The surveys are conducted to help accurately identify current attitudes about the potential future for communications networks and are not meant to imply any type of futures forecast.
Respondents to the Future of the Internet IV survey, fielded from Dec. 2, 2009 to Jan. 11, 2010, were asked to consider the future of the Internet-connected world between now and 2020 and the likely innovation that will occur. They were asked to assess 10 different “tension pairs”—each pair offering two different 2020 scenarios with the same overall theme and opposite outcomes—and they were asked to select the one most likely choice of the two statements. The tension pairs and their alternative outcomes were constructed to reflect previous industry, government, and media reports and public sentiments about the likely evolution of the Internet. They were reviewed and edited by the Pew Internet Advisory Board.
Results were released by the survey authors—Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, and Janna Anderson, director of the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University—in six reports over the course of 2010: