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we hope that will inspire you to write responses that will explain your answer and illuminate important issues.”
Many times when respondents selected one scenario over another, they responded in their elaboration that both outcomes are likely to a degree or that an outcome not offered would be their true choice. Sometimes they responded that their choice was a “vote” for what they would like to see happen while indicating their concern that it will not. This influence on the quantitative numbers is one that renders them ineffective as a true measure of what these experts feel might actually happen in the future.
Experts were located in two ways. First, several thousand were identified in an extensive canvassing of scholarly, government, and business documents from the period 1990–1995 to see who had ventured predictions about the future impact of the Internet. Several hundred of them participated in the first three surveys conducted by Pew Internet and Elon University, and they were re-contacted for this survey. Second, expert participants were selected due to their positions as stakeholders in the development of the Internet.
Survey respondents could remain anonymous or take credit for their remarks, as they chose. Among the respondents who agreed to be credited for their remarks were Clay Shirky, Esther Dyson, Doc Searls, Nicholas Carr, Susan Crawford, David Clark, Jamais Cascio, Peter Norvig, Craig Newmark, Hal Varian, Howard Rheingold, Andreas Kluth, Robert Cannon, Jeff Jarvis, Andy Oram, Kevin Werbach, David Sifry, Dan Gillmor, Marc Rotenberg, Stowe Boyd, Andrew Nachison, Anthony Townsend, Ethan Zuckerman, Tom Wolzien, Stephen Downes, Rebecca MacKinnon, Jim Warren, Sandra Braman, Barry Wellman, Seth Finkelstein, Jerry Berman, Tiffany Shlain, and Stewart Baker, to name a few.
The respondents’ remarks reflect their personal positions on the issues and are not the positions of their employers; however, their leadership roles in key organizations help identify them as experts. Following is a representative list of some of the institutions at which respondents work or have affiliations: Google, Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Yahoo, Intel, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Ericsson Research, Nokia, New York Times,