. We live in a world today far more
interconnected than in the past. And we have access almost instantaneously to a vast range of
information and services. But the transformation has not been without cost. Concentrations of
wealth have increased. Labor markets have been torn apart. Journalism is on the decline, and
democratic institutions are under attack. And there is a growing willingness to sacrifice the free
will of humanity for the algorithms of machine. I do not know if we will survive the next 50 years
unless we are able to maintain control of our destinies.”
Adam Popescu, a writer who contributes frequently to the New York Times, Washington Post,
Bloomberg Businessweek, Vanity Fair and the BBC, wrote, “Either we’ll be in space by then, or
back in the trees. Pandora’s box may finally burn us. No one knows what will happen in five years,
let alone 50. It’s now obvious that the optimism with which we ran headfirst into the web was a
mistake. The dark side of the web has emerged, and it’s come bringing the all-too-human
conditions the web’s wunderkinds claimed they would stamp out. Given the direction in the last
five years, the weaponization of the web, it will go more and more in this direction, which
ultimately means regulation and serious change from what it is now. Maybe we won’t be on the
web at all in that period – it will probably be far more integrated into our day-to-day lives. It’s a
science fiction film in waiting. With email, constant-on schedules and a death of social manners, I
believe we have reached, or are close to, our limit for technological capacity. Our addictions to
our smartphones have sired a generation that is afraid of face-to-face interaction and is suffering
in many ways psychologically and socially and even physically in ways that we’ve yet to fully
comprehend. This will impact society, not for the better. Manners, mood, memory, basic quality
of life – they’re all affected negatively.”
Policy changes today will lay the foundation of the internet of tomorrow
Many respondents to this canvassing described the next several years as a pivotal time for
government regulation, adjustments in technology company policies and other reforms. They say
such decisions being made in the next few years are likely to set the course for digital life over the
next half century. Some warn that regulation can be more harmful than helpful if its potential
effects are not carefully pre-assessed.
Mark Surman, executive director of the Mozilla Foundation, responded, “I see two paths over the
next 50 years. On the first path, power continues to consolidate in the hands a few companies
and countries. The world ends up balkanized, organized into blocks, and societies are highly
controlled and unequal. On the other path, we recognize that the current consolidation of power
around a few platforms threatens the open global order we’ve built, and we enact laws and build
technology that promotes continued competition, innovation and diversity.”
Laurie Orlov, principal analyst at Aging in Place Technology Watch, wrote, “The internet, so cool
at the beginning, so destructive later, is like the introduction of the wheel – it is a basis and
foundation for the good, the bad and the ugly. As the wheel preceded the interstate highway
system, so the internet has become the information highway system. And, just like roads, it will
require more standards, controls and oversight than it has today.”
Juan Ortiz Freuler and Nnenna Nwakanma of the Web Foundation wrote, “Allowing people to
increasingly spend time in digital environments can limit unexpected social encounters, which are
key to the development of empathy and the strengthening of the social fibres. In a similar way
that gentrification of physical neighborhoods often creates barriers for people to understand the
needs and wants of others, digital environments can thicken the contours of these bubbles in
which different social groups inhabit. In parallel, this process enables a great degree of power to
be amassed by the actors that design and control these virtual environments. Whereas in the
past there was concern with the power of media framing, in the future the new brokers of
information will have more control over the information people receive and receive a steady
stream of data regarding how individuals react to these stimuli. It is becoming urgent to develop
processes to ensure these actors operate in a transparent way. This includes the values they
promote are in line with those of the communities they serve and enabling effective control by
individuals over how these systems operate. Government needs to update the institutions of
democracy if it wants to remain relevant.”
Leonardo Trujillo, a research professor in computing sciences at the Instituto Tecnológico de

Tijuana, Mexico, responded, “I am worried that the digital ecosystems being developed today will
limit people’s access to information, increase surveillance and propaganda, and push toward
limiting social interactions and organization, particularly if current policy trends continue.”
Joly MacFie, president of the Internet Society’s New York Chapter, commented, “Today will be
seen as an inflection point – the end on the initial ‘open’ era, and the start of the second.”
A professional working on the setting of web standards wrote, “Looking ahead 50 years, I expect
that AI will either be more evenly and equitably integrated throughout societies, or that there
will have been AI-driven disasters that jeopardize human and other animal life, or may have
already destroyed life. On the more positive side, and focusing on medical research, I would
expect AI-driven research and simulation of artificial life including cognition would have provided
the tools to cure most disease, as well as to advance human capabilities through bionic
augmentation. On the negative side, I would expect that AI combined with rapidly increasing
capabilities of bioengineering, and with persistent socio-pathological tendencies of a small
minority of the population, could have led to uncontained AI-driven cyberwarfare or biological
devastation. A key determining factor differentiating these two futures might be the magnitude
of social investment in a robust ethical framework for AI applications, and continued emphasis on
development of a just society, with social safety nets, to help mitigate the risks of development of
sociopathic behaviors that would be especially dangerous with easy access to AI.”
Benjamin Shestakofsky, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania

specializing in digital technology’s impacts on work, said, “1) The ‘Uber-ization’ of everything will
not proceed as rapidly, nor as evenly, as many now predict. Platform companies that facilitate the
exchange of goods and services will continue to confront the reality that funneling idiosyncratic
human activity through digital platforms is a complicated and costly endeavor. 2) Employers will
continue to increase their use of connected technologies to monitor their workforces. However,
workers will also continue to find ways to subvert employer surveillance and control. In many
workplaces, employers will find it difficult to convert big data about employee activities into
actionable insights. Nonetheless, legislators should act to limit the scope of employee
surveillance and threats to employees’ privacy.”
A professor of information science wrote, “When I’m feeling dystopian, I see a world that looks a
little too much like ‘Mr. Robot’ or ‘Person of Interest,’ with government or private organizations
knowing too much about us and having too much control over us. I’d like to believe that
interconnectivity could, instead, provide us with more ubiquitous access to information and with
the ability to establish connections and deliver services across space and time.”
Stephen McDowell, a professor of communication at Florida State University expert in new media
and internet governance, commented, “The area of law and policy is already showing some
major stresses in dealing with networked connected data systems, apart from AI systems. Law
and policy is often dealt with on a case-by-case and issue-by-issue basis, treating questions and
legal traditions and precedents in isolation. These issues might include speech, privacy, property,
informed consent, competition and security. This has weaknesses already in a networked world
where large teach firms offer platforms supporting a wide range of services and track user
behavior across services…. If we add systems with more learning and predictive power to this
mix, it will be important to develop new concepts that go beyond the segmented approach to law
and policy we are trying to use to govern internet-based interactions presently. We need to
grapple with the totality of a relationship between a user and a service provider, rather than
react to isolated incidents and infringements. We need to address the trade-off between offering
free services and users allowing data to be collected with minimal understanding of their
consent. We should also consider stronger limits on the use of personal data in machine learning
and predictive modeling. Companies that automate functions to save on input costs and to allow
services to be offered at scale to reap the private benefits of innovation must also take on
responsibility for unintended consequences and possibilities they have created.”
Toby Walsh, a professor of AI at the University of New South Wales, Australia, said, “Like the
Industrial Revolution before it, the Internet Revolution will be seen to have improved people’s
social, economic and political lives, but only after regulation and controls were introduced to
guard against the risks.”
Jonathan Taplin, director emeritus at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg

Innovation Lab, wrote, “The answer to this question depends totally on the willingness of
regulators and politicians to rethink their ideas about antitrust policies in the digital age. If
current consumer welfare standards continue to be used, the existing internet monopolies
(Facebook, Google and Amazon) will get more dominant in the AI age. They would be bigger and
have more data than any government or other mediating institution. They would be beyond
control. They would determine our future and politics would be of little use…. I can envision a
world in which technology is a boon to human progress, but it cannot come about as long as the
internet is dominated worldwide by three firms (with two Chinese competitors in Asia). It is
possible that the current efforts around blockchain or the new work of Tim Berners-Lee may lead
to a more decentralized web. Count me as skeptical.”
Doug Schepers, chief technologist at Fizz Studio, said “The technology is less important than the
laws, policies and social norms that we as a society will adopt to adapt to it.”
Randy Goebel, professor of computing science and developer of the University of Alberta’s
partnership with DeepMind, wrote, “A challenge for an increasingly connected and informed
world is that of distinguishing aggregate from individual. ‘For the greater good’ requires an ever-
evolving notion and consensus about what the ‘greater’ is. Just like seat belt laws are motivated
by a complex balance of public good (property and human costs) we will have to evolve a planet-
wide consensus on what is appropriate for ‘great’ good.”
William Dutton, professor of media and information policy at Michigan State University,
commented, “We are still in a transitional period, when so much of our time and effort is focused
on getting connected and using technical advances. I could imagine so many devices that
complicate contemporary life, such as the mobile smartphone, disappearing as they become
unnecessary for accomplishing their functions. That said, the future will depend heavily on wise
policy responses, even more so than technical advances.”
Luis Pereira, associate professor of electronics and nanotechnologies, Universidade Nova de

Lisboa, Portugal, responded, “By virtue of the interconnection of the new tools there will be
widespread data collection on people, their activities, connections, the environment and the
Internet of Things. There will be increased promotion of gig-economy platforms and the focused
targeting of individuals with consumerism and ideology. Unless moral values and ethical rules are
put in place for application designers, product sellers, data users and autonomous software and
robots, people will be forced into cluster drawers. A competitive and increasing AI race for
control of profits and policies will sprout, including a digital weapons race, unless a way is found
to promote collaboration instead, on the basis of regulated and overseen commitments (similar
to global climate agreements) for the benefit of humanity and the planet. Certification methods
for software that complies with such commitments need to be developed. People will be
teaching machines how to replace themselves and others at increasing levels of cognition.
Security will be a major concern. Technological developments will surpass human adaptability
and raise issues we do not have the wherewithal to comprehend or address.”
Hari Shanker Sharma, an expert in nanotechnology and neurobiology at Uppsala University,

Sweden, said, “Technology is a tool for making life better. A goal of life is happiness, satisfaction.
Both require a set of values to remain good or become evil. The internet has brought the world
together. Apps are tools to perform tasks easily. The Internet of Things will connect all living and
nonliving things. But the dark side of human nature – the hunger for power, possession and
control that has brought wars and terrorism – cannot be corrected by the internet or apps. There
is a need to identify the evil in human nature and protect the simple, good and well-meaning
from becoming its prey. Evil often moves ahead of good. Perhaps it can be predicted by features
that check the psychology of individuals, crime records and other past behaviors to block certain
actions or warn others. Biometric identification is already used for e-security – for instance, facial
recognition – and it might be possible to have bio-feature readers to detect the evil-minded or
those who are likely to become evil-minded and put safety checks in place at places of danger.
Expert systems for face reading, feature reading, nature reading and analysis might give warning.
Trackers could be established for isolated nodes and feed details to law-enforcement agencies.
No evil-monger would agree on such checks and caution, but people need to be protected from
online financial fraud, rapes by social media stalkers, murders by e-system users, etc., that
unchecked because no efficient warning system exists. The law today is not helpful. E-crime
should be dealt with and punished without boundary. The internet needs global law and global
governance to become user friendly. Global connectivity becomes a tool of criminals while those
who are simply good have no power to handle evil.”
Amy Webb, founder of the Future Today Institute and professor of strategic foresight at New York
University, commented, “I hope historians’ verdict 50 years from now will be that we made the
right choice in the years 2018-2020 to rethink access to the internet, data ownership and
algorithmic transparency, thus setting all of humanity on a better course for the future.”
A director for an internet registry responded, “There will be ongoing radical development by
which biology, at physical and molecular/genetic scales, will become integrated with digital
technology. We can assume that this will be pervasive throughout society, but both the
applications and the costs and conditions under which they may be accessed are unpredictable.
The greatest determining factor in the overall result will be political rather than technological,
with a range of outcomes between utopian and utterly dystopian.”
Andrea Romaoli Garcia, an international lawyer active in internet governance discussions,

commented, “The cloud is a new world and is navigating in international waters. And because it is
new, laws must follow the innovation. However, I have watched all countries make laws with their
minds focused on traditional models of regulation. This is wrong. Laws must be international. The
interpretation of the innovation scenario should be applied by introductory vehicles of new laws.
The word ‘disruptive’ must be interpreted to apply to new laws. When we use old models of laws
and only we are doing changes to force fit into the new model of doing business or everyday life,
we are creating a crippled creature that moves in a disgusting way. I nominated this as a
‘jurisdicial Frankenstein.’ This means laws that will apply to the cloud environment but will never
be perfect, and legal security will be threatened.”
Stuart A. Umpleby, a professor and director of the research program in social and organizational
learning at George Washington University, wrote, “The Congressional Office of Technology
Assessment was eliminated by Newt Gingrich in order to put companies, rather than Congress, in
charge of technology. Given unrestrained advancements in digital and biological technology, we
now need such an office more than ever.”
Divina Frau-Meigs, professor of media sociology at Sorbonne Nouvelle University, France, and
UNESCO chair for sustainable digital development, responded, “Currently there is no governance
of the internet proper. Cases like Cambridge Analytica are going to become more and more
common. They will reveal that the internet cannot be entrusted uniquely to monopoly
corporations and their leaders who are not willing to consider the unintended consequences of
their decisions, which are mostly market-competition-driven). A global internet governance
system needs to be devised, with multi-stakeholder mechanisms, that include the voices of the
public. It should incorporate agile consultations on many topics so that individuals can have an
influence over how their digital presence can affect, or not, their real life.”
Jennifer J. Snow, an innovation officer with the U.S. Air Force, wrote, “The internet will continue
to evolve in surprising ways. New forms of governance, finance and religion will spring up that
transcend physical Westphalian boundaries and will pose challenges to existing state-based
governance structures. The internet will fracture again as those founders who seek to return it to
its original positive uses establish and control their own ‘walled gardens,’ inviting in only a select
few to join them and controlling specific portions of the Net separately from nation-states. New
policy and regulations will be required to address these changes and the challenges that come
with them. New types of warfare will arise from internet evolutions but also new opportunities to
move society forward together in a positive manner. States will no longer have the premium on
power and nonstate actors, corporations and groups will be able to wield power at the state,
national and regional level in new and unexpected ways. It will be a disruptive time and
dangerous if not navigated smartly but may also result in some of the greatest advances yet for
humanity.”
Peng Hwa Ang, professor of communications at Nanyang Technological University and author of
“Ordering Chaos: Regulating the Internet,” commented, “We know that the future is not linear,
which means that to be accurate I will be painting with broad brush strokes. 1) Laws – It is finally
being recognized that laws are essential for the smooth functioning of the internet. This is a sea
change from the time when the internet was introduced to the public more than 20 years ago. In
the future, governments will be increasingly feeling empowered to regulate the laws to their own
political, cultural, social and economic ends. That is, countries will regulate the internet in ways
that express their own sovereignty. There will be a large area of commonality. But there will also
be a sizable area where the laws diverge across borders. 2) Within 50 years, there should be one
common trade agreement for the digital economy. It is difficult to see China carrying on its own
terms. Instead, it is more likely that China will allow foreign companies to operate with little
censorship provided that these companies do not ‘intrude’ into the political arena. 3) It is difficult
to see Facebook continuing to exist in 50 years. 4) The harm from being always on will be
recognized, and so users will spend less time online. Some of the time currently spent by users
will be taken over by AI bots.”
Devin Fidler, futurist and founder of Rethinkery Labs, commented, “Over the last 50 years we
have built a basic nervous system. Now, the challenge is to evolve it to best support human
society. A great place to start is with the many positive and negative externalities that have been
documented around network deployment. Simply amplifying the positive benefits to society for
network activity and curbing network activities that impose an unfunded burden on society as a
whole may be a great framework for creating a networked society that lives up to the enormous
potential these tools unlock. Expect increased regulation worldwide as societies struggle to
balance this equation in different ways.”
David A. Banks, an associate research analyst with the Social Science Research Council, said, “The
character and functionality of the internet will continue to follow the political and social whims of
the major power players in the industry. If these companies continue to engage in monopolistic
practices without competent and reflective regulation, then we can expect an ossified and highly
commercialized digital network. If something major changes then we can expect something
radically different.”
Luis German Rodriguez Leal, teacher and researcher at the Universidad Central de Venezuela and
consultant on technology for development, said, “The new internet will be blended with human-
machine interfaces, AI, blockchain, big data, mobile platforms and data visualization as main-
driven technologies. They will set up a robust and widely accessible Internet of Things. On the
other hand, these will imply a disruptive way of facing everyday activities such as education,
government, health, business or entertainment, among many others. Therefore, innovative
regulation frameworks are urgently required for each of them.”
Julian Jones, a respondent who provided no identifying details, said, “Data security will be vital as
is privacy. It is essential that individuals can have more control over the context in which their
data is used. In the absence of this legislation the consequences for society could be
catastrophic.”
Fred Baker, independent networking technologies consultant, longtime leader in the Internet
Engineering Task Force and engineering fellow with Cisco, commented, “I suspect that the
expansion of telephone technology and law will inform this discussion. The United States’ 1934
Communications Act was designed to tame a regulated monopoly carrier and prevent the worst
of what that carrier might do with the technology at its disposal. Over the past few decades, the
Federal Communications Commission has tried to interpret the internet through the lens of that
regulation. That has failed, for the most part, for at least two reasons. First, the internet is not a
regulated monopoly. It is a set of companies trying to accomplish various things, some of which
(notably Google, Facebook and their kin) have become very powerful and may require
appropriate regulation or regulatory action to steer in the public interest. A law designed to
regulate a monopoly, and experience with it, may inform a future law, but is not a substitute for
it. Second, the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] tries desperately to understand the
internet to be one two things: a way to carry messages from ingress to egress without inspecting
or changing them (a telecom service), or a way to access an application (an information service).
It is neither, and it is both. Until we have a law that can follow that difference in service model in
the internet, we will find differences between the internet as implemented and the internet as
regulated.”
Jennifer Jarratt, owner of Leading Futurists consultancy, commented, “We need new regulation
now that can protect users and the digital world from themselves and itself. With those we could
also have a fully digital government that might be able to handle some of the planet’s big
problems. Expect also new activism and new social orders. In the next 50 years, technological
change will produce significant change – but maybe not as much as we expect or would like. The
world will have become more difficult to live in by then, so we’d better hope tech has some
answers.”
Oscar Gandy, emeritus professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania, responded,

“The whole notion of connectivity is bound to be redefined in the not-too-distant future. When
we extend the processes through which miniaturization married with processing speed, and
divorce from personal device-based memory, the possibilities for
connectivity/interactivity/control, and what we mean by intelligence are beyond the ability of any
but authors of science fiction novels (I guess that excludes those among us who consider
themselves to be ‘futurists’). I think the most interesting possibilities are those that actually
eliminate (or seem to eliminate) the need to possess devices to make use of what we currently
refer to as connectivity. This means that all we need is access to the intelligent network – a level
of access that will not require manual action of any kind; I can even imagine that use of this
network will not even depend upon requests made vocally – thought will be enough. So, I don’t
know what the requisite ‘interface’ will be, but I believe that something akin to sensors
interacting with implanted chips will be commonplace, without the chips, with sensing of the
brain from what we would characterize as a reasonable conversational distance from the
sensor(s) would be sufficient. Of course, for a privacy scholar, this is quite a leap from our present
thinking about access to and control over our private thoughts. This will, therefore, be an area of
much work with regard to law, regulation and control of these developments and their use by
others for specified legitimate purposes.”
Jennifer King, director of privacy at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, said,
“The last 10 years have demonstrated the risks with unleashing the internet on society with little
accounting for public responsibility. I predict in Western democracies, we will see a greater push
for more regulation and corporate responsibility for the effects of technology. In totalitarian
states, we will see concentrated social control through technology. And across the board, I
suspect it will become increasingly difficult to live a life outside of the reach of technology.”
Tracey P. Lauriault, assistant professor of critical media and big data in the School of Journalism
and Communication at Carleton University, commented, “We are already seeing platform
convergence and the resale of platform data to third parties with whom we do not have a direct
relationship. We already know that data brokerage firms are not regulated and there is very little
regulation when it comes to credit scoring companies. In addition, we are already beginning to
see erroneous social science hiding behind algorithms, not unlike what we saw at the beginning
of the Enlightenment, and we have not even begun to address the social-technical and political
outcomes of junk AI/social sciences (i.e., finding gay people or criminals in facial recognition –
harkening on the bad old days of eugenics and skull measuring). The European Union’s General
Data-Protection Regulation on the right to access information will help, but, for the moment,
there is little individual and aggregate protection. Also, will private sector companies who
aggregate, buy and sell our data, who create individual data shadows or data doppelgangers that
become our representatives in this data world, know more about us than we know about
ourselves? What influence will they have on larger political decision-making? Decision-making
over our lives? How do we correct these systems when they are wrong? How do we adjudicate
and context egregious ‘data-based decisions’ in the courts with current intellectual property law?
And what of personal sovereignty and state sovereignty? What of other decision-making systems
such as social scores in China? How with the poor, elderly and disabled be protected from
automated decision-making about social welfare and supports if they do not have assurances
that the decision-making about them are correct? And what of junk coding that persists and does
not get removed and just keeps generating bad decisions? Who audits? Who is accountable? And
will these become the new governors? The future is here and we do not know how to deal with
it. The EU is beginning to address these and holding these companies to account, but our citizens
in North America are not as well versed, and arguably, our governors seem generally less
interested in our well-being, or perhaps are more ignorant of the implications.”
Andreas Kirsch, a fellow at Newspeak House, formerly with Google and DeepMind in Zurich and
London, wrote, “Regulation will force open closed platforms. Information will flow more freely
between services. Internet services will become more decentralized again as network
bandwidths will not be sufficient for the data volumes that users will produce by then.
Applications and services will not be coupled to devices anymore but will follow us freely
between different contexts (shared car, home, work, mobile devices).”
Anonymous respondents said:
“It is not about the technology itself … it is about the lack of regulation by the institutions and
their lack of understanding of the general public.”
“With each advance there are concerns about privacy and political abuses and these will need to
be addressed with technology and with innovation in policy and laws.”
“The executives of Facebook will be indicted and their trial will begin the process of reform. Once
we get over the idea that tech executives can commit heinous crimes and we hold them
accountable, the tech world will begin the process of change.”
Internet everywhere, like the air you breathe
When asked to look ahead to 2069, respondents largely agreed that connectivity will be both
more pervasive and less visible. A large share predicted that humans and networked devices will
communicate seamlessly and the concept of “going online” will seem archaic. They anticipate
that the internet will “exist everywhere,” turning planet Earth into a cybersphere where
connectivity is as natural as breathing.
Alf Rehn, a professor of innovation, design and management in the school of engineering at the
University of Southern Denmark, commented, “The curious thing will in all likelihood be how
unaware we’ll be of the internet in 50 years. Today, the only time we really reflect on electricity
and plumbing is when they break down. At other times, they’re just there, as self-evident as air. I
believe we will look to digital tools in much the same way. We walk into a room and turn on our
digital streams much like we turn on a light. We wonder how much money is in our bank account,
and just ask the air, and the wall replies (‘You’re slightly overdrawn. Shouldn’t have bought those
shoes. I told you.’). We start cooking, and our kitchen gently suggests we stop doing the Thai fish
stew, because we forgot to tell the kitchen we wanted to do that, so it hasn’t ordered fresh
lemongrass. We’ll do a Mediterranean trout dish instead. The only time we reflect over any of
this is when the Net, for whatever reason, cuts out. It usually lasts only a few minutes, but for
those minutes we become like children, stumbling around unsure what to do when not
surrounded by endlessly helpful technology.”
Scott Burleigh, software engineer and intergalactic internet pioneer, wrote, “Machine-to-machine
network communications will become ubiquitous, and computing hardware will have access to all
human information; to the extent that hardware becomes intelligent and volitional it will replace
humans in essentially all spheres. Humans’ ability to benefit from this advance will be limited
mainly by our inability to come up with adequate interfaces – graphical user interfaces are a dead
end, voice is simply annoying and nobody types fast enough. The hardware will know everything
and won’t be able to convey it to us.”
Adam Powell, senior fellow at the University of Southern California Annenberg Center on
Communication Leadership and Policy, wrote, “Predicting 50 years out is inherently risky (see all
of those flying cars overhead?). But, barring a catastrophe – epidemic, war – extrapolating from
recent history suggests the internet will become more pervasive, more powerful and less
expensive. Think of electricity, or electric motors; they are ubiquitous, noticed mainly when they
cease to function.”
John Laird, a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan,
responded, “The internet infrastructure will disappear from public view. It will be ubiquitous,
always on, always available and invisible. Access will be worldwide. What will change will be our
means of interacting with it. Augmented reality will be ubiquitous (much sooner than 50 years),
with essentially everything interconnected, including the human body – and possibly the human
mind. There are many risks, and many ways in which ubiquitous connectivity can and will be
abused, but overall, it will enhance people’s lives. We will go through ups and downs, but there
will be significant advances in security.”
A senior data analyst and systems specialist expert in complex networks responded, “This is an
area where I think a few science fiction writers, such as John Brunner, have seen the future. The
future version of the internet will be more ubiquitous and more seamless (building on the
Internet of Things), but it will also be much less secure, with people suffering damage from
various kinds of hacking on a daily basis. However, this lack of security will gradually become the
‘new normal,’ and the outrage will fade.”
Nigel Hickson, an expert on technology policy development for ICANN based in Brussels,
responded, “I do not think we will be talking about the internet in 50 years’ time. As the internet
becomes ubiquitous it is simply an enabling force like air or water; it’s what we do with it that
becomes more important – is the power used for good, to improve society, enhance freedom and
choice, or is it used to enslave? The internet cannot be divorced from the progress of society
itself. In an enlightened democracy the effect of the internet will have been positive, enhancing
freedom and choice, but in a dictatorship the opposite could well be true.”
From the ‘Internet of Things’ to the ‘Internet of Everything’

In 1982, graduate students in the computer science department at Carnegie Mellon University
connected a Coke vending machine to the ARPANET, creating the first “smart device.” The rise of
networked devices, collectively known as the “Internet of Things,” was a dominant theme in the
2014 Pew Research Center-Imagining the Internet report on the Impacts of the Internet by 2025.
When asked four years later to look ahead to 2069, these expert respondents predicted the
further rise of networked devices and extended the concept to include the technical hybridization
of the natural world.
Edson Prestes, a professor and director of robotics at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul,
Brazil, wrote, “I believe the internet will no longer exist in the way we see today. It will not be
possible to see the internet as a huge network of connected devices, but instead it will be
something unique that works in a pervasive and transparent way – like air that exists everywhere
so we forget about its existence. We will use the environment to transmit information, via plants,
soil, water, etc. We will develop new processes to take advantage of all resources available in the
environment, e.g., we might use biochemical processes of plants to give support to data
processing. Humans will be naturally adaptable to this pervasive environment. Some people will
use prostheses to get/transmit/visualize and process information, maybe plugged directly in the
brain and working in unison with the brain lobes. The information received from the environment
can be seen as a ‘new sensory input.’ Thus, all interfaces and tools will be totally reshaped: no
mouse, no menus, no ‘blue screens of death.’ Others, from the ‘old school,’ will use plug-and-play
wearable gadgets.”
Valarie Bell, a computational social scientist at the University of North Texas, commented, “In the
coming decades, we’ll have one ‘device’ if any at all. Everything will be voice-print-activated
and/or bio-scanner-activated (retinal scan) so passwords and login details become irrelevant. This
will make identity theft more difficult but not impossible, as no matter what system or
technology people create, other people will immediately develop ways to deviate or breach it. All
domiciles’ powered devices will likely be solar-powered or powered in a way other than 20th
century electricity. Personal credit cards, driver’s licenses and other portable documentation that
you’d carry in your wallet would become synced to a single cloud-based account accessible via
bio-scannable systems. To buy groceries, simply use your home grocery ‘app’ to open your
account as your pantry, freezer, and fridge order what you’re out of. Then robots will pack your
order and self-driving cars with robot delivery staff will restock your kitchen. Later, groceries will
appear in your kitchen in much the same way Capt. Kirk and Mr. Spock used to beam up to the
Enterprise on ‘Star Trek.’ Instead of you teaching your young children to read, tie their shoes, do
their homework or clean their room, aids like Alexa that are more developed and can operate in
multiple rooms of the house will do those things. People continue to abdicate their duties and
responsibilities to devices and machines as we’ve become more selfish and self-obsessed. Social
networking sites like Facebook will be holographic. People will likely have one or more implants
to allow them to access the internet and to access whatever the future computer will be. People
won’t type on computers. Perhaps you’ll be able to think what you want to type and your system
will type it for you while you eat lunch, watch TV, walk in the park or ride in your self-driving car.
It’s also important to remember that past projections from 50 years ago never predicted the
internet but did predict lots of technology that even now we still don’t have. So we can expect
the same with our predictions.”
Stephen Abram, principal at Lighthouse Consulting Inc., wrote, “We will be well beyond apps and
the web in 50 years. The networked information, entertainment and social world will be fully
integrated into biology and networked appliances (not toasters but a full range of new appliances
that may be stand-alone like Google Home but are more likely fully integrated devices into
architecture and spaces).”
Lee McKnight, associate professor, School of Information Studies, Syracuse University,

commented, “The internet will reach close to 100% of humans, forests, fields and streams, as
well as most non-human species, in 2069. The Internet of Things will grow to trillions of things –
and all factories, cities and communities…. I do expect pop-up networks will permit people even
in the most remote locations, or communities with limited means, to access and share services
and internet bandwidth from literally anywhere on this planet, as well as from our Mars colonies
and moon bases. What, you thought there would be just one? Forecasting the way we interact
with software and hardware is too limited a starting point, as we must assume biochemistry
(wetware) will also increasingly take its place in human-machine interaction environments and
platforms. While science fiction is comfortable imagining all kinds of scenarios, the future-realist
in me can only see good, bad and ugly wetware interacting with all of us, at all times, in 2069.”
Mícheál Ó Foghlú, engineering director and DevOps Code Pillar at Google, Munich, said, “Looking
forward 50 years is almost impossible. I think the biggest trend we can anticipate from today’s
frame is that the huge increase in machine-to-machine intercommunication, the Internet of
Things, will transform the landscape. This will mean all electronic devices will have some form of
built-in intelligence and many systems will layer on top of this massively interconnected
intelligent mesh.”
Peter Eachus, director of psychology and public health at the University of Salford, UK,
responded, “The most fundamental change will be the way in which we interact with this
connected technology. There won’t be tablets or smartphones or screens. We will be able to just
think of a question and the answer will immediately come to mind! The Mindternet is the
future!”
A professor and director at a major U.S. university said, “While the Internet of Things will be
touted as time-saving and labor-saving it will present additional challenges due to distraction and
reduce the quality of intrapersonal relations in addition to adding security vulnerabilities.”
A member of the editorial board of the ACM Journal for Autonomous and Adaptive Systems
commented, “I envision billions of devices, objects locally interacting with each other, learning
from their activities, usages and users’ feedback and providing instant, on-demand services not
pre-coded or pre-designed. These services are the result of collective interactions happening
locally with no central servers. Ethics and privacy [are] granted by default. When a user’s request
or need cannot be met, devices/objects provide themselves the missing software (self-coding) or
request any missing hardware.”
Additional anonymous respondents said they expect:
“We will be much less aware of the internet because it will be mostly seamlessly woven into our
everyday lives.”
“A total integration of human inputs (perceptions) and outputs (actions) with the internet and
the objects and tools around them.”
“Free internet access worldwide will be regarded as a basic human right.”
“People will be seamlessly and continuously interconnected without having to use a device of any
kind.”
“Everything will be stored in cloud storage. Sensors will be everywhere, from parking lots to
agricultural fields.”
“More and more of our spheres – even our bodies – will be more and more integrated into the
network.”
“There will be a cashless society. E-shopping will dominate people’s lives. The Internet of Things
will become a part of us – embedded, for instance, in clothes, thermoses, heating systems, etc.”
“Due to the lack of transparency and understanding of algorithmic systems and their owners,
humans’ individual autonomy and agency is going to decrease.”
“More connected objects and connected experiences will allow to get over the digital divide and
allow everyone to profit from the digital lifestyle. At the same time advances in green tech will
also allow the connectivity not to be made at the expense of the environment.”
“Your report card could be connected to, say, a restaurant’s app which will make reservations for
you when you get good grades.”
It will be impossible to unplug
A share of respondents explored the possibilities and challenges of living in a fully networked
world where it is difficult, or even impossible, to disconnect. The following comments illuminate
some of their expectations in the future of constantly connected life.
Steven Polunsky, director of the Alabama Transportation Policy Research Center, University of
Alabama, said, “We all know where this is going. We are at the earliest stages of making devices
like electric and water meters ‘smart’ and integrating home accessories with internet
functionality. The issue is whether people will be allowed, by regulation or by practical exercise,
to opt out, and what the effects of that action will be, as well as what efforts will be required to
bring services to those at the fringes. Does government have an obligation, such as led to the
creation of the Rural Electrification Administration or Essential Air Service, that extends to the
requirement or provision of broadband and beyond to the services it enables?”
Helena Draganik, a professor at the University of Gdansk, Poland, responded, “The rules/law of
internet communication will be unified between many countries, which will limit the freedom of
expression. There will grow to be even more dependence upon big platforms (e.g., Facebook) and
a deepening of the monetization of our customs and habits. The marketing industry will grow.
The internet will just be one more, marketing-dependent medium – as press or TV. Yes, in the
future there will be many information technology and artificial intelligence applications and
commodities to simplify our lives. But it is possible that we will not be able to function properly
without them.”
An expert on converging technologies at for a defense institute wrote, “The internet 50 years
from now will look nothing like it does today. Physical infrastructure will be entirely pervasive and
wireless (perhaps non-electronic) and digital elements will be directly interfaced with human
brains. And the minds of different individuals may be directly linked. This will be a new era for
humankind, which is difficult to hypothesize about.”
Christopher Yoo, a professor of law, communication and computer and information science at the
University of Pennsylvania Law School, responded, “If I had to predict (and undertake the
concomitant risk and inevitable likelihood that some of these predictions will turn out to be
wrong), I would expect more users to become increasingly reliant on their mobile devices and to
rely on them for mobile payments and other functions. Just as cloud computing disintermediated
PC operating systems and created new key intermediaries, such as hypervisor leader VMWare,
these new functions will shake up existing industries and inevitably displace incumbents that are
too slow to innovate.”
Nancy Greenwald, a respondent who provided no identifying details, wrote, “I started on the
early internet in 1983-84 on ‘Dialog,’ with a dial-up connection. Now I talk with my devices, giving
instructions, dictating, etc. What I expect to see is a growing number of tasks we can complete
through the internet, continual increases in collaborative platforms with an increase in a greatly
improved ‘open API’ type of program integration, and an increase in the ways we connect with
the technology (our wearable technology is crude) so that we are continuously connected. I
already have the feeling that one of my senses is cut off when I am unable to connect to the
internet. I expect that sense of enabling/dependence to increase.”
A well-known writer and editor who documented the early boom of the internet in the 1990s
wrote, “We will take omniscience over the state of the world for granted because we will be
connected to everything, always. We are therefore all the more likely to be distracted from asking
questions that really matter. On balance, greater knowledge leads to greater happiness – though
there is a lot of distraction to get through along the way.”
A professor of electronic engineering and innovation studies who is based in Europe commented,
“A radical change will occur in the way the people see human-machine and human-human
interactions. Humans will be entirely dependent on information systems, just like our generation
got used to being dependent on electricity or transport systems. Also, expect radical innovations
in neural connection (i.e., human brains integrated with computers). The effects of this remain
highly unpredictable.”
Slowing the pace of internet innovation

Although a significant majority of survey respondents expected the rate of technological
advancement to remain steady or increase in the next 50 years, a vocal minority argued that
humanity may be entering a cooling-off period when it comes to digital evolution.
Lee Smolin, a professor at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and Edge.org contributor,
responded, “Many technologies evolve fast until they reach functional maturity, after which how
they function for us evolves slowly. I suspect the internet has already reached, or will shortly
reach, that state.”
Ken Birman, a professor in the department of computer science at Cornell University, responded,
“Technology booms take the form of ‘S’ curves. For any technical area, we see a slow uptake,
then a kind of exponential in which the limits seem infinite, but by then things are often already
slowing down. For me, the current boom in cloud computing has created the illusion of
unbounded technical expansion in certain domains, but in fact we may quickly reach a kind of
steady state. By 2050, I think the focus will have shifted to robotics in agriculture and perhaps
climate control, space engineering, revolutionary progress in brain science and other biological
sciences. This is not to say that we will cease to see stunning progress in the internet and cloud,
but rather that the revolutions we are experiencing today will have matured and yielded to other
revolutions in new dimensions they will surely leverage the network, but may no longer be quite
so network-centric.”
Zoetanya Sujon, a senior lecturer specializing in digital culture at University of Arts London,
commented, “Based on the cyclical histories of the printing press, telephone, internet, virtual
reality and artificial intelligence, I believe that all technologies are subject to waves, often
characterized by ferment/early development, great claims and excitement whether positive or
negative, and if they reach the mainstream, they will also experience an era of maturity marked
by institutionalization and ‘an era of dominant design.’ After this point, technologies are likely to
become obsolete, adapt or converge, or follow through incremental change – all rather like
knowledge and product cycles.”
A lead QA engineer at a technology group said, “Twenty years ago someone told me that in the
future all of our applications and data would be online. I did not believe it … and here we are
today. The advances in technology are based on continued availability of electricity that makes
technology and connectivity possible. I have a feeling that while many advances are made, some
in our society will want to separate themselves. Like in the 1950s the big thing was canned goods,
instant meals, and now 50 years later many are going back to cooking from scratch.”
An internet pioneer wrote, “If history is a guide, the 10 most valuable companies in the world will
be different 50 years from now than they are today. These new players will have succeeded in re-
centralizing something that earlier generations had de-centralized. Perhaps we return to
desktop/mobile phone single-vendor dominance. Combined with human-computer interfaces,
the prospect of single-vendor control over the operating system of a substantial portion of your
brain is rather frightening. As to the core internet itself – I suspect it won’t actually change a lot.
Just like railroads or highways, infrastructure sees short periods of time of great innovation, and
then a long plateau. I don’t think the internet has seen much change in the last 10 years aside
from being bigger, colder, harsher and filled with more bad actors, so I suspect that plateau will
continue more or less for another 50.”
A principal researcher for one of the world’s top five technology companies commented, “What
technology makes possible in 50 years depends on what technology exists in 50 years. Will
Moore’s Law and related semiconductor accelerations be extended through quantum, optical, or
some other computing? A breakthrough there in the next 20 years would lead to unimaginable
consequences in 50 years. But it seems more likely that they won’t, so we can expect a slow
realization of the full capabilities of technology that is not qualitatively different from today’s.
That leaves substantial room for increased capability as cloud computing and the Internet of
Things get worked out with modest assists from data science and machine learning, and as our
attentional balance shifts from novelty and eye-catching visual design to utility and productivity.”
Visions of the future: ‘Brave New World,’ ‘1984’ or ‘The Jetsons’

A number of respondents shared colorful descriptions of what they expect the world might look
like in 2069.
Garland McCoy, founder and chief development officer of the Technology Education Institute,
wrote, “On the first day there was analog voice and, behold, it was good. On the second day
there was human-generated data/content, and it was pleasing to the people. On the third day
machines began to talk directly to machines and this was seen as excellent indeed. On the fourth
day, machines began to design their own network of networks (e.g., LoRaWAN, a device-to-
device architecture), and behold great efficiency spread out upon the land. On the fifth day
humans began to leave their homes and assemble at the town square to talk among themselves
face-to-face and this brought great joy to the multitudes. On the sixth day, just as the wise men
from the Semiconductor Industry Association had predicted, the world was unable to generate
enough electricity to feed all of the chips/devices the wise men had created and darkness
descended upon the land. On the seventh day the people rested because that was all they could
do. And so endeth the lesson.”
Baratunde Thurston, futurist, former director of digital at The Onion and co-founder of the
comedy/technology startup Cultivated Wit, wrote, “With land and servers, Amazon was able to
accelerate the merger of the space formerly referred to as ‘the internet’ and the realm once
called ‘meatspace,’ or ‘in real life,’ such that there is no longer a distinction – it is all referred to
now as ‘The Prime Network.’ … Once it was proven in 2045 that a hybrid human-networked
intelligence could manage and draft legislation far better than inconsistent and infinitely
corruptible humans, the U.S. Congress was replaced with a dynamic network model accounting
for the concerns of citizens yet bound by resource constraints and established laws. This
happened too late to save Miami, which is now only accessible by automated submarine,
historical tours or VR re-creations, but it did help rally the resources required to halt The Ten-Year
Burn in California and restore much of Lower Manhattan. Americans now spend roughly 30
percent of their waking hours in SR (simulated reality) environments. Many spend this time
reliving revised personal histories which make them the most popular students in high school
even though industrial school farms were abolished 25 years ago and replaced by personalized
Mental Training Plenaries that dynamically adjusted to the learning styles and needs of each
student. Another 20% of waking hours are spent passively consuming immersive narratives
customized to each person. In order to maintain social cohesion, however, these personalized
narratives have overlapping characters, plot points and themes so that people have something to
talk about when they encounter their fellow humans. Americans split the rest of their time
between eating, picking up litter and serving on the obligatory Algorithmic Oversight
Committees. Advertising has been banned. Once we launched the 360 Accounting Project to
measure the impact of nearly all human endeavors and score them on various elements, the
practice of advertising was found to have a negative social, financial, emotional, ecological and
moral return on investment. Any human or hybrid engaged in advertising is disconnected from
The Prime Network for six hours on a first offense, one day for a second offense and permanently
for a third offense. Amazon is exempt from the advertising ban per the Terms of Service that
govern all Prime citizens.”
Jamais Cascio, research fellow at the Institute for the Future, wrote, “I imagine three broad
scenarios for AI in 50 years. No. 1, EVERYWARE, is a crisis-management world trying to head off
climate catastrophe. Autonomous systems under the direction of governance institutions (which
may not be actual governments) will be adapting our physical spaces and behaviors to be able to
deal with persistent heat waves, droughts, wildland fires, category 6 hurricanes, etc. Our routines
will be shaped by a drive to a minimal footprint and a need to make better longer-term decisions.
This may not be ‘green fascism’ precisely, but that will be a common invective. The dominant
design language here is *visible control* – of public spaces, of economic behavior, of personal
interactions, etc. AI is a climate-protective Jiminy Cricket with an attitude. No. 2, ABANDONWARE,
is also crisis-driven, but here various environmental, economic and political crises greatly limit
the role of AI in our lives. There will be mistrust of AI-based systems, and strong pushback against
any kinds of human-displacement. This likely results from political and economic disasters in the
2040s-ish linked to giving too much control to AI-based systems: institutional decisions driven by
strategies to maximize profits and control, while minimizing uncertainty and risk. AIs messing
around with elections, overriding community decisions and otherwise pushing aside fuzzy
emotional thinking with algorithmic logic goes swiftly from being occasionally annoying to
infuriatingly commonplace. The dominant design language for AI here is submissive. AI is still
around, but generally whimpering in the corner. No. 3, SUPERWARE, is the world described in the
first answer (AI common but largely invisible) turned up to 11. In this scenario, AI systems focus
on helping people live well and with minimal harm to others. By 2069, the only jobs performed
by humans in the post-industrial, post-information world require significant emotional labor,
unique creative gifts or are simply done out of the pleasure of doing them. The newly developed
world is still adapting, but what amounts to the end of 19th century industrial capitalism forces
this change. AI-based systems are dealing with climate, global health, and the like, but in ways
meant to increase human well-being over the long term. Most people born before 2020 hate this,
seeing it as ‘robo-nanny state socialism’ and ‘undermining human dignity’ even as they take
advantage of the benefits. The dominant design language for AI here is ‘caring.’ Machines of
Loving Grace, whether you like it or not.”
Ebenezer Baldwin Bowles, author, editor and journalist, responded, “The next 50 years? A time
frame ending in 2069? As grandpa would say, ‘I can’t imagine.’ But we must try or else fall silent.
1) The best and brightest will communicate brain-to-brain through implants linked to synapses
altered by quantum surgery. Encrypted and delivered by carbon-silicone hybrid technology, this
radical expression of the desire to communicate will create new systems of power and control by
the planet’s ruling class. 2) Global nation-states, empowered by iron-fisted control of electronic
media and financial systems, protected by police drones and robots through continuous
surveillance systems, and sustained by a willing populous, will oversee legions of workers
dedicated to the maintenance of the ruling class of the 1%. 3) The development of no-cost
neighborhood-based replicator stations will provide unlimited access for everyone to nutritious
food, comfortable clothing suitable to local climates, every imaginable item necessary to
maintain a household, and personal necessities linked to popular concepts of comfort and
entertainment. The replicator system, an advanced expression of today’s 3D printing technology,
will serve as a means of control of the working and professional classes – a chicken in every pot
times 10. So, robots and drones with the Evil Eye to watch and control the people. Unlimited
food, clothing and shelter to cow the masses into happy servitude. Total reliance on AI and its
tendrils to supply the necessities of life. What a wonder to behold in 2069. Think back to 1969.
Even the most imaginative thinkers missed the one crucial aspect of digital control of everyday
life in 2018: the surveillance camera. Who back then could imagine the total loss of privacy and
personal independence we live with today? We are swallowed up by digital influences now. In 50
years the influences shall morph into total control, and the world we know now shall be
devoured by electric ones and zeroes, one after another in the rapid march to dissolution.”
Jerry Michalski, founder of the Relationship Economy eXpedition, said, “Most internet-connected
devices have been p0wn3d and are in the Dark Net, making most systems scary and unstable.
Super-small drones changed warfare and policing, making it difficult and expensive to hide.
Anyone who feels at risk travels in a self-sufficient chamber to avoid infiltration. Meanwhile, a
quarter of humanity has figured out how to hear one another and live in abundance, but they
have to keep below the radar…. Over 50 years many more things will change, but the forces at
play are shoving society in negative directions. People who want better will achieve progress, but
I see a dystopian future for the majority of humanity.”
A research scientist who works for Google said, “You want a 50-year prediction? I’m not sure
what to say. Google is only 20 years old – would you have predicted that (and all of the side
effects) back in 1968 (50 years ago)? Likewise, Amazon is 24 years out. My point is that predicting
tech changes in the online/software space is really, really hard. Remember the rise (and fall, and
rise?) of walled gardens? Did anyone predict the fall of AOL back when it was the biggest
company around? A few things I can predict with confidence: 1) There will be new business
models that we do not yet know about. Amazon was enabled by a host of technologies that
didn’t exist in 1968. Play that same tune forward. 2) There will be a backlash against the Internet
of Things. Just sayin’. 3) Eventually, we’ll figure out how to do sufficiently high frame-rate and
precision registration so that VR/AR actually works. Both will be interesting; both have the
possibility of being world-changers. (But I don’t know how that will happen yet. Probably, it will
happen in a way we don’t yet understand.) 4) Bandwidth will eventually make it into the entire
third world. That will change the online landscape as much as when the ARPANET became open
for commercial purposes. (That is, dramatically.) 5) The social effects of connectivity (especially in
the third world) + bandwidth + radicalized pockets of folks will make the current internet battles
seem tame. AI will be important, but it’s not going to be the big driver.”
The chief marketing officer for a technology-based company said, “The Internet of Things and AI
will exponentially help to automate and organize society and the world at large by enhancing
existing infrastructure and innovating new ones.”
An anonymous respondent wrote, “Widespread networked computing will have collapsed 50

years from now, as will society.”
4. The internet will continue to make life better

A large share of respondents predict enormous potential for improved quality of life over the
next 50 years for most individuals thanks to internet connectivity, although many said the
benefits of a wired world are not likely to be evenly distributed.
Andrew Tutt, an expert in law and author of “An FDA for Algorithms,” said, “We are still only
about to enter the era of complex automation. It will revolutionize the world and lead to
groundbreaking changes in transportation, industry, communication, education, energy, health
care, communication, entertainment, government, warfare and even basic research. Self-driving
cars, trains, semi-trucks, ships and airplanes will mean that goods and people can be transported
farther, faster and with less energy and with massively fewer vehicles. Automated mining and
manufacturing will further reduce the need for human workers to engage in rote work. Machine
language translation will finally close the language barrier, while digital tutors, teachers and
personal assistants with human qualities will make everything from learning new subjects to
booking salon appointments faster and easier. For businesses, automated secretaries,
salespeople, waiters, waitress, baristas and customer support personnel will lead to cost savings,
efficiency gains and improved customer experiences. Socially, individuals will be able to find AI
pets, friends and even therapists who can provide the love and emotional support that many
people so desperately want. Entertainment will become far more interactive, as immersive AI
experiences come to supplement traditional passive forms of media. Energy generation and
health care will vastly improve with the addition of powerful AI tools that can take a systems-
level view of operations and locate opportunities to gain efficiencies in design and operation. AI-
driven robotics (e.g., drones) will revolutionize warfare. Finally, intelligent AI will contribute
immensely to basic research and likely begin to create scientific discoveries of its own.”
Arthur Bushkin, an IT pioneer who worked with the precursors to ARPANET and Verizon, wrote,
“Of course, the impact of the internet has been dramatic and largely positive. The devil is in the
details and the distribution of the benefits.”
Mícheál Ó Foghlú, engineering director and DevOps Code Pillar at Google, Munich, said, “Despite
the negatives I firmly believe that the main benefits have been positive, allowing economies and
people to move up the value chain, ideally to more rewarding levels of endeavor.”
Perry Hewitt, a marketing, content and technology executive, wrote, “On an individual basis, we
will think about our digital assets as much as our physical ones. Ideally, we will have more
transparent control over our data, and the ability to understand where it resides and exchange it
for value – negotiating with the platform companies that are now in a winner-take-all position.
Some children born today are named with search engine-optimization in mind; we’ll be thinking
more comprehensively about a set of rights and responsibilities of personal data that children are
born with. Governments will have a higher level of regulation and protection of individual data.
On an individual level, there will be greater integration of technology with our physical selves. For
example, I can see devices that augment hearing and vision, and that enable greater access to
data through our physical selves. Hard for me to picture what that looks like, but 50 years is a lot
of time to figure it out. On a societal level, AI will have affected many jobs. Not only the truck
drivers and the factory workers, but professions that have been largely unassailable – law,
medicine – will have gone through a painful transformation. Overall I am bullish in our ingenuity
to find a higher and better use for those humans, but it seems inevitable that we’ll struggle
through a murky dip before we get there. By 2069, we’ll likely be out the other end. My biggest
concern about the world 50 years out is the physical condition of the planet. It seems entirely
reasonable that a great deal of our digital lives will be focused on habitable environments:
identifying them, improving them, expanding them.”
David Cake, an active leader with Electronic Frontiers Australia and vice chair of the ICANN GNSO
Council, wrote, “Significant, often highly communication and computation technologically driven,
advances in day-to-day areas like health care, safety and human services, will continue to have a
significant measurable improvement in many lives, often ‘invisible’ as an unnoticed reduction in
bad outcomes, will continue to reduce the incidence of human-scale disasters. Advances in
opportunities for self-actualisation through education, community and creative work will
continue (though monetisation will continue to be problematic).”
Eugene H. Spafford, internet pioneer and professor of computing sciences at Purdue University,
founder and executive director emeritus of the Center for Education and Research in Information
Assurance and Security, commented, “New uses, information sources and paradigms will improve
the lives of many. However, the abuses, dilution of privacy and crime will also make things
worse.”
Jeff Jarvis, director of the Tow-Knight Center at City University of New York’s Craig Newmark
School of Journalism, commented, “One need be fairly cynical about one’s fellow humans and
somewhat hubristic about one’s own exceptional abilities to argue that most people will act
against their own self-interest to adopt technologies that will be harmful to them. This is why I
am driven nuts by the contentions that we have all become addicted to our devices against our
will, that the internet has made us stupid in spite of our education, that social media has made us
uncivil no matter our parenting, as if these technologies could, in a mere matter of a few years,
change our very nature as human beings. Bull. This dystopian worldview gives people no credit
for their agency, their good will, their common sense, their intelligence and their willingness to
explore and experiment. We will figure out how to adopt technologies of benefit and reject
technologies that harm. Of course, there will be exceptions to that rule – witness America’s
inability to come to terms with an invention made a millennium ago: gunpowder. But much of the
rest of the civilized world has figured that one out.”
Andrew Odlyzko, professor at the University of Minnesota and former head of its Digital
Technology Center and the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute, said, “Assuming we avoid giant
disasters, such as runaway climate change or huge pandemics, we should be able to overcome
many of the problems that plague humanity, in health and freedom from physical wants, and
from backbreaking or utterly boring jobs. This will bring in other problems, of course.”
Pedro U. Lima, an associate professor of computer science at Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon,
Portugal, said, “Most of the focus on technology and particularly AI and machine learning
developments these days is limited to virtual systems (e.g., apps for travel booking, social
networks, search engines, games). I expect this to move, in the next 50 years, into networking
people with machines, remotely operating in a myriad of environments, such as homes,
hospitals, factories, sport arenas and so on. This will change work as we know it today, as it will
change medicine (increasing remote surgery), travel (autonomous and remotely-guided cars,
trains, planes), entertainment (games where real robots, instead of virtual agents, evolve in real
scenarios). These are just a few ideas/scenarios. Many more, difficult to anticipate today, will
appear. They will bring further challenges on privacy, security and safety, which everyone should
be closely watching and monitoring. Beyond current discussions on privacy problems concerning
‘virtual world’ apps, we need to consider that ‘real world’ apps may enhance many of those
problems, as they interact physically and/or in proximity with humans.”
Timothy Leffel, research scientist, National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago,
predicted, “Future historians will observe that, in many ways, the rise of the internet over the
next few decades will have improved the world, but it hasn’t been without its costs that were
sometimes severe and disruptive to entire industries and nations.”
Dave Gusto, co-director of the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State
University, commented, “Fifty years is a terrifically long time for forecasting. A lot might be riding
on, for example, what happens with the current conflict around net neutrality and the way that
public or private interests get to shape the net from now forward. But within either pathway –
public-interest dominated or private-interest dominated – the ability of some actors to enjoy the
highest-end benefits and many actors to use what they can access or can manage to learn is a
likely contour to the overall system. I think that a vast diversity of uses will characterize the future
system, focusing on experience, entertainment and education, enhanced by AR and VR.”
A representative for a Middle Eastern telecommunication directorate wrote that online life will
continue to be a plus in most individuals’ lives, adding, “As far as technological history is
concerned, there has been no single case that the advance of technology and innovation has
worsened the lives of individuals. This is similarly valid for AI.”
Living longer and better lives is the shining promise of the digital age
Many respondents to this canvassing agreed that internet advancement is likely to lead to better
human-health outcomes, although perhaps not for everyone. As the following comments show,
experts foresee new cures for chronic illnesses, rapid advancement in biotechnology and
expanded access to care thanks to the development of better telehealth systems.
Steve Crocker, CEO and co-founder of Shinkuro Inc., internet pioneer and Internet Hall of Fame
member, responded, “Life will improve in multiple ways. One in particular I think worth
mentioning will be improvements in health care in three distinct ways. One is significantly better
medical technology related to cancer and other major diseases. The second is significantly
reduced cost of health care. The third is much higher and broader availability of high-quality
health care, thereby reducing the differences in outcomes between wealthy and poor citizens.”
Susan Etlinger, an industry analyst for Altimeter Group expert in data, analytics and digital
strategy, commented, “Many of the technologies we see commercialized today began in
government and university research labs. Fifty years ago, computers were the size of walk-in
closets, and the notion of personal computers was laughable to most people. Today we’re facing
another shift, from personal and mobile to ambient computing. We’re also seeing a huge amount
of research in the areas of prosthetics, neuroscience and other technologies intended to translate
brain activity into physical form. All discussion of transhumanism aside, there are very real
current and future applications for technology ‘implants’ and prosthetics that will be able to aid
mobility, memory, even intelligence, and other physical and neurological functions. And, as nearly
always happens, the technology is far ahead of our understanding of the human implications.
Will these technologies be available to all, or just to a privileged class? What happens to the
data? Will it be protected during a person’s lifespan? What happens to it after death? Will it be
‘willed’ as a digital legacy to future generations? What are the ethical (and for some, religious
and spiritual) implications of changing the human body with technology? In many ways, these are
not new questions. We’ve used technology to augment the physical form since the first caveman
picked up a walking stick. But the key here will be to focus as much (or more) on the way we use
these technologies as we do on inventing them.”
Bernie Hogan, senior research fellow at Oxford Internet Institute, wrote, “Tech will make life
better for individuals but not for societies. Life-saving drugs, genetic medicine, effective talk
therapy, better recommender systems will all serve individuals in a satisfying way. I am
concerned, however, that these will create increased dependency and passivity. We already have
trends toward better-behaved, less-experimental and less-sexually-active youth. The increased
sense that one’s entire life is marked from cradle to grave will create a safer and more productive
life, but perhaps one that is a little less low-risk and constrained.”
Kenneth Grady, futurist and founding author of The Algorithmic Society blog, responded, “Fifty
years from now today’s notions of privacy will feel as out of date as horse and buggy
transportation feels to us. Our homes, transportation, appliances, communication devices and
even our clothes will be constantly communicating as part of a digital network. We have enough
pieces of this today that we can somewhat imagine what it will be like. Through our clothes,
doctors can monitor in real time our vital signs, metabolic condition and markers relevant to
specific diseases. Parents will have real-time information about young children. The difference in
the future will be the constant sharing of information, data updates and responses of all these
interconnected devices. The things we create will interact with us to protect us. Our notions of
privacy and even liability will be redefined. Lowering the cost and increasing the effectiveness of
health care will require sharing information about how our bodies are functioning. Those who
opt out may have to accept palliative hospice care over active treatment. Not keeping track of
children real-time may be considered a form of child neglect. Digital will do more than connect
our things to each other – it will invade our bodies. Advances in prosthetics, replacement organs
and implants will turn our bodies into digital devices. This will create a host of new issues,
including defining ‘human’ and where the line exists between that human and the digital
universe – if people are always connected, always on are humans now part of the internet?”
Martin Geddes, a consultant specializing in telecommunications strategies, said, “I am optimistic

that we will find a new harmony with technology, having been in dissonance for a long time. This
will not be due to newfound wisdom or virtue, but due to the collapse of longstanding cultures
and structures that are psychopathic in nature, including today’s central banking systems and
mass-surveillance systems. The digital and nano/biotech renaissance is only just beginning, and it
will in particular transform health care. Our ‘satnav for live’ will help us navigate all daily choices
that impact well-being.”
Danil Mikhailov, head of data and innovation for Wellcome Trust, responded, “My view is that the
internet and related digital tech such as AI 50 years from now will have mostly positive effects,
but only if we manage its development wisely. In health, the pervasiveness of powerful
algorithms embedded in mobile tech doing things like monitoring our vitals and cross-referencing
with our genetic information, will mean longer and healthier lives and the disappearance of many
diseases. Similarly, AI embedded in devices or wearables can be applied to predict and ameliorate
many mental health illnesses. However, there is potential for there to be huge inequalities in our
societies in the ability of individuals to access such technologies, causing both social disruption
and new causes for mental health diseases, such as depression and anxiety. On balance, I am an
optimist about the ability of human beings to adjust and develop new ethical norms for dealing
with such issues.”
Dan Robitzski, a reporter covering science and technology for Futurism.com, commented, “The
powers that be are not the powers that should be. Surveillance technology, especially that
powered by AI algorithms, is becoming more powerful and all-present than ever before. But to
look at that and say that technology won’t help people is absurd. Medical technology, technology
to help people with disabilities, technology that will increase our comfort and abilities as humans
will continue to appear and develop.”
Emanuele Torti, a research professor in the computer science department at the University of
Pavia, Italy, responded, “The digital revolution will bring benefits in particular for health,
providing personalized monitoring through Internet of Things and wearable devices. The AI will
analyze those data in order to provide personalized medicine solutions.”
João Pedro Taveira, embedded systems researcher and smart grids architect for INOV INESC
Inovação, Portugal, wrote, “The most noticeable change for better in the next 50 years will be in
health and average life expectancy. At this pace, and, taking into account the developments in
digital technologies, I hope that several discoveries will reduce the risk of death, such as cancer
or even death by road accident. New drugs could be developed, increasing the active work age
and possibility maintaining the sustainability of countries’ social health care and retirement
funds.”
José Estabil, director of entrepreneurship and innovation at MIT’s Skoltech Initiative, commented,
“AI, like the electric engine, will affect society in ways that are not linearly forecastable. (For
example, the unification of villages through electric engines in subways has created what we
know as Paris, London, Moscow and Manhattan). Another area AI can have impact is in creating
the framework within genomics, epigenomics and metabolomics can be used to keep people
healthy and to intervene when we start to deviate from health. Indeed, with AI we may be able
to hack the brain and other secreting cells so that we can auto-generate lifesaving medicines,
block unwanted biological processes (e.g., cancer), and coupled to understanding the brain, be
able to hack at neurological disorders.”
Jay Sanders, president and CEO of the Global Telemedicine Group, responded, “Haptics will afford
the ability to touch/feel at a distance so that in the medical space a physician at one location will
literally be able to examine a patient at a distance.”
A director of marketing for a major technology platform company commented, “I was an early
user of ARPANET at Carnegie Mellon University, and even then we were able to utilize internet
technology to solve human health problems to make citizens’ lives better and improve their
access to care and services to improve their health outcomes. The benefits of the internet in the
health care industry have continued to improve access to care and services, particularly for
elderly, disabled or rural citizens. Digital tools will continue to be integrated into daily life to help
the most vulnerable and isolated who need services, care and support. With laws supporting
these groups, benefits in these areas will continue and expand to include behavioral health and
resources for this group and for others. In the area of behavioral health in particular, digital tools
will provide far-reaching benefits to citizens who need services but do not access them directly in
person. Access to behavioral health will increase significantly in the next 50 years as a result of
more enhanced and widely available digital tools made available to practitioners for delivering
care to vulnerable populations, and by minimizing the stigma of accessing this type of care in
person. It is a more affordable, personalized and continuous way of providing this type of care
that is also more likely to attain adherence.”
The cyborg generation: Humans will partner more directly with technology
Many experts foresaw a future where the integration of technology and the human body would
lead to a hybridization of humanity and technology.
Barry Chudakov, founder and principal of Sertain Research and author of “Metalifestream,”
commented, “In 50 years the internet will not be a place to access through a device; it will be the
all-surrounding ether of actions and intentions as machine intelligence and learning merge with
human intelligence. This will be a natural evolution of adopting the logic of our tools and
adjusting our lives accordingly. Pathways to digital life will be neural pathways inside our bodies
and brains. We will eat our technology. What is now external mediated through devices will
become neural, mediated through neural triggers along neural pathways. Having gone (and living)
inside us, the merger with our tools and devices will continue to accelerate due to advances in
machine learning. Human identity will morph into an open question, an ongoing discussion.”
Sam Lehman-Wilzig, associate professor and former chair of the School of Communication, Bar-
Ilan University, Israel, wrote, “Given the huge (and completely unpredicted) changes of the
‘internet’ over the past 50 years, this question demands out-of-the-box thinking, which I will do
here. Literally. In my estimation, within the next 50 years the internet will mainly become the
platform for brain-to-brain communication, i.e., no keyboard, no voice, no screen, no text or
pictures – merely ‘neuronic’ communication (thought transmission) at the speed of light, with
internet speeds reaching terabytes per second, if not more than that. This also means that the
main ‘content’ will be various forms of full-experience VR, fed directly to our brains by
professional content providers – and perhaps (a bit science-fictiony at this stage) from our brains
to other brains as well. The consequences of such a ‘hive mind’ communication are difficult (if
not impossible) to predict, but certainly it will constitute a radical break with past human
society.”
Joaquin Vanschoren, assistant professor of machine learning at Eindhoven University of

Technology, Netherlands, responded, “We will be able to interact with each other and the world’s
information more directly, without going through web interfaces, maybe using a brain-internet
interface. A lot more content will be generated automatically, by AI systems that help us fill in the
holes in our knowledge and make it more easily accessible.”
Frank Kaufmann, president of Filial Projects and founder and director of the Values in Knowledge
Foundation, said, “Virtually nothing from today’s internet will be recognizable 50 years from now.
Connectivity will become ever more ethereal and divorced from devices. Speeds will have
exceeded what can any longer be sensed by the human organism. Storage will seem limitless, as
it will exceed all possible need. Most connectivity will be integrated into the biological organism.
… Tech will enable creative people to create more. It will enable good people to do more good. It
will enable lazy people to be more lazy. It will enable bad people to do more bad. It will enable
family and social people to be closer and more loving. It will enable lonely and isolated people to
become more isolated. It will enable radical advances in all things people do – sports, arts,
medicine, science, literature, nature exploration, etc.”
Karen Oates, director of workforce development for La Casea de Esperanza, commented, “At the
rate at which technology is evolving, the internet as we currently know it and interact with it will
have morphed into something very different. I can see people allowing implants in their bodies so
they can connect to whatever the internet becomes – leveraging it as an auxiliary brain. This also,
however, opens the door for manipulation and potential control of people. Like anything,
technology can be used for good or evil. Much will be dependent on to what extent an individual
is willing to sacrifice independence for comfort, security, etc.”
Several other respondents voiced concerns about this future. A law professor based at a U.S.
university said, “The book ‘Re-Engineering Humanity’ provides a reasonable description of the
slippery, sloped path we’re on and where we seem likely to be heading. The authors’ big concern
is that humans will outsource so much of what matters about being human to supposedly smart
technical systems that the humans will be little more than satiated automatons.”
David J. Krieger, co-director of the Institute for Communication & Leadership in Lucerne,
Switzerland, wrote, “Everything will be ‘personalized’ but not individualized. The European
Western paradigm of the free and autonomous individual will no longer be a major cultural force.
Network collectivism will be the form in which human existence, now no longer ‘humanist’ will
play itself out. There will be no other life than digital life and no one will really have the
opportunity to live offline. And if so, then there will probably be a three-class society consisting
of the cyborgs, the hybrids and the naturals. This will of course generate new forms of social
inequality and conflict.”
Despite the likely drawbacks many respondents see the hybrid future as a strong possibility.
Mike Meyer, a futurist and administrator at Honolulu Community College, commented, “The
world in 50 years is likely to be very difficult to imagine or understand in today’s language. The
options available will be contingent on many layers of both technology and human adaption that
will occur over the next 50 years. This will be true as the steady acceleration of the rate of change
continues based loosely on Moore’s Law leading to true quantum computing. Genetic
engineering combined with nano components that may also be bioelectronic in nature will allow
planetary network communication with implants or, perhaps, full neural lace. The primary
distinction will be between those people with full communication plus memory and sensor
augmentation versus those who choose not to use artificial components in their bodies. Everyone
will use a planetwide network for all communication and process activity whether through
augmentation or very small headbands or other options that are not implanted.”
Ray Schroeder, an associate vice chancellor at the University of Illinois, Springfield, wrote,
“Connected technologies and applications will become much more seamlessly integrated into
people’s lives. Technologies are emerging, such as MIT’s AlterEgo, that point to practical telepathy
in which human thought will directly connect with supercomputers – and through those
computers with other people. This kind of thought-based communication will become ubiquitous
through always-on, omnipresent networks. Personal devices will fade away as direct connectivity
becomes ubiquitous. These advances will enable instant virtual ‘learning’ of new ideas and the
whole range of literature. One will be able to ‘recall’ a novel or a treatise as if one had studied it
for years. Such will be the state of augmented memory. There will be attempts to apply new
rules/laws, but technological capability will most often trump artificial restrictions. This will
further empower people, by the power of their purchases and choice-to-use to set standards of
acceptability and preference.”
David Klann, consultant and software developer at Broadcast Tool & Die, responded, “Further
integration of humans and machines is inevitable. More devices will be implanted in us, and
more of our minds will be ‘implanted’ in devices. The inevitable ‘Singularity’ will result in changes
to humans and will increase the rate of our evolution toward hybrid ‘machines.’ I also believe
that new and modified materials will become ‘smart.’ For instance, new materials will be ‘self-
aware’ and will be able to communicate problems in order to avoid failure. Ultimately, these
materials will become ‘self-healing’ and will be able to harness raw materials to manufacture
replacement parts in situ. All these materials, and the things built with them will participate in
the connected world. We will see continued blurring of the line between ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ life.”
Anonymous respondents predicted:
“Artificial general intelligence and quantum computing available in a future version of the cloud
connected to individual brain augmentation could make us augmented geniuses, inventing our
daily lives in a self-actualization economy as the conscious-technology civilization evolves.”
“There is a probability of technological singularity. So far all the trends lead to it; it is hard to
imagine a future in which this does not happen.”
“Connective symbiosis – human-human, machine-human, human-machine – will continue to
thicken.”
“Implants in humans that continuously connect them to the web will lead to a loss of privacy and
the potential for thought control, decline in autonomy.”
Everyone agrees that the world will be putting AI to work
The technology visionaries surveyed described a much different work environment from the
current one. They say remote work arrangements are likely to be the rule, rather than the
exception, and virtual assistants will handle many of the mundane and unpleasant tasks currently
performed by humans.
Ed Lyell, longtime internet strategist and professor at Adams State University, wrote, “If we can
change the governance of technology to focus on common good growth and not a division of
winner/loser then we can see people having more control over their lives. Imagine that the
tough, hard work, dangerous jobs are done by machines guided by computers and AI. We can see
the prototype of these in how the U.S. is now fighting wars. The shooting is done by a drone
guided by a smart guy/gal working a 9-to-5 job in an air-conditioned office in a nice town.
Garbage could be picked up, sorted, recycled, all by robots with AI. Tedious surgery completed by
robots and teaching via YouTube would leave the humans to the interesting and exciting cases,
not the redoing of same lessons to yet more patients/students. Humans could live well on a 20-
hour work week with many weeks of paid vacation. Having a job/career could become a positive,
not just a necessity. With 24/7 learning and just-in-time capacity, people could change areas or
careers many times with ease whenever they become bored. This positive outcome is possible if
we collectively manage the creation and distribution of the tools and access to the use of new
emerging tools.”
Jim Spohrer, director of the Cognitive OpenTech Group at IBM Research-Almaden, commented,
“Everyone will have hundreds of digital workers working for them. Our cognitive mediators will
know us in some ways better than we know ourselves. Better episodic memories and large
numbers of digital workers will allow expanded entrepreneurship, lifelong learning and focus on
transformation.”
Kyle Rose, principal architect, Akamai Technologies, wrote, “As telepresence and VR become
more than research projects or toys, the already small world will shrink further as remote
collaboration becomes the norm, resulting in major social changes, among them allowing the
recent concentration of expertise in major cities to relax and reducing the relevance of national
borders. Furthermore, deep learning and AI-assisted technologies for software development and
verification, combined with more abstract primitives for executing software in the cloud, will
enable even those not trained as software engineers to precisely describe and solve complex
problems. I strongly suspect there will be other, unpredictable disruptive social changes
analogous to the freer movement of capital enabled by cryptocurrencies in the last decade.”
David Schlangen, a professor of applied computational linguistics at Bielefeld University,

Germany, said, “Physical presence will matter less, as high-bandwidth transmissions will make
telepresence (in medicine, in the workplace, in in-person interactions) more viable.”
Ken Goldberg, distinguished chair in engineering, director of AUTOLAB and CITRIS at the
University of California, Berkeley, said, “I believe the question we’re facing is not ‘When will
machines surpass human intelligence?’ but instead ‘How can humans work together with
machines in new ways?’ Rather than worrying about an impending Singularity, I propose the
concept of Multiplicity: where diverse combinations of people and machines work together to
solve problems and innovate. In analogy with the 1910 High School Movement that was spurred
by advances in farm automation, I propose a ‘Multiplicity Movement’ to evolve the way we learn
to emphasize the uniquely human skills that AI and robots cannot replicate: creativity, curiosity,
imagination, empathy, human communication, diversity and innovation. AI systems can provide
universal access to sophisticated adaptive testing and exercises to discover the unique strengths
of each student and to help each student amplify his or her strengths. AI systems could support
continuous learning for students of all ages and abilities. Rather than discouraging the human
workers of the world with threats of an impending Singularity, let’s focus on Multiplicity where
advances in AI and robots can inspire us to think deeply about the kind of work we really want to
do, how we can change the way we learn and how we might embrace diversity to create myriad
new partnerships.”
Kristin Jenkins, executive director of BioQUEST Curriculum Consortium, said, “Access to

information is enormously powerful, and the internet has provided access to people in a way we
have never before experienced. This means that people can learn new skills (how to patch your
roof or make bread), assess situations and make informed decisions (learn about a political
candidate’s voting record, plan a trip), and teach themselves whatever they want to know from
knowledgeable sources. Information that was once accessed through print materials that were
not available to everyone and often out of date is now much more readily available to many more
people. Ensuring access is another huge issue with internet 2.0/AI. Access to these tools is not
guaranteed even within the U.S. – presumably one of the best places in the world to be wired. In
many cases, access to current technology in developing areas of the world allows populations to
skip expensive intermediate steps and use tools in a way that improves their quality of life.
Ensuring that people all over the world have access to tools that can improve their lives is an
important social justice issue.”
Rich Ling, a professor of media technology at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore,

responded, “In the next 50 years there will be significant changes in the way that we work. The
disruption of that will play through to the way people identify themselves and can also be turned
into political movements. AI is on the point of eliminating a wide variety of jobs and professions
(taxi driver, accountant, law clerk, etc.). At the same time a large portion of our identity often
comes from an idealized sense of our work. Witness the notion of being a cowboy. This is a real
job for a small number of people, but it is an identity for many. In the same way, there is an
identity in being a truck driver, an insurance adjuster, etc. It often does not have the same
panache as the idealized version of being a cowboy, but it’s nonetheless an identity. If that is
taken away from people it can, in the worst case, lead to populist political movements. I
answered that the general trend will be positive, but I expect that it is not a simple path to better
lives through the application of IT. There are many social and eventually political issues that will
be played out.”
Divina Frau-Meigs, professor of media sociology at Sorbonne Nouvelle University, France, and
UNESCO chair for sustainable digital development, responded, “The most important trend to
follow is the way game/play will become the new work. Convergence of virtual reality and
immersive devices will modify the rules determining how we interact with each other and with
knowledge and information in the future. These ‘alternative’ realities will enable more
simulations of situations in real life and will be necessary in decision-making every step of our
daily lives. We will need to be conscious of the distinction between game and play, to allow for
leisure time away from rule-bound game-as-the-new-work. This will be particularly necessary for
environmental issues to be solved creatively.”
Estee Beck, assistant professor at the University of Texas and author of “A Theory of Persuasive
Computer Algorithms for Rhetorical Code Studies,” responded, “Society will shift toward
educating the public on reading and writing code at an accelerated rate. Coding literacy will
become part of K-12 curricula to prepare citizens for both STEM-related careers and consumer-
oriented DIY solutions of tech problems. On the latter, because of the mass coding literacy spread
in primary and secondary schooling, the ‘handyman’ will evolve into a tech tinkerer or handyman
2.0. Already acquainted with basic and intermediate home maintenance of basic lighting,
plumbing and painting, the handyman 2.0 will fix code in home appliances, run software updates
to modify and personalize processes in the home. The handyman 2.0 might run their own server
and develop a self-contained smartphone and security system to protect against internet-related
attacks. For those unable or uninterested in being a handyman 2.0, they can hire general and
specialized contractors from a new industry of handymen 2.0. This industry – with public and
private certifications – will employ hundreds of thousands of laborers and enjoy revenues in the
billions.”
Hume Winzar, associate professor and director of the business analytics undergraduate program
at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, wrote, “Working and study at a distance will be
normalized, so lifestyle options will be wider. We won’t need to live/work/study in a major city to
enjoy the best of what is available. Done right, it will expand opportunity for many, too.”
Barrack Otieno, general manager at the Africa Top-Level Internet Domains Organization, wrote, “I
expect technology to enhance the work environment. The internet will mostly be used to
enhance communication, coordination and collaboration.”
Benjamin Kuipers, a professor of computer science at the University of Michigan, wrote, “In the
post-World War II era, many people believed that American society was essentially benevolent,
providing opportunities for political, economic and social advancement for individuals and
families over decades and generations. This was somewhat true for the majority, but dramatically
untrue for many minorities. We may have the opportunity to provide this societal benevolence
for everyone in our society. The technological, often digital, tools we are creating have the
promise of greatly increasing the resources available in society. While it may be possible to
automate some current jobs, people have an intrinsic need for meaningful work. If we can use
these new resources to support them, many jobs can be created to provide meaningful work for
many people, and to improve the environment for everyone in society. Some examples of such
jobs are child and elder care, and creation and maintenance of green spaces ranging from urban
parks to rural farms to wilderness environments and many others. A national service requirement
for young people gets certain kinds of work done, but also provides training in practical skills and
practical responsibility, and also exposes individuals to the diversity of our society. Technological
change produces resources that allow new things to be done and reduces certain constraints on
what can be done. But we need to learn which goals we should pursue.”
Lane Jennings, a recent retiree who served as managing editor for the World Future Review from
2009 to 2015, wrote, “Entire classes of humans (drivers, construction workers, editors, medical
technicians, etc.) are likely to be replaced by AI systems within the next 50 years. Whether
individual members of such groups feel their lives have been improved or made worse will vary
depending on many factors. Suffice it to say that public support of some kind to give displaced
workers the means to live in relative security and comfort is essential. Moreover, this support
must be provided in a way that preserves self-respect and promotes optimism and ambition. A
world of former workers who perceive themselves as having been prematurely retired while
machines provide the goods and services they once supplied seems to me highly unstable. To be
happy, or at least contented, people need a purpose beyond simply amusing themselves and
passing time pleasantly. One of the major functions of the internet in 2069 may be to facilitate
contact between people with skills who want to work and jobs that still need doing in spite of
high-tech robots and ubiquitous AI.”
Mark Crowley, an assistant professor expert in machine learning and core member of the
Institute for Complexity and Innovation at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, wrote,
“Technology affects people asymmetrically. Diseases will be cured with machine learning, profits
will rise with automation and artists, engineers and scientists will be able to do more with less
time and resources than ever before. However, many people will lose the only jobs they’ve ever
known, and many others will feel alienated and left behind. Will society take steps to adapt its
social standards? Will education adapt to prepare each generation for the reality ahead rather
than focusing on the past? Will we allow people to live, with dignity, their own life, even if rapid
technological changes leave them without a job that we would traditionally call ‘useful’ or
productive? That depends on politics.”
Josh Calder, a partner at the Foresight Alliance, commented, “Changes will be for the better if the
wealth generated by automation is spread equitably, and this will likely require significant
changes to economic systems. If wealth concentration is accelerated by automation, the average
person could be worse off.”
In 2069 the ‘new normal’ will be …

If the future is to change as dramatically and rapidly as many of the survey respondents believe,
the world will see seismic shifts in norms and in what might be considered “normal” life.
Cliff Lynch, director of the Coalition for Networked Information, responded, “Over the next 20 to
30 years I expect to see enormous renegotiation of the social, cultural and political norms
involving the digital environment.”
Alistair Nolan a senior policy analyst in the OECD Directorate for Science, Technology and
Innovation, wrote, “I speculate that individuals’ interaction with digital technologies will become
much more pervasive and intimate than it is already. Digital technology will be used to counter
some of the stresses created by economic development and a digital culture. Digital avatars, for
example, might provide intelligent company for the old and lonely, coaching those subject to
psychological disorders, encouraging and guiding the sedentary to adopt healthier lifestyles, and
so on. But changes and societal stresses brought by digital technologies may require a
fundamental overhaul of the social contract. A new digital social contract will likely be needed,
the specifics of which we cannot be sure now, but the contours of which we see suggested today
in proposals ranging from universal basic income to institutionally mandated time free from
digital distraction. The hope is that political processes allow our social arrangements to adjust at
a pace commensurate with broader technological change, and that dysfunction in political
processes is not aggravated by digital technologies. It has been commented that when
humankind attempts to take astronauts to Mars the primary challenge will not be technological.
Instead, it will be social: namely, the ability of unrelated individuals to live in close confinement
for long periods of time. At the level of entire polities, in a similar way, our primary challenge may
be living together in civil ways, attending to the full range of human needs, while the technology
brings opportunities to carry us forward, or carry us off course.”
Greg Shannon, chief scientist for the CERT Division at Carnegie Mellon University’s Software
Engineering Institute, said, “Pervasive/complete/competing memories –
capture/network/storage tech will allow complete digital records of each life, with fast recall for
discussion, disagreements and manipulation. What will it mean to not have to remember, that
you can recall the video with higher fidelity than one could ever remember? This will disrupt
social norms. Communities specified by degrees of anonymity and other variable social norms.
With pervasive sensing/monitoring, communities can define and enforce norms. From everyone
wears green on April 20 to verbal violence is OK (or not) to which laws are well-defined and must
be followed 100% of the time (what does it mean to really stop at a stop sign?). AI and IT
(information technology) can define, enforce and update norms at scale and quickly…. No one is
perfect and social norms in communities will vary with AI/IT helping ensure/permit the varied
norms. Non-locality of communities. We already see this today with the various groups – mailing
lists, conference calls, website, hashtags, etc. – that define communities that can be very
tight/loose, small/large local/global. This might impact happiness; if everyone physically around
you is a stranger (not in one of your communities), what will that mean for the physiological
aspects of happiness – touch, smell, tastes, complex sounds and sights? At a technical level, the
RF (radio frequency) signature of [an] individual will become increasingly important as the wired
last mile disappears. Social norms will include RF – peaceful or aggressive/harmful. And you
won’t be able to hide it [any] more than you can hide walking down the street.”
Betsy Williams, a researcher at the Center for Digital Society and Data Studies at the University of
Arizona, wrote, “Free internet-connected devices will be available to the poor in exchange for
carrying around a sensor that records traffic speed, environmental quality, detailed usage logs,
and video and audio recordings (depending on state law). There will be secure vote-by-internet
capabilities, through credit card or passport verification, with other secure kiosks available at
public facilities (police stations, libraries, fire stations and post offices, should those continue to
exist in their current form). There will be a movement online to require real-name verification to
comment on more reputable sites; however, this will skew participation tremendously toward
men, and the requirements will be reversed after a woman is assaulted or killed based on what
she typed in a public-interest discussion.”
Pamela Rutledge, director of the Media Psychology Center, responded, “Starting with Generation
Z and going forward, internet and 24/7 real-time connectivity will no longer be viewed as a
‘thing’ independent from daily life, but integral, like electricity. This has profound psychological
implications about what people assume as normal and establishes baseline expectations for
access, response times and personalization of functions and information. Contrary to many
concerns, as technology becomes more sophisticated, it will ultimately support the primary
human drives of social connectedness and agency. As we have seen with social media, first
adoption is noncritical – it is a shiny penny for exploration. Then people start making judgments
about the value-add based on their own goals and technology companies adapt by designing for
more value to the user – we see that now in privacy settings and the concerns about information
quality…. Technology is going to change whether we like it or not – expecting it to be worse for
individuals means that we look for what’s wrong. Expecting it to be better means we look for the
strengths and what works and work toward that goal. Technology gives individuals more control –
a fundamental human need and a prerequisite to participatory citizenship and collective agency.
The danger is that we are so distracted by technology that we forget that digital life is an
extension of the offline world and demands the same critical, moral and ethical thinking.”
Geoff Livingston, author and futurist, commented, “Technology will become a seamless
experience for most people. Only the very poor who cannot afford technology and the very rich
who can choose to separate themselves from it will be free from connectedness. When I consider
the current AI conversation, I often think the real evolution of sentient beings will be a hybrid
connectedness between human and machine. Our very existence and day-to-day experience will
be through an augmented experience that features faster thinking and more ethereal pleasures.
This brings a question of what is human? Since most of us will be living in a machine-enhanced
world, the perspective of human reality will always be in doubt. Most will simply move through
their existence without a thought, able to change and alter it with new software packages and
algorithms, accepting their reality as the new normal. Indeed, perception will become reality.
There will be those who decry the movement forward and wish for yesteryear’s unplugged mind.
The counter movement against the internet of 2070 will be significant, and yet much like today’s
Luddite, it will find itself in the deep minority. For though the cultural implications will be
significant, the internet of 2070 offers the world a much more prosperous and easier life. Most
will choose comfort over independence from devices.”
Meryl Alper, an assistant professor of communication at Northeastern University and a faculty

associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, wrote, “Parents will be inundated
by non-intuitive, AI-sourced information about their children (e.g., their moods, their behaviors)
through the data collected about them in their everyday lives. Parents will face a choice about
knowing too much about every single aspect of what their child does and says (be it with them or
without them) or not knowing all the details – while being aware that someone else (teachers,
doctors, law enforcement) is compiling this information for later determinations of some kind
about their child. Parents will ultimately be encouraged to automate this data-intensive
parenting, but this itself will create more work for parents (and thus more work for parents to
outsource).”
Uta Russmann, professor in the Department of Communication at FHWien der WKW University of
Applied Sciences for Management & Communication, warned, “In 50 years every aspect of our
life will be connected, organized and hence, partly controlled, as technology platform and
applications businesses will take this opportunity. A few global players will dominate the
business; smaller companies (startups) will mostly have a chance in the development sector.
Many institutions, such as libraries, will disappear – there might be one or two libraries that
function as museums to show how it used to be. People who experienced today’s world will
definitely value the benefits and amenities they have through technology (human-machine/AI
collaboration). If technology becomes part of every aspect of our lives we will have to give up
some power and control. People thinking in today’s terms will lose a certain amount of freedom,
independency and control over their lives. People born after 2030 will probably just think these
technologies produced changes that are mostly for the better. It has always been like this –
people have always thought/said ‘in the old days everything was better.’”
Danny Gillane, a netizen from Lafayette, Louisiana, commented, “The content owners will
become the platform companies (Disney, Time Warner, etc.), and the platform companies will
become the content owners (Comcast, Netflix, etc.). In the U.S., we will give up more privacy to
gain more convenience. We will have to choose between paying with our wallets or paying with
our personal information in order to keep up with the Joneses. Collaboration and communication
will become less personal as more of it will be done through virtual reality and through our
devices. The promise of worldwide connection will lessen as Europe places restrictions on tech
companies to protect its citizens’ rights, but the U.S. will pass laws to protect shareholders even
at the expense of its citizens’ rights. Unless the focus of technology innovation moves away from
consumer entertainment and communication products (such as social networks) and more
toward medical and scientific advances, we will see fewer people truly benefiting from the
internet. The money that fuels America’s politics already fuels its legislative efforts, or lack of,
with regard to technology. So, I actually don’t think we’ll see any actual change, unless one
considers for-profit companies having an even larger presence in more parts of our lives more
often and in more ways.”
Justin Reich, executive director of MIT Teaching Systems Lab and research scientist in the MIT
Office of Digital Learning, responded, “The trends toward centralization and monopolization will
persist. The free, open internet that represented a set of decentralized connections between
idiosyncratic actors will be recognized as an aberration in the history of the internet. Today’s
internet giants will probably be the internet giants of 50 years from now. In recent years, they’ve
made substantial progress in curtailing innovation through acquisitions and copying. As the
industry matures, they will add regulatory capture to their skill sets. For many people around the
world, the internet will be a set of narrow portals where they exchange their data for a curtailed
set of communication, information and consumer services.”
Michael R. Nelson, a technology policy expert for a leading network services provider who
worked as a technology policy aide in the Clinton administration, commented, “We will see more
change and disruption in the next 10 years than we have seen in the last 20. If governments and
incumbents allow it, we could see twice as much. All we know about 2069 is that data storage,
network capacity and tools to turn data into knowledge will be basically unlimited and cost
almost nothing. But, we also know that the wisdom needed to use the power of technology will
not be available to everyone. And we also know that political forces will try to create scarcity and
favor some groups over others. Let us hope that the engineers innovate so fast that consumers
have the tools and choices they need to overcome such constraints.”
Guy Levi, chief innovation officer for the Center for Educational Technology, based in Israel,
wrote, “Digital tools will be part of our body inside and remotely, and will assist us in decision-
making constantly, so it will become second nature. Nonetheless, physical feelings will still be
exclusively ‘physical,’ i.e., there will be a significant difference between the ‘sensor-based
feelings’ and real body feelings, so human beings will still have some advantages over technology.
This, I believe, will last forever. Considering this, physical encounters among people will become
more and more important and thus relationships, especially between couples, will prosper. It will
be the return of LOVE.”
No need to give it orders – your digital assistant already knows what you want
Many of these experts expect that – despite some people’s worries over privacy issues – digital
experiences will be far more personalized in 2069. One likely trend: Instead of having to directly
communicate requests to a device, AI-enabled, database-fed digital technologies will anticipate
individuals’ needs and provide customized solutions.
Michael Wollowski, associate professor of computer science and software engineering at Rose-
Hulman Institute of Technology, expert in the Internet of Things, diagrammatic systems and
artificial intelligence, wrote, “Much of our lives will be automated. Better yet, we will be in
control of the degree of automation. Technology will assume the role of a polite personal
assistant who will seamlessly bow in and out. Technology based on learned patterns of behavior
will arrange many things in our lives and suggest additional options.”
Peter Reiner, professor and co-founder of the National Core for Neuroethics at the University of
British Columbia, Canada, commented, “The internet will remain a conduit for information about
us as well as a tool for us to access information about the world. Whilst many commentators
rightly worry about the degree to which apps can know about us today, we are only at the early
stages of corporate and governmental surveillance of our inner lives. In 50 years’ time, apps will
be remarkably more sophisticated in terms of their knowledge about us as agents – our wants
and desires, our objectives and goals. Using that information, they will be able make decisions
that align with our personal goals much better than they can do today, and as this happens they
will become bona fide extensions of our minds – digital (or as seems likely, quantum-based)
information-processing interfaces that are always available and seamlessly integrate with the
human cognitive toolkit. These cognitive prostheses will be so much a part of our everyday lives
that we will barely notice their existence. Our reliance upon them will be both a strength and a
weakness. Our cognitive prowess will substantially expand, but we will feel diminished in their
absence.”
David Zubrow, associate director of empirical research at the Carnegie Mellon Software
Engineering Institute, said, “Networked devices, data collection and information on demand will
become even more ubiquitous. I would hope that better curation of information along with its
provenance occurs. The trend of digital assistants that learn your preferences and habits from all
the devices that you interact with will become integrated with each other and take on a persona.
They may even act on your behalf with a degree of independence in the digital and physical
worlds. As AI advances and becomes more independent and the internet becomes the world in
which people live and work, laws for responsibility and accountability of the actions of AI will
need to be made.”
Daniel Siewiorek, a professor with the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon
University, predicted, “We will all have virtual coaches that learn and grow with us. They will be
in communication with the virtual coaches of others, allowing us to learn from the experience of
others. For example, my grandfather could teach me how to swing a baseball bat through his
virtual coach even though my grandfather passed away before I was born.”
Gary Kreps, distinguished professor of communication and director of the Center for Health and
Risk Communication at George Mason University, wrote, “Future computing systems will be fully
integrated into everyday life, easy to access and use, and adaptable to meeting individual
preferences and needs. These devices will serve as integrated personal assistants that can
intuitively provide users with relevant information and support. There will be no need for typing
in requests, since systems will be voice- and perhaps even thought-activated. These systems will
adapt to user communication styles and competencies, using familiar and easy to understand
messages to users. These messages will be presented both verbally and visually, with the ability
to incorporate vivid examples and relevant interesting stories for users. Information content will
build upon user preferences, experiences and needs. These personal computing systems will
learn about users and adapt to changing user needs, assisting users in accomplishing important
tasks and making important decisions. These systems will also automatically network users to
relevant personal and professional contacts to facilitate communication as desired by users. The
systems will also help users control other forms of technology, such as transportation,
communication, health care, educational, occupational, financial, recreational and commercial
applications. Care must be taken to program these systems to be responsive to user preferences
and needs, easy to use, adaptive to changing conditions and easy for users to control.”
Mike Meyer, futurist and administrator at Honolulu Community College, commented, “It is
becoming clear that, as human numbers increase to 10 billion and beyond in the next 50 years,
diversity will be more and more valuable. The very nature of the technology that will become
part of our bodies … [It] will shape the very nature of our communities and the natural result will
be homogenization of the species. The nature of [the] planet will become predominantly urban
with constant instantaneous communication. We are already well on the way to a planetary
culture based on current metropolitan areas. This is a tremendous benefit allowing the move to
AI-based management following universally defined and expanded rights. The desire will be for
change and difference, innovation and originality to counter the growing sameness. This may,
finally, eliminate the problem of irrational bigotry, racism and xenophobia. But that will lead to
personal augmentation and, probably, genetic engineering to regain diversity under our
individual control. A major challenge that I see is the management of virtual worlds for people
with specific ideas or ideals who wish to and could live in the world as they want it to be. How
will this be handled physically (‘The Matrix’ model) and morally? Living as master of a slave
plantation may be desired by some. Should that be an option with no ‘real’ people involved?
Overall the tremendous expansion of options will be good. But more questions will arise from
this and answers may be difficult.”
Ian Rumbles, a quality-assurance specialist at North Carolina State University, said, “Fifty years
from now the internet will be available to us through us thinking, versus using a keyboard or
speaking. The display of data will be visible only to the user and how that display is shown will be
totally customized for that user. The ability to obtain answers to questions and look up
information in a format that is defined by the user will greatly improve the lives of people.”
More leisure time expected in ‘real life’ and virtual worlds

Could it be true that technology will finally create more free time? Some respondents in this
study expect that the evolution of digital technologies will allow for more leisure activities and
less “work.” Some predict people may choose to live most of their lives in a virtual reality that
lacks the messy authenticity of real life. They also predict that in the widening global media
marketplace of the future individuals will have access to a wider range of entertainment options
than ever before.
Dan Schultz, senior creative technologist at the Internet Archive, said, “The world is about to
have a LOT more time on its hands, a culture-redefining level of newfound time. Governments
will need to figure out how to ensure people are compensated for that time in ways that don’t
correlate to capitalistic value, and people are going to need creative outlets for their free time.
We’re going to need better mental health services; we’re going to need to finally redefine the
public education system to shift away from the 19th century factory model. It will either be a
golden age for invention, leisure, entertainment and civic involvement, or it will be a dystopia of
boredom and unemployment.”
James Gannon, global head of e-compliance for emerging technology, cloud and cybersecurity at
Novartis, responded, “In 50 years machine-to-machine communication will have reduced a lot of
menial decision-making for the average person. Smart-home technology manages the basic
functions of the household, negating the need for many manual labor roles such as cleaners and
gardeners. Many services are now delivered remotely such as telehealth and digital
therapeutics…. Technology and the internet have already dramatically increased the standard of
living for billions of people; this trend will not cease.”
Chao-Lin Liu, a professor at National Chengchi University, Taiwan, commented, “If we can handle
the income and work problems, lives will be easier for most due to automation.”
Paola Perez, vice president of the Internet Society chapter in Venezuela and chair of the LACNIC
Public Policy Forum, responded, “Technology will make everything in our lives. We won’t drive,
we won’t cook. Apps are going to be adapted to all our needs. From the moment we wake up we
are going to have technology that cooks for us, drives for us, works for us and suggests ideas for
our work. Problems are going to be solved. But all our data is going to be known by everybody, so
we won’t have private lives.”
Alex Smith, partner relationship manager at Monster Worldwide, said, “Everything will be
centered around saving us time – giving us back more time in our days.”
A professor of communications said, “Simple, mundane tasks will be taken care of by AI, allowing
more time for creative thinking, arts, music and literature.”
David Wells, the chief financial officer at Netflix at the time of this canvassing, has an idea for
how to fill all of that free time. He predicted, “Continued global connectedness with our
entertainment, music and news will mean global popularity of some media with a backdrop of
local flavor that may be regional and/or hyper local. 3D visual (virtual) rendering will evolve and
become integrated into user interfaces, discovery interfaces along with AI assistants, and will
heavily define learning and entertainment.”
Gabor Melli, senior director of engineering for AI and machine learning for Sony PlayStation,
responded, “By 2070, most people will willingly spend most of their lives in an augmented virtual
reality. The internet and digital life will be extraordinary and partially extraplanetary. Innovations
that will dramatically amplify this trajectory are unsupervised machine learning, fusion power
and the wildcard of quantum computing.”
Valarie Bell, a computational social scientist at the University of North Texas, commented, “While
the gadgets and tools we may have in the future may result in more conveniences, like when
ovens turned into microwaves, we find with technology that we trade quality and uniqueness for
convenience and uniformity. What tastes better and provides a better experience? The
homemade chocolate cake Grandma made from scratch with attention to great ingredients and
to baking the cake until it’s perfectly moist OR the microwaved chocolate-cake-for-one? The
microwave cake takes less than 10 minutes and you simply add water, but Grandma’s cake is not
over-processed, and you taste the real butter, real vanilla, real chocolate instead of powdered
butter flavoring and powdered chocolate substitute. Technology will bring us things faster,
perhaps even cheaper, but not necessarily better.”
Michel Grossetti, a sociologist expert in systems and director of research at CNRS, the French
national science research center, wrote, “The boundaries between private life and work or public
life will continue to blur.”
Social connections, community and collaboration will be improved

Some experts expect that digital advances will lead to better communication among disparate
groups, resulting in stronger interpersonal relationships and positive community development. A
number of respondents said that physical barriers to communication and community building will
mostly disappear over the next half century. They are hopeful that greater connectivity will lead
to better collaboration in response to major world problems, more equitable distributions of
wealth and power and easier access to information and resources.
Tomas Ohlin, longtime professor at Linköping and Stockholm universities in Sweden, predicted,
“AI will exist everywhere. The internet will, after a few decades, be replaced by a more value-
added surface on top of our present system. Its governing will be truly decentralized, with
participation from many. Cultural differences will exist on this surface, with borders that will differ
from the present. However, there will not be as many borders as today; this new information
society is a society with flexible borders. Human beings are friendly, and the world we create
reflects this. Communication and contact between everybody is a fundamental and positive
resource that will lead to fewer conflicts.”
Bryan Alexander, futurist and president of Bryan Anderson Consulting, responded, “I’m convinced
we’ll see individuals learn how to use technologies more effectively, and that collectively we’ll
learn how to reduce harm.”
Charles Zheng, a researcher into machine learning and AI with the U.S. National Institute of
Mental Health, commented, “Life will not qualitatively change much for people in the middle and
upper classes of society. The biggest impact will be to the lower classes, and will mostly be
positive. The increase in information gathering in all levels of society will also improve the
efficiency of social welfare programs. Access to information becomes democratized as cities start
offering free, basic Wi-Fi and the government hosts AI educational programs which can teach
young people how to find jobs and access public resources. The increase in networking also
makes … social nonprofits more effective at helping the disadvantaged. Government
accountability is also improved now that people at all levels of society can leave reviews about
government services online.”
Craig Mathias, principal at Farpoint Group, an advisory firm specializing in wireless networking
and mobile computing, commented, “Civilization itself centers on and thus depends upon
communication of all forms. The more we communicate, the better the opportunities for peace
and prosperity on a global basis. It would be difficult to imagine communications without the
internet, now and especially in the future.”
Gene Crick, director of the Metropolitan Austin Interactive Network and longtime U.S.
community telecommunications expert, wrote, “Genuine universal technology access has
become a vital issue for every community. AI/IT can make powerful tools, resources and
opportunities available to anyone interested. To help rhetoric become reality, we could adopt and
insist on a few fundamental principles, including standards for openness and accountability.
How? Just a notion but perhaps a modernized version of the National Science Foundation
internet administration transfer two decades ago. Though the outcome was far from pretty, those
who participated felt we got the job done. Today’s improved communications tools could make
possible a much simpler, more widespread ‘grassroots’ discussion and decision process.”
Jean-Daniel Fekete, researcher in information visualization, visual analytics and human-computer

interaction at INRIA, France, said, “The connected world will become even more integrated in our
life and appliances, as a virtual extension of our physical world. Physical location [will] become
less important, blurring the notion of workplace, home, vacation, traveling. In that world,
humans will have easy access to mostly all intellectual resources, but companies will be fighting
for human attention. Advertising is already too efficient, diverting attention already. Mitigating
these threats will become essential to maintain a healthy humanity.”
Liz Rykert, president at Meta Strategies, a consultancy that works with technology and complex
organizational change, responded, “We will see more and more integration of tools that support
accountability. An early example of this is the use of body cams by police. The internet will let us
both monitor and share data and images about what is happening, whether it is a devastating
impact of climate change or an eventful incident of racism. Continued access to tools of
accountability and access to knowledge and collaborative opportunities will support people to be
both bold and collaborative as they seek new solutions. The internet will be the base to support
these efforts as well as the platform that will continue to serve as the means for how we will
work together to respond to problems either urgent (like a flood or fire) or longer-term like
solving problems like affordable housing.”
Matt Belge, founder and president of Vision & Logic, said, “Humanity has always strived to be
connected to other humans, and writing, publishing, art and education were all efforts to serve
this desire. This desire is so deeply seated, this desire for connection, that it will drive everything
we do. Privacy will become less of a concern and transparency will become more of the norm in
the next 50 years. Therefore, I expect technology to enable deeper and more personal
connections with fewer secrets and greater openness. Specifically, AI will help people with like
interests work together, form deeper relationships and collaborate on advancing our entire
species. I believe humans are always striving for more and more connection with other humans
and technology is evolving in ways to facilitated this.”
Sam Ladner, a former UX researcher for Amazon and Microsoft, now an adjunct professor at
Ontario College of Art & Design, wrote, “We will continue to see a melding of digital and analog
‘selves,’ in which humans will now consider their digital experiences less and less divorced from
their face-to-face experiences. Face-to-face social connections will become ever more precious,
and ever more elusive. Having an ‘in real life’ relationship will be a commodity to be exploited
and a challenge to keep. Physical experiences will increasingly be infused with digital
‘backchannel’ experiences, such as an ongoing digital conversation either in text, images or VR,
while the physical event carries on. Likewise, IRL (in real-life) events will become even more
exclusive, expensive and a source of cultural capital. Isolated people will fail to see their isolation
before it reaches a desperate point, because collectively, we will fail to see physical connections
as a key ingredient to ward off loneliness. Loneliness will take on a new meaning; digital friends
will assist some isolated people, but loneliness will focus more on lack of human touch, and face-
to-face eye contact. New medical disorders will emerge, based on this social withdrawal, and
given the aging demographic, a public policy crisis will overwhelm nation-states’ budgets and
capabilities. Lonely, aging, physically infirm people may find relief in online forums of all sorts, but
we will be surprised to learn what a total absence of IRL interaction will yield.”
Peggy Lahammer, director of health/life sciences at Robins Kaplan LLP and legal market analyst,
commented, “Historically access to natural resources, with limited intelligence on how to best
use those resources, provided the means to survive and prosper. As we continue to become more
specialized in our expertise and less skilled in many tasks required to survive, we are more
dependent on others with specialized talents. I believe the internet and a connected world have
fueled this transformation and will continue to do so in the next 50 years. The internet will
continue to connect people around the globe and cause instability in areas where people have
limited resources, information or specialized skills necessary to thrive.”
Bert Huang, an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech
focused on machine learning, wrote, “I believe the internet can meet the promise of helping
people connect to all of humanity. The main concern I see with the internet is that it plays
counter to human intuitions about scale. When humans see thousands of like-minded individuals
on the internet, it is too easy to believe that those thousands of people represent all of humanity.
One promise of the internet is that it would allow people to interact with, and learn from,
individuals with widely different backgrounds, unifying the human species in way that was
previously impossible. Unfortunately, the more recent effect has apparently been that people are
further entrenched in their own narrow views because they are surrounded on the internet with
inconceivably large numbers of people sharing their own views. These large numbers make it
difficult for people to fathom that other valid views exist. I believe technology can and will help
alleviate this problem.”
A technical information science professional commented, “The daily living ‘operations’ will
change drastically from today – how we work, how we take care of family, how we ‘commute’
from place to place, how we entertain and so on. However, the fundamental of living, creating
and maintaining meaningful relationships with others will be more dominant focus of our lives,
and those concerns and efforts will not change.”
Several of the expert respondents who said they believe humanity will be better off in the future
thanks to digital life said that in 50 years individuals will have greater autonomy and more control
over their personal data.
Eileen Donahoe, executive director of the Global Digital Policy Incubator at Stanford University,
commented, “I envision a dramatic change in terms of how we think about people’s ownership
and control of their own data. People’s data will be seen as a valuable commodity and platforms
will arise to facilitate data sovereignty for individuals. If we move toward development and
deployment of platforms and systems that allow individuals autonomy to choose when and
where they exchange their data for goods and services, this will constitute an important positive
step toward wider distribution of the benefits of a data-driven society.”
Greg Lloyd, president and co-founder at Traction Software, responded, “The next 50 years will
see performance of hardware, storage and bandwidth increase and cost decrease at a rate no
less than the past 50 years. This means that the resources available to any person – at the cost of
a current smartphone and network subscription – will be close to the resources supporting a
Google regional center. This will turn the advertising supported and privacy invasive economic
model of the current internet on its head, making it possible for anyone to afford dedicated,
private and secure resources to support a Prospero and Ariel-like world of certified and secure
services. That people agreed to grant access to their most private resources and actions to
platform companies in order to support use of subsidized internet services will become as oddly
amusing as the fact that people once earned their living as flagpole sitters. Your smartphone and
its personal AI services will be exactly that: your property, which you pay for and use with
confidence. When you use certified agents or services, you’ll have choices ranging from free
(routine commerce, public library or government services) to fabulously expensive (the best legal
minds, most famous pop stars, bespoke design and manufacturing of any artifacts, membership
in the most exclusive ‘places’). In all cases your personal smartphone (or whatever it turns into)
will help you negotiate enforceable contracts for these services, monitor performance and
provide evidence any case of dispute. Think Apple with a smart lawyer, accountant, friend and
adviser in your smartphone, not Facebook becoming Silicon Valley’s version of Terry Gilliam’s
‘Brazil.’”
James Scofield O’Rourke, a professor of management at the University of Notre Dame

specializing in reputation management, commented, “I foresee two large applications of digital
connections such as the internet over the next half century. First, I see access to information,
processes and expertise that would either be delayed or inaccessible today. Second, I see a much
larger degree of autonomy for the individual. This could mean everything from driverless trucks,
automobiles and other vehicles to individual control over our immediate environment, our assets
and possessions, and our ability to choose. In exchange, of course, the notion of privacy will
virtually disappear.”
R “Ray” Wang, founder and principal analyst at Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research, said,
“The new internet can also be a place where we decentralize human rights, enabling an
individual to protect their data privacy and stay free. Keep in mind privacy is not dead. It’s up to
us as a society to enforce these human rights.”
Susan Aaronson, a research professor of international affairs and cross-disciplinary fellow at

George Washington University, responded, “I admit to being a techno optimist. I believe that true
entrepreneurs ‘see’ areas/functions that need improvements and will utilize technologies in ways
that make it easier for, as an example, the blind to see.”
5. Leading concerns about the future of digital life

The comments in the following section are a sharp contrast to the utopian visions of equity and
advancement described above. Whereas some see the future of the internet as a great equalizer,
others warn that technology can just as easily be used for control and exploitation.
Inequality on the rise: The growing divide between haves and have-nots
The majority of respondents to this study are in agreement that digital life is likely to improve the
lives of people at the top of the socioeconomic ladder over the next few decades. A large share of
those who predicted that internet use will produce change for the worse for most individuals
over the next 50 years expressed concerns that an extension of current trends will lead to a
widening economic divide that leaves the majority in the dust of the privileged class.
Johanna Drucker, professor of digital humanities in the department of information studies at the
University of California, Los Angeles, said, “The question ignores the growing and disastrous
division between poor, disenfranchised populations and wealthy, privileged ones. There may be
huge improvements in some people’s lives and negative impacts for many, many more –
pollution, toxins from waste generated by electronic media, deregulation of labor conditions for
workers in the high-tech industries, deterioration of support systems and social infrastructure
and so on.”
Michael Kleeman, a senior fellow at the University of California, San Diego, and board member at
the Institute for the Future, wrote, “Because of the economic disparity the new technologies will
be used with those with access to more resources, financial and technical. The digital divide will
not be one of access but of security, privacy and autonomy.”
Jillian C. York, director of international freedom of expression for the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, commented, “I don’t believe that technology will be a net negative; rather, I worry
and suspect that it will make life better for some of us but worse for others. Much of the
technology coming out of Silicon Valley aims to serve elites, when we should be aiming toward
equality for all.”
Zoetanya Sujon, a senior lecturer specializing in digital culture at University of Arts London,
commented, “In my view, and drawing from the growth of global big tech companies and
decreased pluralization of global platforms, I believe that in 50 years, the economic and cultural
divides between rich and poor, developed and developing nations, technologically advanced and
disadvantaged will continue to grow. These divides are serious and already take place within
urban centers, between developing and developed nations, and between rural and urban areas,
to name only a few sites of division. Thus, for those with capital, including access to new
technologies and the literacies that come with them, life will likely involve wearable and
ubiquitous computing based on internet and platformed communication…. These kinds of tools
will likely be available only to those with the economic and cultural capital to access them.”
John Laudun, a respondent who provided no identifying details, commented, “The next 50 years
is going to be great for a percentage of humans smaller than the percentage of humans for whom
things will probably get worse. We continue to forget that 75% of the world’s populations are
effectively peasants, individuals (living in families, groups, etc.) who engage in subsistence
agriculture. Too often when we project into the future we imagine ourselves, people like us or
the people we think we see. But there are hosts of groups that we do not see. How will
technological advances, and their various implementations, help or hurt them? No one, for
example, could have predicted the explosion in micro-transactions connecting villagers to one
another and a wider world thanks to the cellphone.”
Christopher Leslie, lecturer in media, science and technology studies at South China University of
Technology, wrote, “There will be many opportunities for consumers and entrepreneurs in the
internet of the future, but the technology will mostly enhance the businesses and countries that
already are ahead. It seems likely that a different kind of networking technology, perhaps truly
decentralized and certainly separated from telecommunications companies, will be developed to
challenge the inequalities fostered by today’s use of internet technology. The general trend in the
technological society to this point has been that more people have received more benefits to
their lives. This is in terms of any meaningful metric: health care, education, political
participation, sense of self. This will continue into the next 50 years. However, the inequalities
perpetrated by the modern use of digital technology will mean that not all people will benefit.
The overall trend will be positive, but some ways of life and some categories of people will suffer
a detriment that may be extreme.”
John Willinsky, professor and director of the Public Knowledge Project at Stanford Graduate
School of Education, explained why he selected the automated survey response that digital life
will be mostly beneficial for most individuals’ lives over the next few decades: “I say ‘mostly for
the better’ as both praise and critique, because the ‘mostly’ speaks to the continuing inequities
in the distribution of the ‘better,’ and – while ‘mostly’ suggests a majority of benefits – it will take
a great deal of concern and effort to ensure that that those benefits are distributed with some
lesser degree of inequality than previously to more people and, by the same token, more people
need to participate in the processes behind that distribution.”
Fernando Barrio, director of the law program at the Universidad Nacional de Rio Negro,
Argentina, commented, “The ubiquitous-tech society will imply a better, more enjoyable life for
those being part of it. Wearable technology, tech implants, AI-medicine, autonomous robot
workers and companions and many other coming technologies will allow humans to reach new
limits of what to do and expect. However, the question is, with an ever-increasing income
concentration at global scale in almost every country, how many members of the society will be
able to be part of the enjoyment of that ubiquitous, hyper-connected, AI-tech society?”
James Scofield O’Rourke, a professor of management at the University of Notre Dame,

commented, “People will be ‘mostly better off’ in 50 years’ time, largely because of our ability to
apply things we already know, i.e., the decoding of the human genome, our understanding of the
fragility of our planetary environment and more. The singular exception will be that group of
people who have no assets, no education, no opportunity, and as a result, no hope. They will be
reduced to dependence on the kindness of neighbors, strangers and the government.”
Elizabeth Feinler, the original manager of the ARPANET Network Information Center and an
Internet Hall of Fame member, said, “As the internet matures, I hope the big guys will remember
the little guys. As a pioneer, I remember when the Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brins
and countless other famous and successful entrepreneurs were working out of garages or dorm
rooms, often penniless but with a lot of perseverance behind a great idea. Leave room for the
next little guy – the one who comes up with a great pair of socks, or produces lovely artwork, or
sells that gizmo you can’t live without for $19.95, or develops a security system that works, or
cures cancer or Alzheimer’s – to hang their shingles on the internet too. True, one of them may
challenge your greatness – it’s the American way – but don’t crowd them out. Just make your
own service, product or idea better, and enjoy the challenge.”
Michael Veale, co-author of “Fairness and Accountability Designs Needs for Algorithmic Support
in High-Stakes Public Sector Decision-Making” and a technology policy researcher at University
College London, responded, “Technological change will improve some of the lowest standards of
living in the world today, but beyond a certain point (e.g., provision of basic needs), it is unclear
who will benefit. It is likely that technological change will force countries to reconsider how they
measure welfare, progress and societal benefit, and this is likely to differ strongly across different
countries and cultures.”
Ryan Sweeney, director of analytics at Ignite Social Media, commented, “Technology has the
potential to further divide humans on a class level. Those who can afford the technology will have
significant benefits from wealth-maintenance to extension of life. Those who cannot afford the
technology will likely remain disconnected or will not receive the same level of service as those
who can.”
Ian O’Byrne, an assistant professor at the College of Charleston whose focus is literacy and
technology, said, “The main challenge is whether or not we have the social, political and
educational imagination to adapt and effectively use these technologies. If we do not (and history
has shown this again and again), then a relative few will be able to leverage these new powers
and tools, while the remainder may be worse off for it.”
A policy director with the European Commission wrote, “Millions of people in the world still do
not have access to clean water, education, clean energy, fast and cheap communication and the
health and welfare benefits that are associated with that (not to mention economic growth and
job potential).”
Denise N. Rall, a professor of arts and social sciences at Southern Cross University, Australia,
responded, “It is more likely that some climax will come, in a semi-apocalyptic scenario. The
world’s resources cannot continue to support ‘life as we know it.’ If people continue to pursue
digital realities over real-life realities – that is, too many people to feed and not enough resources
to do so, plus the ever-widening gap between rich and poor – any kind of internet-based
interactions will come under threat as our physical environment continues to deteriorate around
us. Generally, technology has made things better for the ‘haves’ and rarely, with a few positives,
such as the Grameen Bank, for the multitude of poor. Over 1 billion people live on less than $1
U.S. per day, and between 20 [million] and 50 million people are housed in refugee camps,
without hope of permanent homes. Until these trends can be reversed, internet-based
technologies will become secondary to overwhelming necessities of maintaining life for those on
this planet. I cannot see any technological solution to this issue, as the wealthy may have
increased digital access and employ digital servants, but this will not improve conditions overall.
In Australia, we are suffering again from prolonged drought, and the simple fact of growing food
is becoming precarious in many parts of the world, while population continues to climb. There
will be significant benefits from technology for the wealthy, and significant drawbacks to the
poor. Therefore, saying ‘each individual’ is a meaningless parameter for this question. Some
percentage (1% to 10%) will be immeasurably richer in their employment of technological
solutions, the vast majority will not.”
Peter Asaro, a professor at The New School and philosopher of sci-tech and media who examines
artificial intelligence and robotics, commented, “The penetration of the internet deeper into the
physical and social world will benefit some greatly, many to some degree and most little or
negatively. Most of the benefits will go those who have already benefited from the internet.
Some benefits will be derived from aggregating and analyzing the collected data, but few people
will see the connection.”
Joshua Loftus, assistant professor of information, operations and management sciences at New
York University and co-author of “Counterfactual Fairness in Machine Learning,” commented, “I
expect inequality to continue growing in each new dimension. For many in the world it will be a
long and drawn-out apocalypse. For others it will be an augmented reality wonderland of
hyperstimuli and consumption. It will be better for some and worse for others. For non-humans,
for example, mass extinction will probably accelerate.”
Simeon Yates, director of the Centre for Digital Humanities and Social Science at the University of
Liverpool, said, “I sadly believe that we will see a world of digital haves and have-nots – where
the majority have access but utilize a limited set of services (as is the case with written literacy).”
An associate professor of sociology at a major university in Japan responded, “The digital divide
will become a more serious problem. Most tech companies will make apps and digital tools for
people who easily utilize internet and digital devices and also for English users. This creates an
illusion of ubiquitous internet, but the infrastructure will tend to be made for only those people.
This could create huge social problems.”
A program director for technology at a U.S. Ivy League school said, “Adoption of technology will
be uneven, and the rich will get richer. Surveillance technology will keep the masses from
organizing for social and political movements. The rich will get richer.”
Life will not be better for most individuals if current trends expand, extend
A number of respondents expressed concerns over the power of large technology companies, the
rise of platforms that offer services in exchange for data and marketing dollars, the potential for
growing lack of human agency in the algorithm age, the potential loss of jobs as humans are
replaced in workplaces, and other worries over emerging potential negatives of digital life.
Amy Webb, founder of the Future Today Institute and professor of strategic foresight at New York
University, commented, “In 2018, there are nine companies (which I call the Big 9) that control
the future of humanity, because they are building the future of artificial intelligence. Over the
next five decades, we will see widespread consolidation in the fields of AI and digital platforms.
We’ll trade convenience for choice and find that we have far fewer options for everything, from
how fast to drive in our cars to which restaurants we’ll choose for dinner. Our professional and
personal lives will be tethered to a provider – likely Amazon or Google – which will maintain and
run our smart homes, hospitals, schools, city infrastructure and offices. We will probably see a
vast new digital divide: The wealthiest among us will have the privilege to remain anonymous if
they choose, while everyone else will submit to continual surveillance for marketing and business
intelligence. Importantly, during the next five decades, America will have fallen far behind China,
primarily because of China’s long-term, comprehensive AI strategy and its integration into other
state-level initiatives. In the U.S. commercial interests are what propel AI, platforms and digital
media. The interests of for-profit companies don’t necessarily align with the best interests of
democracy, our country or humanity. With significant investment in these fields, there is
tremendous pressure to generate commercial products and services, and the speed required
doesn’t leave room to ask critical questions about a technology’s impact on individuals,
communities or our society. If we do not change the developmental track of AI in the present, the
probability of negative scenarios will increase during the next 50 years. Collectively, we fetishize
the future. Few are actively mapping longer-term outcomes, and that is a big mistake.”
Anita Salem, systems research and design principal at SalemSystems, wrote, “Without a
concerted effort to design these new systems ethically and responsibly with a goal of improving
the human condition, we will see a world of increasing power disparity with capitalism and
corporations at the top. Worldwide, we already see a rise in authoritarianism, a weakening of
democracy and the dominance of transnational corporations. In the United States, we are also
seeing a shift in demographics and economics that looks to further weaken democratic ideals of
freedom (but not for people of color), identity (a corporation has human rights) and free speech
(journalists are the enemy of the people).”
Roland Benedikter, co-director of the Center for Advanced Studies at Eurac Research Bozen,
South Tyrol, Italy, responded, “The overall problem is democracy. The internet as we know it has
been invented by and within open societies. If there will be a multipolar global order in the full
sense, it might be partially nondemocratic, thus lowering basic rights and opportunities as
compared to now.”
Simeon Yates, director of the Centre for Digital Humanities and Social Science at the University of
Liverpool, said, “I see a much greater commercial role in the digital sphere unless net neutrality
can be enforced. As more of the internet is served up through walled garden/gated community
platforms and apps – digital places whose access is commercially or organizationally constrained
– there are inherent threats to open society and democracy. This is ironically the opposite of the
hopes of the internet’s founders and first users. If we want to see an internet for all – for the
many, not the few – we need to realize that this will need regulation and policy. I see the internet
becoming ever more part of politics and policy on many fronts therefore.”
Jillian C. York, director of international freedom of expression for the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, commented, “I expect to see the world’s platform companies break up, and a more
diverse array of platforms to enter the market. This may lead to more silos, but it could also
create safer spaces for communication for various communities…. As for laws, it remains to be
seen – but I worry that if our democracy continues down the road it’s on, the internet will suffer.”
Danny O’Brien, international director for a nonprofit digital rights group, commented, “My hope
will be that these tools will be at the control of individual users, not hidden or concentrated in
smaller, more powerful groups.”
Kenneth Cukier, author and data editor for The Economist, commented, “These tools in the hands
of the populists and authoritarians of 2018, in 50 years’ time, mean that if safeguards are
meagre, a surveillance state is possible. Freedom might be winnowed even if most people feel
better off. This could be a horrible irony.”
Andrian Kreye, a journalist and documentary filmmaker based in Germany, said, “Current
conditions will solidify monopoly capitalism, making it harder and harder for users to escape the
grip of the grid and for newcomers to break into the business. The internet as we know it in 2019
is the basic structure for a world based on an AI-driven infrastructure…. User interfaces will be
speech- and thought-based, turning users even more into nodes of an ever-expanding network.
For most people, these technological advances will increase convenience and ease of use. For
corporations using networked AI this will mean a wealth of data and constant contact with a
consumer base that can be steered and nudged with increasing ease.”
Jonathan Taplin, director emeritus at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg

Innovation Lab, wrote, “At the very moment when the bottom-up networked revolution is
affording us the opportunity to disperse power closer to the people, both our politics and our
business are concentrating power in fewer hands. We can change this, but we need to act now.”
Brian Harvey, lecturer on the social implications of computer technology at the University of
California, Berkeley, said, “Just in this past year, there has been a big increase in popular
understanding of who profits from social media technology. If that new understanding leads to
rebellion, perhaps the internet can return to the anarchist utopia that was first envisioned. But if
it fizzles out, people will still be bought and sold by social media.”
Peter Levine, associate dean for research and professor of public affairs at Tufts University, wrote,
“Right now, the internet seems to be eroding journalism as a profession, giving a few big
companies and governments (like China’s) more social control, and balkanizing citizens. Those
trends may continue, or they may provoke a civic backlash that yields a better internet.”
Mauro D. Ríos, an adviser to the eGovernment Agency of Uruguay and director of the Uruguayan
Internet Society chapter, responded, “The internet will reach very advanced technological
development but will lose freedom due to economic and political interests over the network. It is
possible that the international community will develop a parallel network or establish technical
environments on the internet that are beyond the control of governments or organizations.”
Christine Boese, digital strategies professional, commented, “Most algorithms [now being] used
are shortsighted, flawed and reductive, but so ‘black box’ that no one has the expertise to check
the work! There is enough tech available for humans to do destructive things, including
destroying their own technological infrastructure. There are a number of bad actors on the
human stage with outsize resources and ill intent, in this new Gilded Age created, not by
technology, but by changes in government policies. Note the number of super-rich people
building elaborate bunkers and compounds for themselves and their ‘servants’ if you doubt
where the hoarded wealth of this planet believes the future is heading. We are living out a
nightmare as analyzed by Jared Diamond, more resembling Western Europe’s ‘Dark Ages’ of
feudal castles, keeps and moats. With a vanishing middle class and extreme polarization of
wealth and poverty, the super-rich have no intention of investing in a networked infrastructure
that serves anyone but themselves.”
A professor of computer science expert in systems at a major U.S. technological university wrote,
“On the one hand, the future technological changes will lead to positive societal changes, if the
political power in control of knowledge is benevolent and progressive. On the other hand, if the
political power is repressive (e.g., the Orwellian vision described in his book ‘1984’), then the
technological changes will result in significant negative changes, possibly a dystopian society. In
other words, technological changes are enablers that can be used for good or for evil. The
question of whether they will better or will worsen an individual’s life is not a technological
question, but a political one, of how technological advances will be used. My hope is that the
political forces will evolve toward bettering individual lives.”
Ramon Lopez de Mantaras, director of the Spanish National Research Council’s Artificial
Intelligence Research Institute, said, “Unfortunately, with the arrival of the internet we did not
only open a box that contains good and positive things. We opened a box that is causing lots of
problems. We are living in an accelerated pace that leaves us less and less time for reflection. We
are on a train running at very high speed that is taking us nobody knows where. Are we happier
now than 30 years ago? I do not think so! And when one reads about the social credit initiative in
China one should be really afraid. In summary, there will be more stress due to living an
accelerated life and real threats to our freedom and privacy.”
Mike O’Connor, a retired technologist who worked at ICANN and on national broadband issues,
commented, “I’m deeply pessimistic about the future of the planet in general and digital life in
specific. The undercurrent of the present day pits earnest volunteers (like me) against ever more
sophisticated and well-funded corporations and governments. I believe that 2050 will find us in a
dystopian environmental nightmare in which the internet I love has become a devastatingly
powerful tool of suppression and mind control. The next 50 years will see the end of the
Enlightenment and the Renaissance and the descent back into a much more authoritarian era.
Techniques being beta tested in current politics (e.g., Russian meddling, Brexit, Trump) will be
viewed as unsophisticated trial runs of control technologies built by the very best minds – people
who are well compensated for their efforts. While I’m a fan of ‘plucky opponents,’ I don’t believe
the forces of good stand a chance against the gathering intellectual and ethical darkness.”
“Bill Gates often points out that by any statistical metric you can define, global quality of life and
also quality of life in the Western world have risen enormously for many decades now. I see no
reason for this to change in the 2050 time period, with one major exception: Some countries,
notably China, seem to be viewing the internet as a massive technology for spying on their own
population and on much of the rest of the world. Russia seems to view the internet as a
playground for disruption. North Korea has used it to extort money and to harass their enemies.
So I do worry that research on strong ways to protect security and privacy, and to protect against
intrusion, needs a great deal of additional emphasis and investment, to enable the bright future
Bill Gates sees and also to protect against this sort of harassment and meddling.”
An engineer and chief operating officer for a project automating code said, “The internet will
become a highly regulated and monitored form of communication with its main aim to promote
consumerism. People’s use of it in seeming information will be mined to an intimidating extent,
putting severe limitations of personal freedoms. People wanting social change, which will mean
equity and justice will withdraw from electronic communications. The use of encoding will
eventually be made illegal except for those with sociopolitical power.”
An expert in algorithms and bias and assistant professor artificial intelligence at a major European
university wrote, “At some moment the question of who owns or controls the algorithms will
become the prime question for humanity, and at the moment algorithms will become
uncontrollable by humans we will face a whole lot of other questions. Whether that will happen
in the next 50 years or earlier, or later, who knows? But, that there is this trend of algorithms
replacing/controlling any interaction between humans and the world (and other humans) is
undeniable and already happening: Facebook controls much of our social communication, Google
manages our lives and information consumption, Twitter mediates our chit-chat, and with the
rise of modern smartphones the control of visual information (e.g. Google Lens) is coming. And
this is just the beginning. Algorithms will take more control over our lives (health, music
preferences, job choices, satisfaction, etc.) and the world (markets, cities, deployment of
resources and much more).”
One of the world’s foremost experts in the sociology of human-technology interaction said, “I
fear not only an integration but surveillance so that there is a chill on political and social
expression. Already you see the start of this kind of regime in China. Social control in exchange
for convenience is what I mostly fear.”
What’s going to happen if humans become cyborgs or AI gets smarter than us?
A share of respondents reflected on the potential dark side of recent innovations – a world in
which neural implants help connect people’s brains to the internet – and shared concerns about
the prospects of technology moving toward and beyond human-level artificial intelligence.
Steven Thompson, an author and editor of “Androids, Cyborgs, and Robots in Contemporary
Culture and Society,” wrote, “I expect a dystopia to rise out of the consequences of the internet
appliance moving into the human body. That is a game-changer from economies to personal
liberties and everything in between…. [O]nce the internet in inside you, and that’s prior to 2030
even, you are no longer strictly human, so all of the necessary structures for sustainment of you
as the creature will change the future for mankind as a species…. [I fear] a sentient internet.”
Frank Tipler, a mathematical physicist at Tulane University, commented, “We may see human-
level AI within 50 years. Once the human level is reached, AI will automatically take off to
superhuman levels. Humans will cease to be the dominant life form in the universe. If humans
accept their loss of being the dominant life form, then AI technology can raise human standards
of living. If humans join AIs as downloads, this will also be good. But if humans decide to make
war or enslave the AIs, it will be very bad. I’m optimistic, hence my answer that internet
evolution over the next 50 years will be mostly positive in individuals’ lives.”
Erik Huesca, president of the Knowledge and Digital Culture Foundation, based in Mexico City,
said, “The greatest point of tension between humans and intelligent entities (not necessarily
robots) will be the values of our current society, privacy and respect for democracy and the
diversity of communities and cultures. If systems whose objective is efficiency interact in the
social field with humans, there can be seeds for the type of totalitarianism that we are seeing
today. The idea of the individual in societies highly linked by networks can disappear.
Technologies will be aimed at development of superhumans with genetic modification. (It is
cheaper to modify an organism than to produce entities from other materials.) The values of
human life will change. The new sciences of life will be the key point of knowledge development.”
Frank Feather, futurist and consultant with StratEDGY, commented, “Thinking ahead 50 years, it is
highly likely that DigiTransHumanoids, who will replace humans as a species, will be able to
network and communicate directly with each other on a brain-to-brain basis, via the cosmic
wavelengths that carry today’s platforms. As such, no platforms will be needed. There may well
be a Google-like cosmic platform that prevails if Google itself transforms itself into that platform.
We need to understand that each and every technology is an extension of the human species and
its abilities – abilities that are vastly underdeveloped. DigiTransHumans will be vastly more
advanced in our next evolution, and they will unify this planet and reach out into the cosmos
from where they first originated.”
Michael Dyer, an emeritus professor of computer science at the University of California, Los
Angeles, commented, “One of the greatest existential threats to humanity will be, not AI, but
General Artificial Intelligence (GAI). Our humanity is based in our bodies, not our minds (when
comparing ourselves to synthetic entities with similar or greater mental capabilities). Synthetic
GAI entities will not be born; they will not grow from children into adults; they will not grow old
and die. They will not urinate or defecate. They will not have sex. Change the embodiment of
mind and you change what it means to be human. GONE would be the following: Disney movies
(since no children), romantic novels (since no sex) and all experiences based on bodily desires
(recharge batteries vs. good meal at a restaurant). If GAI is allowed then elimination of humanity
will occur, either via general spread of GAI entities or by development of a single, super-
intelligence GAI.”
Alexey Turchin, existential risks researcher at Foundation Science for Life Extension, responded,
“If there will be life on Earth at all, that is assuming a positive outcome, we will live in the world
dominated by global benevolent superintelligence, where there will be no border between VR, AI
and individual minds of fleshy humans and uploads.”
Anita Salem, research and design principal at SalemSystems, shared a dystopian post-human
scenario, writing, “In 50 years, digital tools, if used at all, will be used for entertainment only.
Video and chat apps will be created by the corporate powers to shape opinions and behaviors of
the masses and will be widely and publicly displayed. The Dark Web will be alive as a black
market and revolutionary system used by the outcasts. Organic/chemical communication systems
will be used by corporations for real work and they will form the underlying structure of
computing systems. They will be embedded in everything, including humans. This will be the
‘post-human’ era, where the human/machine interface is embedded at birth, invisible and
pervasive.”
What if having less work leads to the opposite of the ideal ‘life of leisure’?
A share of respondents shared thoughts about a world with fewer jobs for humans.
Mark Maben, a general manager at Seton Hall University, wrote, “Right now, we are ill-prepared
to manage how artificial intelligence will disrupt the nature of work across the globe, both
emotionally and institutionally. Humanity has to plan immediately for the loss of literally billions
of jobs around the world as AI and automation replace people in all types of work. This means
governments must step up to provide for displaced workers through benefits like a universal
basic income, health care, retirement security AND guiding people to accept a new definition for
what it means to perform meaningful work. Parenting, volunteering, lifelong learning, mentoring,
leisure, artistic creation and other pursuits must be raised in stature and acceptance. But the
response to economic disruption so far has been nationalism, authoritarian, scapegoating,
violence against ‘the other’ and denial of what’s to come. While I believe in the potential for
technological progress to improve our lives, I lack faith in our ability to successfully manage that
progress for social good. As E.O. Wilson wrote, ‘We have created a “Star Wars” civilization, with
Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology.’ That’s a dangerous
combination, one that presents a real risk for individuals.”
Justin Amyx, a technician with Comcast, said, “It can be potentially catastrophic to low-wage,
unskilled workers. Without a plan to do something to mitigate that displacement – of machines
taking people’s jobs – poverty may prevent access therefore stifling growth. If we do resolve to
account and accommodate for these potential issues there is no telling where technology can
possibly go.”
Marc Noble, a respondent who provided no identifying details, commented, “AI, if properly
developed, will take over a lot of jobs. A lot of IT positions will disappear; programming will be
relegated to a very small number if at all. AI will develop its own language and communications
channels that will be faster, more efficient and a lot more secure. The need for old industries and
fossil fuels will be sharply curtailed.”
University of California, Los Angeles, suggested a movement toward planned creation of non-
technological job positions as work evolves. She wrote, “Distributed computing, embedded into
‘natural’ interfaces, will create a seamless integration of access to networked information and
experience in the physical, analog world. The hazard is that the greater the integration, the
higher the risks of codependence. I would advocate for physical labor (urban gardens and forests,
elder care, child care, local food production and preparation) to be part of the emerging social
structure. Free human beings from labor that is meaningless, but give them work with a purpose.
Keep in mind that skills like plumbing and electrical work cannot be outsourced and that
infrastructure is massively physical and built on stacks of systems that have to work together. We
should always have a way to sustain ourselves without networked technologies. Reduce our path
dependencies, fragment the supply chains, resist monopoly controls, change the values of the
culture toward sustainable and equitable human and animal life. Someday the idea of huge
profits and private control of massive wealth will look as grotesque as the idea of heads on pikes
and guillotines do now.”
An assistant professor of social justice based in the U.S. wrote that in a world with fewer jobs for
humans thanks to networked AI and other transformations, “Technology will end humanity, as
people will no longer strive to be the best they can be.”
Who’s really in charge here – humans or automated digital systems?
Concerns over slipping into a world with no real human agency were expressed by some
respondents.
Marc Brenman, managing partner at IDARE LLC, said, “The internet will become transparent to
us. We will think our way through it, using implanted devices. There will be no privacy. Everything
will be remembered, and there will be no forgiveness. Virtual reality will become reality. The very
concept of ‘virtual’ will almost disappear. People will be able to distinguish fact from fiction even
less than we do today. Unscrupulous people will use this technology to create our obedience.
Free will will be eroded. We will surrender even more of our time to bread and circuses,
celebrities, puppies and kittens. We will live so long that life itself will be a burden. Machines will
do everything better than we can, including creating art.”
An assistant professor of social justice at a U.S. university wrote, “People will become helpless
and rely on tech for almost everything. Tech will take over almost all routine activities, but this
will not empower most. Rather, tech will serve as a prison.”
John Sniadowski, a director for a technology company, wrote, “To the vast majority of internet
users, the internet is akin to making a cup of tea. You simply want to fill the kettle from the tap,
switch on the kettle, boil the water and pour it onto the tea. They don’t ever think about the
infrastructure that makes that possible. This means that people will adopt any internet that
makes life easier without thinking of the consequences.”
An anonymous respondent wrote, “I fear that we will end up in an extremely dystopian situation
where autonomous AI makes decisions for society with significant disparities between the haves
and the have-nots. This is not inevitable, but I think controlled self-learning and self-management
is necessary for a beneficial contribution to society.”
A strategy consultant wrote, “People will lose individuality and cultures will die, merged into one
Eurocentric mass with threats to trade, aid and international access. Minorities will be corralled
and shamed online into silence and acceptance as online speech and media overwhelms typical
law. Copyrights will be enforced beyond fair use, leaving entertainment and information heavily
blockaded from the poor.”
An anonymous respondent predicted that the public will just tune into entertainment to cope
with the new realities of this dystopia others have described, writing, “Oh, brave new world that
has such addictive pacification tools available. People will not be better or worse off. They will be
distracted from their situation with individualized circuses.”
Corporate self-regulation is seen as unlikely remedy due to market capitalism

The 50th year of computer networking has been one of commonly expressed disillusionment
with the current state of affairs online. A large share of respondents to this canvassing say that
profit-based enterprises’ domination over the network of networks and thus the world – now
and in future – is what concerns them most.
Cliff Zukin, professor of public policy and political science at the School for Planning and Public
Policy at Rutgers University, said, “Looking backward, there are two axioms that have stood the
test of time: 1) Information is power and 2) Power corrupts. Fifty years into the future – by then I
expect everything will be global and individual at the same time – we either won’t be here, or we
will have figured it out. If we figured it out, there will be no independent states, nor much
difference between human and robot. All big players will be multinational corporations. Borders
won’t exist; countries electing their own leaders won’t exist. We will have a governance structure
of the internet determined by those powerful enough to make that happen. In other words, the
Empire will win.”
Douglas Rushkoff, a professor of media at City University of New York, responded, “When
technological development is determined solely by the market we get some unintended
consequences. Barring a major shift in emphasis away from corporate capitalism, the benefits of
any technological development will probably be determined by how aggressively one company or
another pursues its goals. Some technologies will be less bad, because the manufacturers want
to be less harmful. But even those outside traditional venture funding, who attempt to create
beneficial technologies, will be subject to the supply chain and platform limitations of the
mainstream technologies. So it’s going to be really hard to develop any capital-intensive tools
that don’t serve capital over people.”
Christian Huitema, internet pioneer and consultant focused on privacy online, previously Internet
Architecture Board president, chief scientist at Bell Research and Microsoft distinguished
engineer, commented, “We developed a wonderful communication technology only to see it
captured by large corporations and governments. It will take several generations for humanity to
regain control…. The ad-funded business model evolved in generalized corporate surveillance. It
requires more attention to drive more revenue; AI-driven user interactions are providing that.
This AI + ads feedback loop is creating digital drug addicts.”
Seth Finkelstein, consulting programmer at Finkelstein Consulting, commented, “I, for one,
welcome our new platform overlords. I see almost no check on the tendency toward monopoly
control, or at the very best, oligarchy involving a handful of corporate behemoths. It’s sobering to
realize that the very few serious restrictions that exist come from major nation-states (i.e.,
China’s own desires for internal control). That’s the level of power needed for an effective
opposition. Looking at the history of the 20th century, it’s entirely possible that the 21st century
will see some massive convulsion similar to the Great Depression or a World War. And the
aftermath of that event (presuming civilization still exists) could entail strong antitrust laws that
would severely limit the data-mining business models of many of today’s major internet
companies. It’d be a horrible way to get that outcome, but if the past is any guide, one of the few
ways it would ever happen.”
Walid Al-Saqaf, senior lecturer at Sodertorn University, member of the board of trustees of the
Internet Society, commented, “With consolidation on the internet as an ongoing threat to
democracy and fairness to citizens, there will be a greater tendency to move to alternative
decentralized solutions that aim at empowering citizens more directly as bitcoin did. That being
said, I expect a pushback by governments and conglomerates that will fight to remain in power,
leading to an inevitable clash of wills. At the end of the day, it will be mass adoption of which
technology that will determine who will win.”
John Leslie King, computer science professor, University of Michigan, and a consultant on
Cyberinfrastructure for the NSF CISE and SBE directorates for several years, commented, “It is
hard to know exactly what will happen with power-reinforcing technologies in a climate that is
tending to exacerbate wealth and income inequalities, given the proven influence of wealth and
income on the social order. It is not crazy to imagine IT reinforcing the power of an elite that
already has a lot of power, especially if that elite tends to be aggrandizing power to begin with.
Many IT proponents think that some version of libertarian utopianism will arise to save the day
by taking power from ‘the man’ and giving it to ‘the people.’ In my experience, ‘the man’ doesn’t
want to lose power to ‘the people’ or anyone else. It is a mistake to think of technology as
changing anything. Technology is, at most, one of several powerful forces that shape things.”
in High-Stakes Public Sector Decision-Making” and a technology policy researcher at University
College London, responded, “As more and more tasks and interactions move online, political
battles will become increasingly about the governance of the internet. The interconnectedness of
this policy area means that new democratic institutions will be needed that are more global in
nature. Some old-style, exclusive, powerful networks will find new forms online, as a new
political elite are ‘digital-first.’ A consistent battle between centralization and decentralization is
likely to continue, with AI tools enabling individuals and small firms to make and connect
compelling services, and the value-add of a large design and management bureaucracy like
Facebook will decrease. Competition rules might be in place to force services to work with each
other, and the failure of the ad-supported funding model will mean that individuals are often
paying a premium for enhanced access to exclusive networks of people and activities.”
A professor of computing and digital media expert in in artificial intelligence and social computing
predicted, “The trends around democratic governance of technology are not encouraging. The
big players are U.S.-based and the U.S. is in an anti-regulation stance that seems fairly durable.
Therefore, I expect computing technologies to evolve in ways that benefit corporate interests,
with little possibility of meaningful public response. As such systems take in more data and make
bigger decisions, people will be increasingly subject to the systems’ unaccountable decisions and
non-auditable surveillance practices. Soshanna Zuboff’s term ‘surveillance capitalism’ describes
this state of affairs.”
A well-known journalist, blog author and leading internet activist wrote, “The future of
technology depends on our willingness to break up the digital monopolists and reinstate the
antitrust measures that prevent predatory pricing, market-cornering and other anticompetitive
actions. In particular, companies must not be able to convert their commercial preferences
against ‘adversarial interoperability’ (when a competitor or toolsmith makes a tool that modifies
their products and services to make them better for the users, without the service provider or
manufacturer’s permission) into a legal right to invoke the state to punish competitors who
engage in this conduct.”
An anonymous respondent said, “Neo-liberal economic policies are resulting in increasing

inequality and are unsustainable. If current trends continue, we will be living in a frightening
dystopia, where personal data is collected and monetized by a small number of giant companies.”
Sanjiv Das, a professor of data science and finance at Santa Clara University, responded,
“Technological revolutions improve the world not because they offer cool new toys but because
they improve lives with better use of information…. These systems implement control through
inequalities in knowledge, which lead to inequalities in wealth. Advances in technology
unaccompanied by enlightened politics may delay progress and create turmoil in the short run. It
may take a mutiny by a tech elite to move things forward in the right direction.”
Larry Lannom, internet pioneer and vice president at the Corporation for National Research
Initiatives (CNRI), an expert in digital object architecture, said, “I am an optimist and I hope all of
these advances will, overall, be for the better. But I worry about the ownership and use of
ubiquitous computing and network technologies – will they be used to control the masses for the
benefit of the few or will the benefits apply to all? It will almost surely be a mix of the two and
we should be working today to ensure that the balance of advances will go to improving the
general welfare.”
Serge Marelli, an IT security analyst, predicted that the future will bring, “More porn, more
advertising, less privacy, fewer users’-citizens’ rights (e.g., right to privacy), more money for big
corporations. And politics and democracy will fall short.”
Joël Colloc, professor at Université du Havre Normandy University and author of “Ethics of
Autonomous Information Systems: Towards an Artificial Thinking,” responded, “The internet is no
more than a tool of business polluted by advertising, and internet users are seen as customers to
target with CRM and the place of the trade. This evolution is irreversible. The internet has
become a space without ethics where the user is subjected to predators in a lawless, wild world.
The netiquette rules must be updated to protect the rights of users and protect them against
business spamming, which has become a plague.”
Manoj Kumar, manager at Mitsui Orient Lines, responded, “Advancement of

knowledge/information availability has not only empowered humanity; it has also bewildered it.
Rights are being abused. Commercial aspects are being hijacked by few strong companies,
depriving the rest of fair opportunities. At some point, government and the public will have to
rethink the options and ways of limiting their reach. Amazon and Alibaba will need to become
more decentralized, less encompassing and less pervasive than what they are today. Google will
need to scale back its analytical reaches to provide the freedom of choices…. The proliferation of
the services sector is leading to erosion of the infrastructural economy, which is not sustainable.
The coming years will require correction to these uncontrolled advancements in the digital world.
The excesses of free access, unchained commerce and capital-free digitalization must be checked
and the human element enhanced to provide the balance of the digital with human growth so
that they are sustainable in the coming century.”
Wangari Kabiru, author of the MitandaoAfrika blog, based in Nairobi, commented, “As we have
more owners of democracy through the net … this will result in new super-powers being created
– now not nations but individuals and corporations.”
An assistant professor of media studies at a major U.S. university commented, “So long as the
political economy of the internet is shaped by surveillance and the extraction of personal data
from users who have no recourse, any democratic potential of these new communication
technologies will be squandered.”
A professor emeritus at a major U.S. university’s school of information responded, “I remain

hopeful, yet I am pessimistic. The U.S. form of capitalism has ‘won’; variations of it have been
adopted in virtually all nation-states. It has yielded extraordinary technical innovation and
economic development, progress in health care and medicine and overall improvements in living
standards. Yet the benefits of this economic infrastructure are unequally distributed among the
global population, and currently this benefit inequality seems destined to widen. Without a
revolution or upheaval in values and structures, we can posit that AI becomes increasingly
embedded in existing corporate/government organizations. With this evolutionary movement,
the emergent structures can continue to become more centralized. The increased centralization
of power is likely to be manifest as the larger platforms (corporate or government, the boundary
may become more porous or blurred) exercise their economic power with greater control of
individual choice and behavior. The control might be exerted either through a ‘Big Brother’
model, with more personal intervention at the highest level or a more Kafkaesque model, with AI
aiding governance systems to make decisions using complex and hidden algorithms whose origins
and evolutionary paths are not evident and can’t be dissected and understood.”
An infrastructure engineer for a leading social network company commented, “The push to
monetize every aspect of digital life will continue, potentially causing large disruptions in the way
we live. Not all these disruptions will be for the positive, particularly in the areas of human
dignity and worth. As humans increasingly rely on social networks to make decisions, they will
find themselves unable to resist the ‘mob of the moment,’ which will cause political and social
problems far beyond our current ability to manage. These problems may well be met with
attempts to ‘regulate’ expression to prevent mob actions from occurring, which could, in turn,
lead to less-free societies – the opposite of what was intended in the invention and fostering of
these technologies. The law of unintended consequences is likely to show itself in many other
aspects of our lives, from sexuality to social order. We are building highly complex systems for
one purpose, and failing to realize that complex systems, and their social offshoots, have
unintended consequences far larger than anything we can imagine. The backlash to these
movements, once the unintended consequences set in, are far greater than imagined, as well.
The initial goals are often mixed, causing both a gain and loss in human dignity; the backlash is
often mixed, as well. Whether dignity ratchets up or down is an open question at this point, but
right now we are seeing human dignity ratcheted down, with human life being devalued en
masse. The problem of ‘content wants to be free’ will need to be resolved, as well; if content is
free, then the human effort put into creating that content is useless. This would reverse the trend
of thinking being more important than doing, and virtual products being more valuable than
physical ones. Until the worth of human effort can be balanced against the ability to move and
copy information freely, the problem of paying people to create will remain.”
Some express the hope that the troubled times they foresee coming over the next few decades
will eventually be overwritten by new social, economic and political processes and forces.
Ian Peter, pioneer internet activist and internet rights advocate, said, “The internet, after a period
of utopian visions for a form of media that enhanced freedom of expression and communication,
and improved access to information has followed the pattern of most forms of mass media by
becoming dominated by a few players. As part of this domination a new financial model has
emerged where internet users are the commodity, with their free or cheap usage funded by the
use of their personal data for a variety of commercial uses. It is hard to see a change to this
model occurring in the near future, and the internet as we know it is likely to continue this
pattern for the rest of its lifetime. However, the internet will in time become old media like radio
and television: New forms of media will emerge, and they are likely to be disruptive changes
rather than some type of incremental development.”
Yvette Wohn, director of the Social Interaction Lab and expert on human-computer interaction at
New Jersey Institute of Technology, commented, “Despite the internet being a system that
enables peer-to-peer interaction, in the past 50 years we have seen it enable the corporate
broker in scales unprecedented. Amazon, Facebook, Spotify and Uber are just few examples of
these brokers. The roles of these brokers will slowly change so that they have less power and
decentralization will bring back individual and small businesses.”
Sasha Costanza-Chock, associate professor of civic media at MIT, said, “Here I’ll offer an edge-
case optimistic scenario. In 50 years, very high-speed symmetrical network connectivity will be
freely available to all humanity, served by a mix of satellite, municipal networks and community-
controlled cooperatives. For-profit ISPs will be a thing of the past. In a similar vein, key platforms
and features of the net will no longer be controlled by for-profit companies. The dominant search
engine will be run by the Wikimedia Foundation, in partnership with the United Nations. Social
networking sites will be predominantly decentralized, federated, interoperable and powered by
F/LOSS (similar to the way email functions, with many different providers, or the option to host
your own, that all communicate with one another). Important services that benefit from network
effects will be controlled by municipalities; for example, OpenHail ridesharing standard will be
mandated by most municipalities so that ride services are no longer controlled by one or two
large firms. Airbnb will be largely replaced by OpenHouse home sharing/hostel standards that
enable many players in the market. Most importantly, new applications and services, and
improvements to existing applications, will largely be developed through co-design methods that
include intended end users in all stages of the design process. Co-design, or design justice, will
have long since become the standard best practice across all areas of technology design and
development. All AI and algorithmic decision systems will be monitored through standing
intersectional audits by independent third parties and/or state agencies to ensure equitable
distribution of outcomes rather than the reproduction of bias.”
An anonymous respondent said, “It is my hope that platforms/giants like Facebook, Google and
Apple take more responsibility for their intrusion into our lives.”
Digital experiences threaten authentic human interaction

A share of respondents envisioned a future for many humans of self-imposed isolation in virtual
worlds or personalized online algorithm-avatar-based relationships that seem more attractive
than real-world, in-person social interactions. Some are concerned that the many hours people
spend in controlled digital environments will influence them in a negative manner.
Luke Stark, a fellow in the department of sociology at Dartmouth College and at the Berkman
Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, wrote, “Increasingly ubiquitous digital
systems will do a good job of cocooning individuals within personalized augmented reality
bubbles, but a terrible job at facilitating durable connections between us. At the same time,
those connections will be surveilled, measured, tracked and represented back to us in ways that
will aim to make us more economically productive and socially pliant in the guise of ‘wellness’
and ‘community.’ These systems will increase social inequality through their dividuating effects
and contribute to environmental degradation through their use of natural resources – a Philip K.
Dick dystopia come to banal life.”
John Lazzaro, retired professor of electrical engineering and computer science, University of
California, Berkeley, commented, “Fifty years from now, we will return to Steve Jobs’ original
vision of computers as bicycles for the mind. As someone whose first job in technology was
stocking shelves in a Radio Shack, years before the first personal computer appeared in the store,
I am lucky enough to remember life before Steve articulated his vision. I then watched the
vision’s ascent, and its current fall from grace. Today, as I walk down the street, and see people
walking with their attention captured by their phone screen, I wonder how it all went so wrong.
The only thing more depressing is the content that appears on their screen, and the cultural
impact that the content has on us all. I believe the way forward starts with an acceptance of the
human condition: We are an easily addicted species, and our evolutionary survival depended on
prioritizing ‘thinking fast’ over ‘thinking slow’ in many contexts. Today, from the application user
interface up to the economic ecosystem, platforms often exploit human foibles for profit, just as
Marlboro Man and Virginia Slims billboards did in the 1970s. The first step in the journey of the
next 50 years is reaching a consensus that an addictive approach to the digital world is not
sustainable. And that the profit motive, like discipline, is a means to an end, and not an end to
itself (to paraphrase Robert Fripp). Technology options can inform the journey’s second step. On
the device level, Mark Weiser pointed us to the right direction with the concept of ubiquitous
computing in 1988, and the many iterations of this concept in the decades since provide a good
foundation for a world where a computer is not a cigarette. The mature mechanical devices (for
example, venetian window blinds) and electro-mechanic devices (for example, electric shavers) in
our lives do not foster addictive responses, and have benign business models. If we rethink the
‘how’ and the ‘why’ of digital devices in our lives, we can remake them in the same positive way.”
Eliot Lear, principal engineer at Cisco, said, “On the whole the internet has proven to be a wealth
of knowledge and entertainment. But it has also isolated us from our local communities.”
Ian Peter, pioneer internet activist and internet rights advocate, said, “We cannot dismiss two key
factors in the current spread of internet usage: firstly the addictive and pervasive ‘always-on’
effect of unending access and multiple device usage, and secondly the effects on our capacity for
critical thinking of having the ‘information’ we see determined by algorithms whose objective is
not to inform us, but to capture or thoughts and minds. The decline of a capacity for critical
thinking is a serious side effect of continued addictive internet usage that warrants more detailed
scientific investigation.”
Evan Selinger, a professor of philosophy at the Rochester Institute of Technology, commented,

“Half a century from now, one of the biggest challenges will be what, in our book ‘Re-Engineering
Humanity,’ Brett Frischmann and I call the right to be ‘off.’ Currently, it’s extremely hard for many
of us to unplug. Unplugging is simply a luxury that most of us can’t afford. As internet
connectivity expands to more and more interconnected devices, a robust Internet of Things
infrastructure will keep expanding. The expansion will be fueled by a desire to acquire more
personal and collective data and the ideal of ubiquitous algorithms acting upon integrated and
aggregated big data will become harder to decouple from smart living. In such a world, where will
people find protected spaces for thinking critically about whether they are being programmed to
behave in ways that diminish their agency and capacity to determine whose interests the
unshakable, augmented intelligences really serve?”
Kostas Alexandridis, author of “Exploring Complex Dynamics in Multi-agent-Based Intelligent

Systems,” a research assistant professor at the University of the Virgin Islands, said, “In the next
50 years digital integration will become closely integrated with almost every aspect of our lives,
from our simple household infrastructure to our transportation systems to our economic
infrastructure to our social systems. Digital integration will change norms and institutions the
same way that industrialization and electricity was integrated to our societies and global
infrastructure in the beginning of the 20th century. From smart devices to smart cars to smart
wallets to digital commerce to digital democracies, it is very likely that newer generations of
citizens will develop a strong and tightly integrated dependency with networked infrastructure.”
Alper Dincel of T.C. Istanbul Kultur University, Turkey, wrote, “Technology’s first purpose is
creating benefits, so apps and programs helping people to consume more. In this point of view,
companies are losing their reliability. And we are losing quality of our life. Our life will be like
1990s pop music (not 1980s) with the effects of digital age – less meaningful and more fast.”
University of California, Los Angeles, said, “We will be shocked by the rapid acceleration of
destabilizing influences and the rate at which civility can break down. Hopefully it can also be
rebuilt with the same forces.”
Robert Bell, co-founder of Intelligent Community Forum, wrote, “I expect ubiquitous high-
capacity connectivity in the rich and semi-rich worlds, and vast increases in it for the rest of the
world’s people. Riding that connectivity will be learning algorithms that we integrate into our
lives without a thought and deliver a vast range of services and information. Our interface with
the network will evolve in ways that seem almost fantasy now. How well this turns out for us
depends on getting a few things right. We must have a near bulletproof solution for security and
identity online, and individual control over online privacy. Otherwise, the ‘pollution’ of
cyberthreat, fraud and misinformation will choke off all progress. It is typically a crisis that forces
us to confront the damage of such third-party effects as pollution. I have no idea what the crisis
or crises will be, but as the network grows toward ubiquity, the potential damage of such a crisis
grows with it. The great challenge that will come with all of this is to avoid being overwhelmed by
the digital overlay of the physical world. We already see the early stages of it in daily life. I hope
that humanity’s ability to adapt its environment to its own needs, rather than letting the digital
environment control it, will continue to shield us from the worst effects. If we give people
individual choice and the power to evolve rules to guide those choices in the right direction, we
will manage to extract more benefit than harm from what we do.”
Dalsie Baniala, Telecommunications and Radiocommunications Regulator of Vanuatu, said,

“Digital will divide lives (rich and poor). Rich people will interact with only rich people. Digital life
for some people will also create artificial living and happiness. Digital life will cause no more
human-to-human interactions but human machine-to-machine. Digital life creates no more
human senses.”
Ross Stapleton-Gray, principal at Stapleton-Gray and Associates, an information technology and

policy consulting firm, commented, “I suspect that the internet will evolve toward greater
robustness and reliability through, in some ways, becoming more opaque, more like a ‘system of
(system of systems)’ than the current ‘system of systems,’ and partly through increased demand
(for some of this infrastructure) for authentication. I would not be surprised to see it genericize
from ‘the Net’ or ‘cyberspace’ or ‘being online’ to just ‘connected,’ with an assumption that
unless you were actively seeking to be ‘unconnected by choice,’ you’d always be connected/have
connection. Like we plug things into any electrical socket without much caring how the electrons
get there, we’ll assume connectivity. I’ve written some on how humans might relate to the
Internet of Things, and that vision, that humans, like cars, or buildings, or any other object, will
be seamlessly interacting with all of the other things, seems likely.”
Andrea Bonarini, a professor of AI and soft computing at Politecnico di Milano, Italy, said, “People
will be less free and they will lose their ability to think and design, as we are already experiencing
nowadays.”
Alistair Knott, an associate professor specializing in cognitive science and AI at Otago University,
Dunedin, New Zealand, wrote, “AI systems that understand human language have potential for
both good and bad impacts on society. The technologies are likely to be developed and used by
large transnational companies with the aim of maximizing their profits. The likely effect of this is
that people will increasingly fall into the role of ‘consumers’ of entertainment-like apps that
encourage political apathy and discourage individualism.”
A professor emeritus expert on technology’s impacts on individuals’ well-being wrote, “Sadly I

think we will find ourselves spending nearly all of our time immersed in internet-based activities.
We are already spending, on the average, more than five hours a day using our smartphones and
in 50 years smartphones will be replaced by smart devices, implants, etc. Relationships will suffer,
as will our feelings of freedom. I already see the beginnings of an increased obsession to what is
contained in the little box we carry with us 24/7/365 as opposed to the world that is right in front
of us. It is Sherry Turkle’s dichotomy of SL (online life, or a ‘second life’) vs. RL (real life). SL
appears to be winning already, and we are talking about what will happen in 50 years. It is
happening now.”
A researcher and teacher of digital literacies and technical communication at a state university
based in the U.S. Midwest responded, “In the future I expect to have network interactions
embedded or subcutaneous on humans. We will have more interactions that are done in
networked environments rather than in person. We may not even have to speak to a person for
several days.”
Toby Walsh, a professor of AI at the University of New South Wales, Australia, and president of
the AI Access Foundation, said, “By 2069, the real and virtual world will have blurred into one. It
will be impossible to tell them apart. Whilst many will spend much of their time in this digital
world, there will be an analog counterculture, celebrating a disconnected and old-fashioned
existence.”
A digital accessibility consultant responded, “Augmented reality is likely to become part of the
everyday experience. Transceivers in clothes or even under the skin will give people direct access
to the internet all day every day wherever and whenever they find themselves. Thus, information
will be available at all times and people will be able to control their environments through
sending signals. It is unlikely that this will be done through thought alone for some time, but that
is likely to come at some stage in the future. This is likely to lead to less interaction between
people and certainly less personable interactions as people are likely to interact with information
on the internet rather than each other. However, people with disabilities may gain somewhat as
they will be able to gain access to information and services through the internet which they
cannot do now because of the inaccessible nature of much of our current-day environments.”
An anonymous respondent commented, “Connections between people are going to change. I

think people will work from home more, having virtual meetings that are presented in 3D. I think
this will produce a general depression among people having a lack of connection to others. In
general, people will thrive; they won’t have to spend time shopping, commuting and doing
menial tasks. But I think we are going to lose our connection to each other.”
An anonymous respondent wrote, “The internet will be more and more integrated in our daily
lives. However, I see a problem developing. The ability to connect to people all around the world
is actually splitting us into smaller groups, not uniting us.”
Constant data monitoring and surveillance is a condition of hyperconnectivity

Many survey respondents pointed out that people are already trading privacy for convenience
and perceived security and said they expect this trend to be magnified.
“In the coming 50 years we will surely mature and invest in the needed technology to make this
connected world a safer world, too. But today, that deficit stands out, and historians will be harsh
when they judge us relative to this one aspect. The harm to entire cultures that oppressive
monitoring and surveillance can cause is frightening, and those future historians will be in a
position to document that harm – harm that people are actively inflicting today for all sorts of
reasons. But I think the good will easily outweigh this harm over long periods.”
A professor expert in cultural geography, American studies and gender and sexuality said, “Unless
we soon make policies to regulate data collection, privacy and use as well as the policies and
practices laden into algorithms (such as racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia
and so on)…. I fear we may wind up with a very small elite controlling most of the population.”
A professor of sociology at a major U.S. university responded, “It seems likely that in 50 years
there will be very few free spaces left for citizens to engage with one another without corporate
or government sponsorship/surveillance. This will have implications for content and, I suspect,
make it very difficult for individuals to avoid corporate advertising and government-sponsored
messaging.”
Craig Burdett, a respondent who provided no identifying details, wrote, “The greatest challenge
facing society is determining how much privacy and autonomy we are willing to cede in exchange
for convenience and features. How much of our personal lives are we willing to share? Even in
2018 the internet is nearly ubiquitous in first world countries. Users happily allowed Uber to track
them 24/7 in exchange for having a car nearby when they needed it. And we’ve learned that
Uber is far from virtuous. New York’s LinkNYC kiosks make Wi-Fi available at no cost in exchange
for ad displays. And New Yorkers happily agree to the terms, which include allowing select third
parties to contact them ‘with … express … consent.’ What feature will CityBridge offer to entice
that consent? By 2069 some form of the internet will be embedded in almost every aspect of
modern life. Elon Musk is already showing us how our cars will be always connected and can be
updated (or disabled) without notice. And Tesla owners are happily allowing that intrusion in
exchange for his cars. Extend that concept to every appliance and device we touch, from our door
locks to our refrigerators, and imagine what privacy we might be enticed to give up for a smidge
more convenience or efficiency. What if your refrigerator could evaluate and pre-order items
before they were depleted, communicating directly with the supplier using your online account?
And your front door will automatically know which delivery person (or robot) to allow inside
based on the products the refrigerator (or the washing machine) ordered. Imagine never running
out of toilet paper, or never again scurrying to the market at 7 a.m. for eggs. Is that sufficient
incentive to share that information? I imagine devices like tablets will cease to be primarily
standalone appliances. Their functionality will be embedded in homes and offices. The wall of
your entryway will have a tablet that automatically adjusts the home to match your individual
preferences: from adjusting the temperature in your bedroom to turning the teapot on when you
arrive. And your power company will know not only when, but specifically who, is home based on
that information. Each of these affordances is available by virtue of making information about
your habits available to the device manufacturers. The internet, in and of itself, is benign – like a
handgun. But the companies and individuals behind the services are the greatest threat.”
Angelique Hedberg, senior corporate strategy analyst at RTI International, said, “Our digital
footprints – intentional, unintentional and simulated – will create troves of data that will be used
to model and predict our behavior and as such will be used to maximize product and control by
one or more entities. At the individual level this may feel like a loss of control. At the community
and relevant transnational levels it will make room for enlightenment. We will benefit from the
data of individuals we have never met just as we will be questioned about our own potential
because of persons who never existed. The term for the greater good will take on new meaning
as we balance personal privacy with human good.”
David Brake, senior lecturer in communications at the University of Bedfordshire, UK, said, “It is
very likely that the (relatively) free and open internet that flourished across much of the world in
the internet’s early days will continue to be threatened and, I fear, all but overwhelmed by an
oligopoly of powerful platforms that will have ‘captured’ the time and attention of most internet
users most of the time. Whether they are aware of it or not, almost everyone will live their lives
continually being sorted into different categories depending on their behavior, much of which will
be in some way digitally recorded, processed and shared. Some will react by attempting to
remain constantly ‘digitally vigilant’ but this is not achievable in the long term, particularly as you
will remain traceable through your interactions with others. And of course even an absence of
digital profile or a carefully curated one sends its own signals.”
Betsy Williams, a researcher at the Center for Digital Society and Data Studies at the University of
Arizona, wrote, “Privacy will be largely a luxury of the rich, who will pay extra for internet service
providers, services and perhaps separate networks that protect privacy and security.”
David Sarokin, author of “Missed Information: Better Information for Building a Wealthier, More
Sustainable Future,” commented, “The world of 2069 will be dotted with ‘privacy spaces’ in our
homes, workplaces and public areas. These will be rooms where people can be assured that their
words and activities are not being tracked in any manner. Outside of such spaces, our current
notion of ‘privacy’ will have essentially disappeared.”
Thad Hall, a research scientist and coauthor of “Politics for a Connected American Public,” wrote,
“Privacy will diminish further and further as facial recognition becomes more prevalent and
people can be tracked through shopping areas and other public places and their personal data
from search is linked to their face persona. You walk down the street and you are presented with
specialized ads on a small screen in stores as you look at a rack of clothes. Data are used to
differentiate between the rich and poor, whites and nonwhites, and biases are built into every
customer experience. A person’s ability to be anonymous will cease and ad intrusions will
become very common. These trends are likely to have political ramifications. Employers, retailers
and others will be able to infer people’s political behaviors – or lack of participation – from data
and discrimination will occur, much as it did in the early to mid-1800s, but with greater impact.”
Amali De Silva-Mitchell, futurist, responded, “When they realize the implications of data
collection and profiling and tracking under various uses, people will group together to adjust to
their value and comfort levels in this regard. This clustering will impact the quality of data and the
quality of outcomes using algorithms. We will see tweaking of algorithms and data all the time,
but poor ethics or low-quality updates are a real issue. Mobile technology in the palm of
everyone’s hand will result in the small minority without it living at a disadvantage although they
may have a lot of privacy.”
Bart Knijnenburg, assistant professor of computer science active in the Human Factors Institute at
Clemson University, said, “Put the computational power, sensors and connectivity of a modern
smartphone into every single object in your life. This is where I think the Internet of Things will
go: You can ‘ping’ any object to learn its location (where is my thermos?), its status (is it full or
empty?), past interactions (when did I last use it?) and connections with other devices (what
brand of coffee did I fill it with and which device brewed that coffee?). It has very powerful
applications, but also severe implications for our privacy. Note though that privacy concerns will
not stop this future from happening. Privacy concerns have never stopped anything from
happening.”
Anirban Sen, a lawyer and data privacy consultant, based in New Delhi, India, wrote, “The next 50
years will have both fights over big data and privacy as well as people desiring to use new apps.
How data in different jurisdictions can be used/relied will be a problem and technology will be
used to also fight technology. Integration would be holistic, but it would be tough to live un-
networked.”
The co-founder of an information technology civil rights program wrote, “The internet will
become as ubiquitous as electricity. That means sensors will be everywhere. Governments will
engage in surveillance. But the same surveillance capabilities will allow you to get immediate
help from 911, for example, with the operators knowing exactly the context of the call and the
situation in progress. Moreover, currently 80% of 911 calls are prank calls. That number will go
down to zero. There are other examples: If your car goes off the road into a cliff and you’re
unconscious, the car will likely inform emergency responders automatically.”
An anonymous respondent said, “Technology, and the evolution of technology, hews closely to
long-standing human hegemonies, priorities and identities. We will probably be more dependent
than ever on networked technologies (such as autonomous cars and mapping), but we may also
be increasingly wary of invasions of privacy and the way that the data we have been donating to
large tech firms can be used in service of those aforementioned hegemonies. We will be even
more instantaneously connected, and machines will make more decisions for us for our
convenience, but I expect that we will also have a ‘reckoning moment’ in which we decide that
our digital footprint is as important and protectable – as the Health Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act, for example.”
A principal researcher for one of the world’s top five technology companies commented, “The
shape of the future could hinge on whether the world moves toward autocratic rule, as in China
and Russia, and now with the U.S. and other governments considering that direction, or whether
it extends democratic institutions to meet challenges in a world so complex that the public can’t
engage meaningfully with many issues. In either case, privacy will be gone, with our lives visible
to governments or corporations that – in the face of pushback such as GDPR – will raise the
amount they pay us for full access. Only bad actors will refuse the offers they make; whether we
will build systems to let bad actors operate with the current degree of cloaking is an open
question.”
A professor of information science wrote, “When I’m feeling dystopian, I see a world that looks a
little too much like ‘Mr. Robot’ or ‘Person of Interest,’ with government or private organizations
knowing too much about us and having too much control over us. I’d like to believe that
interconnectivity could, instead, provide us with more ubiquitous access to information and with
the ability to establish connections and deliver services across space and time. I hope that
increases in access to information and services will enable a fairer distribution of goods and one
that allows those with fewer resources to achieve success in their endeavors.”
An anonymous respondent said, “The future will see our sacrifice of personal freedom as real-
time surveillance becomes ubiquitous.”
A professor of artificial intelligence and cognitive engineering from a developing nation said,
“There will be a loss of freedom, and anything you or your relatives did or said can be used
against you. It cannot be predicted on what criterion you will be singled out for termination,
purportedly to ‘save the planet.’”
Miguel Moreno-Muñoz, a professor of philosophy specializing in ethics, epistemology and

technology at the University of Granada, Spain, expressed hope, writing, “Perhaps a more
sophisticated culture of privacy will emerge.”
Misinformation and mistrust must be addressed for positive internet growth

A number of respondents worried over misinformation, security and other concerns. They said
that current issues in internet evolution and what seems to be quite an uncertain future will call
for new methods of building trust and security.
Benjamin Kuipers, a professor of computer science at the University of Michigan, wrote, “We will
take for granted that there will be AIs that know an enormous amount about each of us, and we
will trust them to protect our individual interests, consistent with the ethical requirements of
society. One of the great contrasts between the positive and the negative possible futures will be
the extent to which we can trust that available knowledge, and to what extent we can trust those
AI knowers. In my ideal future, within the next 50 years we will have found ways to ensure
trustworthiness in the infrastructure of knowledge and AI knowers. We will understand that
there are ethical principles governing the use of knowledge about each of us as individuals, and
the respect we must all have for the collected general knowledge that is a resource for humanity.
We will trust that those ethical principles will be followed by the vast majority of people,
corporations, robots and states, and that there are mechanisms in place to detect violations,
protect us from their effects and sanction the violators. The Founding Fathers of the United
States of America were among the greatest systems engineers of all time, designing feedback
systems, checks and balances to protect our government and our society from the failures of all-
too-human leaders, holding power and hungry for more. We need a new generation of great
systems engineers, to create new feedback systems to create and maintain a trustworthy society,
even with the hugely powerful tools we are creating.”
Theodore Gordon, futurist, management consultant and co-founder of the Millennium Project,
responded, “We will have Watson-like capabilities for data and analytic reasoning in our pockets.
False or suspect news will be rejected or marked with a skull and bones. The internet seems likely
to splinter into specialized networks that communicate with each other. Big data will be a given
and important in determining epidemics in health and in ideas.”
Engineering Institute, said, “Trust will be a critical social asset. Those communities that value and
promote trust will have more life, liberty and happiness. AI and IT will allow communities to
ensure varying degrees of security, privacy, resiliency and accountability in building trust. Being
trustworthy all the time is stressful given that trust is based on competency, dependability,
honesty, loyalty, boundaries and sincerity.”
A share of respondents discussed the challenges presented by the constant flow of

misinformation and by the potential for massive misuses of data.
Thad Hall, a research scientist and coauthor of “Politics for a Connected American Public,” wrote,
“The ability of the news media to report facts will be hampered by a cascade of alternate news,
with different video and audio of the exact same event. Things as simple as what the president
said in a meeting will be constantly up for debate as instant, real-time alternate feeds show
something different, presenting a different worldview. There will be greater segmentation of the
population and divisions that separate people. People are likely to become more polarized and
tribal over the next 50 years. People will be pushed in different directions by advertisers, who will
segment us in ways so that people will not even be aware of certain products others use
(especially as online sites like Amazon continue to grow greatly). We will receive different news,
again exacerbated by the prevalence of fake news that is exceedingly difficult to discern from
reality.”
Alan Mutter, a longtime Silicon Valley CEO, cable TV executive and now a teacher of media
economics and entrepreneurism at the University of California, Berkeley, said, “I hope internet
users in the future will have more control over their data, interactions and the content pushed to
them, but I fear that the platform companies – Google, Facebook, Amazon, Baidu and others –
will take us in the opposite direction. A safe and satisfying user experience requires far more
thought, work and time than the average user can muster. So, we will be at the mercy of the
platforms, which have an asymmetrical ability to outwit and outmaneuver any government
entities that try to rein them in. The internet will make lives both better and worse in the future.
It will provide greater access to information to those who know how to use it well. At the same
time, it will push horrific misinformation to people who lack the ability to critically discern what
they are seeing, reading or hearing.”
Rik Farrow, editor of “;login:” a publication of the USENIX Association, predicted, “The problem of
‘fake news’ will be solved by news-providers providing digitally signed content, such as photos,
recordings and videos, so that news can be trusted.”
A professor of psychology for a human-computer interaction institute commented, “It will be

more and more difficult to determine the validity of sources of information, and people will have
weaker tools to make judgments for themselves. Perhaps I am discouraged by recent political
events, but to me they are a harbinger of more to come. We could look to the past: The National
Socialists knew all about controlling information.”
An online communities researcher said, “We will continue to have problems of community and
identity online, where malicious actors quite easily pose as others and manipulate people’s
opinions.”
Security issues will be an ongoing obstacle

Assuring security in a constantly evolving human-technological system was mentioned by
respondents as a moving-target challenge that will be a constant in years to come.
Llewellyn Kriel, CEO of TopEditor International, a media services company based in Johannesburg,
South Africa, wrote, “Despite all the assurances security has become the biggest obstacle in the
path of all forms of technology. We predicted this 10 years ago, but things have become worse
than even we imagined. The Internet of Things will aggravate this many times. AI so far shows no
signs of being able to address security – personal, corporate and national. We see this situation
simply getting worse as criminal cartels, international terrorists and rogue governments exploit
the thousands of loopholes.”
A professor of computing and digital media expert in in artificial intelligence and social computing
predicted, “In 50 years we will have at least one large-scale internet-enabled attack against an
entire country, lasting more than five days: power grids, banking, transportation, utilities. People
will die. This will (at last) trigger a complete rethinking of the internet protocols, and they will be
redesigned with security by design. It will become illegal to use nonconforming devices.”
Eugene H. Spafford, internet pioneer and professor of computing sciences at Purdue University,
founder and executive director emeritus of the Center for Education and Research in Information
Assurance and Security, commented, “Crime and propaganda are going to be even bigger
problems, as we have no good, global solutions to deploy as of yet. We need to come to some
form of consensus on issues such as fact, primary sources and reliability of information. I see a
future where there are more likely to be editorial and content controls, and continued
Balkanization of the internet.”
Lou Gross, professor of mathematical ecology and expert in grid computing, spatial optimization
and modeling of ecological systems at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, said, “I see entirely
new options for theft and an ongoing battle across linked systems to maintain orderly operations.
Because of the linkage of systems this ‘warfare’ has the potential to be highly destructive, and I
see major opportunities for insurance companies to enter the fray and provide services to those
willing to pay to allow them to maintain an interfaced-lifestyle while having a measure of safety.”
The chief marketing officer for a technology-based company said, “Security and privacy will
become a very important and critical subject of discussion as individuals and societies at large
realize that the benefits come at a severe cost to these freedoms. The EU is pushing and shaping
this agenda with its latest effort for protecting from these technologies via GDPR. We will see
how all of these play out. At the moment, key technology platforms do not seem to realize the
power and the responsibility. The exchange between the European Union’s Guy Verhofstadt and
U.S.’s Zuckerberg nailed this exact subject in their recent interaction. But the biggest problem and
threat for humanity emanates from our historical insecurity and craving for power. As
infrastructure is becoming more dependent on AI and the Internet of Things, so do weapons of
mass destruction will become more focused on how to better attack them with digital weapons.”
Dan Geer, a respondent who provided no identifying details, commented, “This is a question of
the whole being different than the sum of the parts. If one is, as I am, certain that only God is
perfect, then a digitalized world that is ever-more optimized begs the question of optimized to
what end, to whose benefit, to which criteria of perfection? As Donald Knuth said, ‘Premature
optimization is the root of all evil,’ and there exist optimizations that are, or soon will be, within
our reach yet will be forever premature. When you cannot believe what you hear, cannot believe
what you see, cannot believe what you smell, taste or touch, what are you? Soon, my friend,
soon.”
Climate change, the internet and the future of the human race
Several experts observed that this attempt to divine features of the future digital world is futile if
the planet can no longer support life in 2069.
Judith Donath, author of “The Social Machine, Designs for Living Online” and faculty fellow at
Harvard University’s Berkman-Klein Center for Internet and Society, commented, “Western
civilization, pinnacle of individual liberty, has culminated in the reckless and wasteful
consumption of the Earth’s natural resources: We’ve polluted the water, paved over the land, cut
down the forests, strip-mined the mountains. Confronted with the apocalyptic specter of human-
induced mass extinctions and disastrous climate change, we as a species appear to have chosen
to do nothing – to continue on the same path that got us here, buying, burning and birthing as if
tomorrow simply did not exist. If we – and the myriad other species we share this planet with –
are to survive into the next century, the billions of us humans will need to radically change our
behavior. It will take extraordinary measures over the next 50 years to get us to eat less, buy less,
reproduce less. I see few signs of us moving in that direction in a serious fashion left to our own
devices. But now imagine an artificially intelligent government, programmed to re-balance
humans and the natural world as painlessly as possible. Though there would be no privacy from
the machine government’s ceaseless sensing, it would be a pleasant world. We would enjoy an
apparent wealth of choice – the illusion of liberty. In reality, personal agency would be quite
minimal, our desires redirected and our behavior shaped by subtle, powerful nudges. It may be
the only hope we have left.”
Divina Frau-Meigs, UNESCO chair for sustainable digital development, said, “Environmental issues
will be the primary problem everybody will want to solve in the next 50 years. There is no planet
B.”
Hank Dearden, executive director at ForestPlanet Inc., said, “My hope is that the more we
explore the cosmos, the more we appreciate our precious and fragile planet, and as such use the
Internet of Things to monitor and regulate all manner of metrics: oxygen, carbon dioxide,
temperature, biomass (trees), trash levels in the oceans, etc.”
Brock Hinzmann, a partner in the Business Futures Network who worked 40 years as a futures
researcher at SRI International, said, “I choose to remain optimistic, although I don’t expect there
to be one future for everyone on the planet, and I expect there will be plenty of abuse of the
technology to limit freedom. It could also be that many other concerns, resulting from climate
change, global migration and geopolitical conflict, will overwhelm issues related to technology.”
Christine Boese, digital strategies professional, noted that the future development of burgeoning
cloud technologies relies upon the electrical grid, commenting, “I believe this brilliant system –
the internet – is more robust and persistent than anything else the world has created, barring a
worldwide failure of electrical grid infrastructure (which is a real possibility). I am more skeptical
that humanity will still be around in its present, literate form, to access it! It is carbon-based life
forms which endanger the future networked and communicating computer. I have high hopes for
blockchain technology, to be used for far more than cryptocurrency. I believe evolving XML
schemas will continue to add important logic to our metadata for semantic parsing and sense-
making. Aggregated data has promise, but the server farms required to support constant
crawling, indexing and processing will require outsize electrical grid support, and human
civilization’s declining literacy, its lack of ongoing infrastructure maintenance and
disproportionate grid power draws by server farms could endanger the entire system within 50
years. We are becoming dumb, violent Eloi, without our engineering Morlocks.”
Thomas Streeter, a professor of sociology at the University of Vermont, said, “The next 50 years
will be shaped by human social and political choices in the context of limited global resources.
Whether life in 50 years is better or worse (and for whom) will not be determined by technology.”
The founder of a technology research firm wrote, “I always recommend ‘He, She, It’ by Marge
Piercy for an understanding of where the internet could go, and she wrote it before the internet
existed. I think cars won’t be the same and fully expect that we won’t be riding individual cars in
50 years. If we are still functioning as a planet and all this has to be contextualized within
dramatic climate change as well as population increase and the resulting migrations flows, with
their concomitant political disruptions. Digital life will leave more people behind as it is created
for young people by young people, and in an aging planet, this will not serve us well.”
A British-American computer scientist commented, “I don’t think society in a recognizable form

will survive climate change, increasing inequality and the centralization of essential systems to
2069. Increasing centralization of essential systems will reduce society’s resilience in the face of
these problems, leading to societal collapse.”
An anonymous respondent commented, “It depends on what the overall state of the world will
be then and whether one subscribes to the mantra of continuing progress. Those of us who take
climate change seriously and see the continuing failures to deal with it must see the possibility of
some very nasty changes, even down to the mass movement of populations and the contraction
of natural resources including landmasses. In this vision of the future, fixed infrastructure may be
a casualty and the local generation of electricity may be the difference between survival and not.
One hopes that this pessimism will turn out to be unfounded but at the same time this sort of
economic decline or even collapse cannot be ruled out and its impact on technology will be
profound. Ad hoc networks might become the main game in town for example.”
An anonymous respondent said, “Global climate change will continue unabated as long as
ignorance and capitalists are allowed to triumph over humanity.”
An anonymous respondent commented, “Climate change is going to have a very destabilizing

effect on economies and societies worldwide, so it’s difficult to predict how long we will have the
infrastructure to support rapid technological advances.”
About this canvassing of experts

The expert predictions reported here about the impact of the internet over the next 50 years
came in response to questions asked by Pew Research Center and Elon University’s Imagining the
Internet Center in an online canvassing conducted between July 4, 2018, and Aug. 6, 2018. This is
the 10th Future of the Internet study the two organizations have conducted together. Nearly
10,000 experts and members of the interested public were invited to share their opinions on two
big-picture questions: 1) the likely future of artificial intelligence and humans, and 2) the
ARPANET/internet’s 50th anniversary. The first report, “Artificial Intelligence and the Future of
Humans,” was published Dec. 10, 2018. This second report is an analysis of 530 respondents’
answers to questions related to the 50th anniversary of the ARPANET/internet.
The results published here come this nonscientific canvassing. They cover respondents’ answers
to these questions:
internet?
Participants were further asked:
In the next 50 years, technological change (Please choose only one answer):
… will not produce significant change in individuals’ lives.
… will produce significant change that is mostly for the better for individuals’ lives.
… will produce significant change that is mostly for the worse for individuals’ lives.
Explain your answer and describe the ways you see changes in digital life influencing individuals
in the next 50 years.
The answers of the 530 total responses to this question showed the following:
72% said technological change will produce significant change that is mostly for the better
25% said technological change will produce significant change that is mostly for the worse
3% said technological change will not produce significant change in individuals’ lives
An additional 42 respondents (7% of the total number of survey participants) declined to specify
if technological change would lead to significant change for the better or worse but did provide
long-form responses to describe the ways they expect digital life to influence individuals in the
next 50 years.
The web-based instrument was first sent directly to a list of targeted experts identified and
accumulated by Pew Research Center and Elon University during previous “Future of the
Internet” studies, as well as those identified in an earlier study of people who made predictions
about the likely future of the internet between 1990 to 1995. Additional experts with proven
interest in this particular research topic were also added to the list. Among those invited were
researchers, developers and business leaders from leading global organizations, including Oxford,
Cambridge, MIT, Stanford and Carnegie Mellon universities; Google, Microsoft, Facebook,
Amazon, Kernel, Kyndi, BT and Cloudflare; inductees to the Internet Hall of Fame, most of whom
played key roles in the invention and diffusion of the internet; leaders active in global internet
governance and internet research activities, such as the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF),
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), Internet Society (ISOC),
International Telecommunications Union (ITU), Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR), and
the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). We also invited a large
number of professionals and policy people from technology businesses; government, including
the National Science Foundation, Federal Communications Commission and European Union;
think tanks and interest networks (for instance, those that include professionals and academics in
anthropology, sociology, psychology, law, political science and communications); globally located
people working with communications technologies in government positions; technologists and
innovators; top universities’ engineering/computer science and business/entrepreneurship
faculty, graduate students and postgraduate researchers; plus many who are active in civil society
organizations such as Association for Progressive Communications (APC), Electronic Privacy
Information Center (EPIC) and Access Now; and those affiliated with newly emerging nonprofits
and other research units examining the impacts of digital life. Invitees were encouraged to share
the survey link with others they believed would have an interest in participating, thus there may
have been somewhat of a “snowball” effect as some invitees invited others to weigh in.
Since the data are based on a nonrandom sample, the results are not projectable to any
population other than the individuals expressing their points of view in this sample.
The respondents’ remarks reflect their personal positions and are not the positions of their
employers; the descriptions of their leadership roles help identify their background and the locus
of their expertise.
About a third of the expert respondents elected to remain anonymous. Because people’s level of
expertise is an important element of their participation in the conversation, anonymous
respondents were given the opportunity to share a description of their internet expertise or
background, and this was noted where relevant in this report.
In the canvassing of experts, in which Pew Research Center and Elon’s Imagining the Internet
Center asked about AI and the future of humans and asked questions tied to the internet’s 50th
Anniversary, 519 respondents overall answered the demographic questions. About 70% identified
themselves as being based in North America, while 30% hail from other corners of the world.
When asked about their “primary area of internet interest,” 33% identified themselves as
professor/teacher; 17% as research scientists; 13% as futurists or consultants; 8% as technology
developers or administrators; 5% as entrepreneurs or business leaders; 5% as advocates or
activist users; 4% as pioneers or originators; 1% as legislators, politicians or lawyers; and an
additional 13% specified their primary area of interest as “other.”
Following are two lists noting a selection of the key respondents in this canvassing.
Internet Hall of Fame members who participated include: Leonard Kleinrock, co-director of the
first host-to-host online connection, professor of computer science, University of California, Los
Angeles; Vint Cerf, co-inventor of the Internet Protocol, now vice president and chief internet
evangelist at Google; Steve Crocker, a co-initiator of many of the processes and organizations that
gave the internet its start, now CEO and co-founder of Shinkuro Inc.; Dai Davies, European
internet pioneer, a founder of EuropaNet; Elizabeth Feinler, the original manager of the ARPANET
Network Information Center; Shigeki Goto, Asia-Pacific internet pioneer; Teus Hagen,
Netherlands internet pioneer, former chair and director of NLnet; Bob Metcalfe, co-inventor of
Ethernet, founder of 3Com, now professor of innovation and entrepreneurship at the University
of Texas, Austin; Craig Partridge, chief scientist at Raytheon BBN Technologies for 35 years, now
chair of the department of computer science at Colorado State University; Lawrence Roberts,
chief scientist, designer and manager of ARPANET and founder of five startups (Dr. Roberts
passed away in December 2018); Michael M. Roberts, first president and CEO of ICANN; Henning
Schulzrinne, Internet Hall of Fame member, co-chair of the Internet Technical Committee of the
IEEE and professor at Columbia University; Paul Vixie, best known for designing and
implementing major Domain Name System protocol extensions and applications; and several
additional Hall of Famers who responded anonymously.
Additional key respondents:
Walid Al-Saqaf, senior lecturer at Sodertorn University, Sweden, and member of the board of
trustees of the Internet Society (ISOC); Aneesh Aneesh, author of “Global Labor: Algocratic
Modes of Organization”; Kostas Alexandridis, author of “Exploring Complex Dynamics in Multi-
agent-based Intelligent Systems”; Micah Altman, director of research and head scientist for the
program on information science at MIT; Geoff Arnold, chief technology officer for the Verizon
Smart Communities organization; Henry E. Brady, dean, Goldman School of Public Policy,
University of California, Berkeley; David Bray, executive director for the People-Centered Internet
coalition; Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy and author of
“Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future”; Jamais Cascio, distinguished fellow at
the Institute for the Future; Barry Chudakov, founder and principal at Sertain Research and
StreamFuzion Corp.; Joël Colloc, professor at Université du Havre Normandy University and
author of “Ethics of Autonomous Information Systems”; Kenneth Cukier, author and senior editor
at The Economist; Eileen Donahoe, executive director of the Global Digital Policy Incubator at
Stanford University; Judith Donath, Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet &
Society; William Dutton, Oxford Martin Fellow at the Global Cyber Security Capacity Centre;
Susan Etlinger, an industry analyst for Altimeter Group; Jean-Daniel Fekete, researcher in
information visualization, visual analytics and human-computer interaction at INRIA, France; Seth
Finkelstein, consulting programmer and EFF Pioneer Award winner; Charlie Firestone, executive
director and vice president of the Aspen Institute’s communications and society program; Bob
Frankston, internet pioneer and software innovator; Divina Frau-Meigs, UNESCO chair for
sustainable digital development; Richard Forno, of the Center for Cybersecurity at the University
of Maryland, Baltimore County; Oscar Gandy, professor emeritus of communication at the
University of Pennsylvania; Ashok Goel, director of the Human-Centered Computing Ph.D.
Program at Georgia Tech; Ken Goldberg, distinguished chair in engineering, director of AUTOLAB
and CITRIS at the University of California, Berkeley; Marina Gorbis, executive director of the
Institute for the Future; Theodore Gordon, futurist and co-founder of the Millennium Project;
Kenneth Grady, futurist, founding author of The Algorithmic Society blog and adjunct and adviser
at the Michigan State University College of Law; Sam Gregory, director of WITNESS and digital
human rights activist; Wendy Hall, professor of computer science at the University of
Southampton, UK, and executive director of the Web Science Institute; Perry Hewitt, a marketing,
content and technology executive; Brock Hinzmann, a partner in the Business Futures Network
who worked for 40 years as a futures researcher at SRI International; Bernie Hogan, senior
research fellow, Oxford Internet Institute; Jeff Jarvis, director of the Tow-Knight Center at City
University of New York’s Craig Newmark School of Journalism; Bryan Johnson, founder and CEO
of Kernel (developer of advanced neural interfaces) and OS Fund; Frank Kaufmann, president of
Filial Projects and founder and director of the Values in Knowledge Foundation; Andreas Kirsch,
fellow at Newspeak House, formerly with Google and DeepMind in Zurich and London; Michael
Kleeman, a senior fellow at the University of California, San Diego, and board member at the
Institute for the Future; Bart Knijnenburg, assistant professor of computer science active in the
Human Factors Institute at Clemson University; Gary L. Kreps, distinguished professor and
director of the Center for Health and Risk Communication at George Mason University; Larry
Lannom, internet pioneer and vice president at the Corporation for National Research Initiatives
(CNRI); Peter Levine, associate dean for research and Lincoln Filene Professor of Citizenship &
Public Affairs in Tufts University’s Jonathan Tisch College of Civic Life; John Markoff, fellow at the
Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University and author of “Machines
of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots”; Matt Mason,
roboticist and former director of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University; Craig J.
Mathias, principal for the Farpoint Group; Jerry Michalski, founder of the Relationship Economy
eXpedition (REX); Steven Miller, vice provost and professor of information systems at Singapore
Management University; Monica Murero, director of the E-Life International Institute and
associate professor in sociology of new technology at the University of Naples Federico II, Italy;
Grace Mutung’u, co-leader of the Kenya ICT Action Network; Ian Peter, pioneer internet activist
and internet rights advocate; Justin Reich, executive director of the MIT Teaching Systems Lab;
Peter Reiner, professor and co-founder of the National Core for Neuroethics at the University of
British Columbia; Marc Rotenberg, director of a major digital civil rights organization; Douglas
Rushkoff, writer, documentarian, and professor of media at City University of New York; David
Sarokin, author of “Missed Information: Better Information for Building a Wealthier, More
Sustainable Future”; Ben Shneiderman, distinguished professor and founder of the Human
Computer Interaction Lab at the University of Maryland; Dan Schultz, senior creative technologist
at Internet Archive; Evan Selinger, professor of philosophy at Rochester Institute of Technology;
Engineering Institute; Daniel Siewiorek, professor with the Human-Computer Interaction Institute
at Carnegie Mellon University; Mark Surman, executive director of the Mozilla Foundation and
author of “Commonspace: Beyond Virtual Community”; Brad Templeton, chair for computing at
Singularity University, software architect and former president of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation; Baratunde Thurston, futurist, former director of digital at The Onion and co-founder
of the comedy/technology startup Cultivated Wit; Stuart A. Umpleby, professor and director of
the research program in social and organizational learning at George Washington University;
in High-Stakes Public Sector Decision-Making”; Amy Webb, founder of the Future Today Institute
and professor of strategic foresight at New York University; David Wells, chief financial officer at
Netflix; Betsy Williams, researcher at the Center for Digital Society and Data Studies at the
University of Arizona; John Willinsky, professor and director of the Public Knowledge Project at
Stanford Graduate School of Education; Yvette Wohn, director of the Social Interaction Lab at the
New Jersey Institute of Technology and expert on human-computer interaction; Cliff Zukin,
professor of public policy and political science at the School for Planning and Public Policy and
the Eagleton Institute of Politics, Rutgers University
A selection of institutions at which some of the respondents work or have affiliations:
Abt Associates; Access Now; Aeon; Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence; Alpine Technology
Group; Altimeter Group; American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology; American
Library Association; Antelope Consulting; Anticipatory Futures Group; Arizona State University;
Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; Aspen Institute;
AT&T; Australian National University; Bad Idea Factory; Bar-Ilan University, Israel; Bloomberg
Businessweek; Bogazici University, Turkey; Brookings Institution; BT Group; Business Futures
Network; California Institute of Technology; Carnegie Mellon University; Center for Advanced
Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University; Centre for Policy Modelling, Manchester
Metropolitan University; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France; Cisco Systems;
Clemson University; Cloudflare; Columbia University; Comcast; Constellation Research; Cornell
University; Corporation for National Research Initiatives; Council of Europe; Agency for Electronic
Government and Information Society in Uruguay; Electronic Frontiers Australia; Electronic
Frontier Foundation; Emergent Research; ENIAC Programmers Project; Eurac Research, Italy; FSA
Technologies; Farpoint Group; Foresight Alliance; Future of Privacy Forum; Future Today Institute;
Futurism.com; Gartner; General Electric; Georgia Tech; Ginkgo Bioworks; Global Forum for Media
Development; Google; Harvard University; Hokkaido University, Japan; IBM; Internet Corporation
for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN); Ignite Social Media; Information Technology and
Innovation Foundation; Institute for Defense Analyses; Institute for the Future; Instituto Superior
Técnico, Portugal; Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies; Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF); International Academy for Systems and Cybernetic Sciences; Internet Society; Institute for
Communication & Leadership, Lucerne, Switzerland; Jet Propulsion Lab; Johns Hopkins
University; Kansai University, Japan; Institute for Systems and Robotics, University of Lisbon;
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE); Keio University, Japan; Kernel; Kyndi;
Knowledge and Digital Culture Foundation, Mexico; KPMG; Leading Futurists; LeTourneau
University; The Linux Foundation; Los Alamos National Laboratory; Machine Intelligence Research
Institute; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Maverick Technologies; McKinsey & Company;
Media Psychology Research Center; Microsoft; Millennium Project; Monster Worldwide; Mozilla;
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; National Chengchi University, Taiwan; National
Institute of Mental Health; NetLab; The New School; New York University; Netflix; NLnet
Foundation; NORC at the University of Chicago; Novartis, Switzerland; Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development; Ontario College of Art and Design Strategic Foresight and
Innovation; Open the Future; Open University of Israel; Oracle; O’Reilly Media; Global Cyber
Security Capacity Center, Oxford University; Oxford Internet Institute; Packet Clearing House;
People-Centered Internet; Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics; Politecnico di Milano;
Princeton University; Privacy International; Purdue University; Queen Mary University of London;
Quinnovation; RAND; Research ICT Africa; Rochester Institute of Technology; Rose-Hulman
Institute of Technology; Russell Sage Foundation; Salesforce; SRI International; Sciteb, London;
Shinkuro; Significance Systems; Singapore Management University; Sir Syed University of
Engineering and Technology, Pakistan; SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory; Södertörn
University, Sweden; Social Science Research Council; University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle;
South China University of Technology; Stanford University; Straits Knowledge; Team Human; The
Logic; Technische Universität Kaiserslautern, Germany; Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico; The
Crucible; United Nations; University of California, Berkeley; University of California, Los Angeles;
University of California, San Diego; University College London; University of Denver Pardee Center
for International Futures; Universitat Oberta de Catalunya; Universidade NOVA de Lisboa,
Portugal; the Universities of Alabama, Arizona, Delaware, Florida, Maryland, Michigan,
Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Southern California, Utah and Vermont; the Universities of Calcutta,
Cambridge, Cologne, Cyprus, Edinburgh, Granada, Groningen, Liverpool, Otago, Pavia, Salford and
Waterloo; UNESCO; USENIX Association; U.S. Department of Energy; U.S. Naval Postgraduate
School; U.S. Special Operations Command SOFWERX; Telecommunications and
Radiocommunications Regulator of Vanuatu; Virginia Tech; Vision & Logic; Vizalytics; World Wide
Web Foundation; Wellville; Wikimedia; Witness; Yale Law School Information Society Project.
Complete sets of credited and anonymous responses can be found here:
https://www.elon.edu/u/imagining/surveys/x-2-internet-50th-2019/credit/
https://www.elon.edu/u/imagining/surveys/x-2-internet-50th-2019/anonymous/
Acknowledgments
We are extremely thankful for the contributions of the people who participated in this
canvassing.
This report is a collaborative effort based on the input and analysis of the following individuals.
Primary researchers
Kathleen Stansberry, Research Director, Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center
Janna Anderson, Director, Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center
Lee Rainie, Director, Internet and Technology Research
Research team
Claudia Deane, Vice President, Research
Editorial and graphic design

Margaret Porteus, Information Graphics Designer
David Kent, Copy Editor
Communications and web publishing
Sara Atske, Associate Digital Producer
Shawnee Cohn, Communications Manager

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Experts Optimistic About the Next 50 Years of Digital Life

Themes about the next 50 years of life online

Experts Optimistic About the Next 50 Years of Digital Life

Themes about the next 50 years of life online

2. Internet pioneers imagine the next 50 years

‘Beyond Mars and down to molecules’

An international ‘law of the net’ treaty might be needed to solve challenges

‘Roads will be used for driverless transport of goods or pleasure’

Centralization of personal data will be irreversible in an ‘information hegemony’

Watch the rise of multi-stakeholder organizations

Brain-computer interfaces will emerge, as will nightmares about privacy

Smart prosthetics and other smart things will be common

The next phase of the internet will be ‘politically driven’

New developments will be extrapolations of the past

In schools, ‘education politics’ have stifled new tech-based learning methods

There will be ‘less privacy, less democracy, less individual self-esteem’

‘We had no idea where it would go’

Lives will improve

3. Humanity is at a precipice; its future is at stake

Daniel Riera, a professor of computer science at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, commented,

Kenneth R. Fleischmann, an associate professor at the University of Texas, Austin School of

An associate professor of computer science at a U.S. university commented, “Humans have

Miguel Moreno-Muñoz, a professor of philosophy specializing in ethics, epistemology and

Leonardo Trujillo, a research professor in computing sciences at the Instituto Tecnológico de

Benjamin Shestakofsky, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania

Jonathan Taplin, director emeritus at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg

Luis Pereira, associate professor of electronics and nanotechnologies, Universidade Nova de

Hari Shanker Sharma, an expert in nanotechnology and neurobiology at Uppsala University,

Andrea Romaoli Garcia, an international lawyer active in internet governance discussions,

Oscar Gandy, emeritus professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania, responded,

Anonymous respondents said:

From the ‘Internet of Things’ to the ‘Internet of Everything’

Lee McKnight, associate professor, School of Information Studies, Syracuse University,

Additional anonymous respondents said they expect:

Slowing the pace of internet innovation

Visions of the future: ‘Brave New World,’ ‘1984’ or ‘The Jetsons’

An anonymous respondent wrote, “Widespread networked computing will have collapsed 50

4. The internet will continue to make life better

Martin Geddes, a consultant specializing in telecommunications strategies, said, “I am optimistic

Joaquin Vanschoren, assistant professor of machine learning at Eindhoven University of

Anonymous respondents predicted:

David Schlangen, a professor of applied computational linguistics at Bielefeld University,

Kristin Jenkins, executive director of BioQUEST Curriculum Consortium, said, “Access to

Rich Ling, a professor of media technology at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore,

In 2069 the ‘new normal’ will be …

Meryl Alper, an assistant professor of communication at Northeastern University and a faculty

More leisure time expected in ‘real life’ and virtual worlds

Social connections, community and collaboration will be improved

Jean-Daniel Fekete, researcher in information visualization, visual analytics and human-computer

James Scofield O’Rourke, a professor of management at the University of Notre Dame

Susan Aaronson, a research professor of international affairs and cross-disciplinary fellow at

5. Leading concerns about the future of digital life

James Scofield O’Rourke, a professor of management at the University of Notre Dame,

Jonathan Taplin, director emeritus at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg

Corporate self-regulation is seen as unlikely remedy due to market capitalism

An anonymous respondent said, “Neo-liberal economic policies are resulting in increasing

Manoj Kumar, manager at Mitsui Orient Lines, responded, “Advancement of

A professor emeritus at a major U.S. university’s school of information responded, “I remain

Digital experiences threaten authentic human interaction