In late 2005 and the first quarter of 2006, the Pew Internet Project issued an e-mail invitation to a select group of technology thinkers, stakeholders, and social analysts, asking them to complete a second, scenario-based quantitative and qualitative survey about the future of the Internet—The Future of the Internet II. Rainie and Anderson also asked the initial group of respondents to forward the invitation to colleagues and friends who might provide interesting perspectives.
Some 742 people responded to the Future II survey between November 30, 2005, and April 4, 2006. More than half are Internet pioneers who were online before 1993. Roughly one-quarter of the respondents said they live and work in a nation outside of North America.
The respondents’ answers represent their personal views and in no way reflect the perspectives of their employers. Many survey participants were hand picked due to their positions as stakeholders in the development of the Internet or they were reached through the leadership listservs of top technology organizations, including the Internet Society, Association for Computing Machinery, the World Wide Web Consortium, the UN Working Group on Internet Governance, Internet2, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, International Telecommunication Union, Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, Association of Internet Researchers, and the American Sociological Association’s Information Technology Research section.
About the Survey Participants
Many top Internet leaders, activists, and commentators participated in the survey, including David Clark, Gordon Bell, Esther Dyson, Fred Baker, Scott Hollenbeck, Robert Shaw, Ted Hardie, Pekka Nikander, Alejandro Pisanty, Bob Metcalfe, Peng Hwa Ang, Hal Varian, Geert Lovink, Cory Doctorow, Anthony Rutkowski, Robert Anderson, Ellen Hume, Howard Rheingold, Douglas Rushkoff, Steve Cisler, Marilyn Cade, Marc Rotenberg, Alan Levin, Eugene Spafford, Veni Markovski, Franck Martin, Greg Cole, Paul Saffo, Thomas Narten, Alan Inouye, Seth Finkelstein, Teddy Purwadi, Luc Faubert, John Browning, and David Weinberger, to name a few.