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About The Imagining
The Internet Center

Imagining the Internet explores and provides insights into the impact of Internet evolution. It exposes future possibilities and provides a peek at the past. Here you will find the words of many thousands of people from every corner of the world, from today and yesterday, sharing thoughts about the likely future of humankind.

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Time Capsule:
Past Future Forecasts

When the telegraph, radio, telephone, TV and the Internet were invented, people predicted they would bring world peace. What looms in the future? AI far superior to human intelligence? Brain downloads? Here we offer three collections, about early 20th-century media, the 1990s 'Net and the insights of futurists in 2005.

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Multimedia Reports
From Global Gatherings

How will newly emerging communications technologies change our lives and our world? What are the greatest challenges and opportunities that lie ahead? Researchers from Elon University conduct video surveys and cover the major news events at international conferences, gleaning insights about the potential future.

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'Future of the Internet'
Surveys Raise Issues

Elon University and Pew Internet Project researchers conduct biennial surveys, asking leaders to share their expectations for the future. They are offered a series of predictions to which they respond with richly detailed elaborations on the opportunities and challenges emerging at this time of accelerating change.

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Voices of the People:
Share Your Prediction

Share your own thoughts about the future of humans and networked communications or just browse through and read the fascinating foresight statements that nearly a thousand people from around the world have shared in their contributions to the Imagining the Internet site.

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Latest Project: Documenting the World Technology Policy Forum

Elon team in Geneva

The WTPF and WSIS 2013, Geneva

Imagining the Internet has a research team at the World Technology Policy Forum and the World Summit on the Information Society conferences in Geneva, Switzerland, this week. They are conducting video interviews with delegates to these United Nations-facilitated conferences on the future of the Internet, gathering people's opinions about crucial issues.