What are the biggest threats to the Internet in the next 20 years? According to experts canvassed by Pew, the biggest threats aren’t a rise in hacking attacks or new waves of Internet crime. They’re government and big online corporations.Control and consolidation were the top threats for experts canvassed by Pew’s Internet and American Life Project in a study published Thursday. The think tank asked more than 1,400 experts — academics, theorists and those who work in the technology industry — to weigh in on what risks the Internet faces through 2025.
www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/07/03/researchers-asked-1400-experts-to-describe-the-biggest-threats-to-the-web-heres-what-they-said/Also see:Government crackdowns, surveillance could destroy the open web, Pew says
The Internet as we know it faces several major dangers in the next 10 years, including interference from nation-states, an undermining of trust caused by governmental and corporate surveillance scandals and the corporate world’s influence on its basic structure, according to a new report.The Pew Research Center, in cooperation with Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center, studied more than 1,400 responses from researchers and Internet experts to a set of questions designed to forecast threats to the public internet over the next 10 years.
www.networkworld.com/article/2378598/security0/government-crackdowns-surveillance-could-destroy-the-open-web-pew-says.htmlThe Gurus Speak
Some of the most prominent and respected technology experts and analysts made far-ranging statements, encompassing many points. Their answers:Things will get better, rather than worseVint Cerf, Google vice president and co-inventor of the Internet protocol, represented many people’s views when he optimistically predicted, “Social norms will change to deal with potential harms in online social interactions … The Internet will become far more accessible than it is today — governments and corporations are finally figuring out how important adaptability is. AI [Artificial Intelligence] and natural language processing may well make the Internet far more useful than it is today.”
http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/07/03/the-gurus-speak-3/