It's an interesting read from PEW Internet & American Life Project. The report, The Future of the Internet III states the experts agree that the mobile phone will become the primary device for online access and they disagree about whether or not the technology and the Internet will lead to more social tolerance, more forgiving human relations or better home lives. Their predictions are for scenarios in 2020. Other observations they make are:"The division between personal and professional time will disappear: A majority of expert respondents (56%) agreed with the statement that in 2020 "few lines (will) divide professional from personal time, and that's OK." While some people are hopeful about a hyper connected future with more freedom, flexibility, and life enhancements, others express fears that mobility and ubiquity of networked computing devices will be harmful for most people by adding to stress and challenging family life and social life."
"Telephones in 2020 will be archaic, relics of a bygone era-like transistor radios are today. Telephony, which will be entirely IP based by then, will be a standard communications chip on many devices. We'll probably carry some kind of screen-based reading device that will perform this function, though I assume when we want to communicate verbally, we'll do so through a tiny, earplug based device."--Josh Quittner, executive editor of Fortune Magazine and longtime technology journalist and editor
"By 2020, the Internet will have enabled the monitoring and manipulation of people by businesses and governments on a scale never before imaginable. Most people will have happily traded their privacy-consciously or unconsciously-for consumer benefits such as increased convenience and lower prices. As a result, the line between marketing and manipulation will have largely disappeared."--Nicholas Carr, author of the Rough Type blog and "The Big Switch"
# # #
I think these predictions are sobering thoughts. I've stated before that the lines between work and personal time are blurring. I'm not completely convinced that telephony will become all IP either. The PSTN stands in the way or it stands as an icon that simply works, is reliable and isn't that expensive (yet).
Mobility is what people want because by nature, people are mobile, and yet desk phones won't disappear. Instead, I think they will always appear, especially where needed.
More importantly, I still see pressing concerns ahead about the roles of environment and energy. IT hasn't come to mature terms with what truly is sustainable and what isn't. The new economy isn't about IT, telecom or creating unforgettable customer experiences. In reckoning many past due accounts, reducing or negating negative environmental, social or energy impacts won't be a means to right past wrongs. The Internet won't deliver on the "more social tolerance and forgiving human relations or better home lives," but people can do so by using the Internet as a tool. We will see conformists and non-conformists fighting amongst a seemingly in-your-face socialized system that can disrupt the original intentions of the Internet.
Some people will unplug and disconnect and are more inclined to becoming anti-technological--even branching out to be unfound on the web thus giving new meaning to "going underground." Recalling the movie, "The Illustrated Man," from the collection of numerous science fiction short stories by Ray Bradbury the movie depicts the tensions between technology and human psychology.
