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June 4, 2014
from
Disinfo
Website
The bad:
A new report from the Pew Research Center Internet Project and Elon University's Imagining the Internet Center looks further ahead to 2025, and asks how things will have moved on by then (full report: Digital Life in 2025 - Experts Predict the Internet will Become 'Like Electricity' - Less Visible, yet more Deeply Embedded in People's Lives, for Good and Ill).
Its conclusions - summarized below - are based
on responses from 2,551 people, both Internet "experts" and members of the
public.
Dams and bridges will send maintenance data to
engineers. Paper towel dispensers will bleep attendants when they need
refilling. Fridges will automatically buy milk when the carton runs empty.
Storekeepers will move from a stocking model
where they take regular deliveries in response to shortages, to "flows"
where inventory is updated more responsively.
How can it really not?
With surveillance ubiquitous and everything quantified, it's going to be hard to escape from someone's electronic eye, whether it's the NSA or a company.
Frank Pasquale, a law professor at the University of Maryland, says:
Aaron Balick, a psychotherapist, thinks we could lose sight of ourselves.
All of which is likely to increase the premium
on ways to "disengage from the network," the report says. |