Respondents Say Building Network Capacity and Technological Knowledge Should Be the Top Priority
We asked a separate question about setting priorities for future investments in communications technology. Most respondents identified building network capacity and technological literacy as the first or second priority for policy makers and technology leaders to pursue.
Following closely as a priority was “creating a legal and operating environment that allows people to use the Internet the way they want, using the software they want.”
Internet sociologist Howard Rheingold expressed the consensus of the respondents reflecting on the setting of priorities. “Without affordable access, knowledge of how to use the technology, and the legal and operating environment that permits innovation,” he wrote, “we won’t see the creative explosion we saw with personal computers and the Internet. Digital rights management, ‘trusted computing’ that bakes restrictions into hardware, and extensions of copyright law such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act are roadblocks that could strangle a global creative renaissance before it can take root worldwide.” Internet Society board chairman and Internet Engineering Task Force member Fred Baker wrote, “Education is key to Internet deployment and use…I therefore placed it first.”
Thinking Ahead to 2020: A Sampling of Revealing Predictions Selected From the Thousands of Answers That Were Submitted to Open-Ended Questions in the Survey
“In 2020 it may no longer be ‘screens’ with which we interact. What I mean by ‘screen time’ in 2020 is time spent thinking about and interacting with artificially generated stimuli. Human-to-human nonmediated interaction counts as ‘face time’ even if you do it with a telephone or video wall.” — Glenn Ricart, executive director, PricewaterhouseCoopers Advanced Research; member of the board of trustees of the Internet Society