Pew Internet and American Life Project draws national
attention
Project highlights predictions for future internet use from
1990 and 1995, will release new survey in 2005
Sarah McGlinchey / Reporter
Between 1990 and 1995, Internet leaders made valuable
predictions regarding the future of the Internet. Today,
these predictions are being released online by Elon
University and the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
Visitors of the “Imagining the Internet” database
can search the thousands of predictions, read about early
internet history, and submit a prediction.
“Everyone should be interested in studying the database
with interest, students especially, but everyone because
networked communications will play more and more of a key
role in how our world looks and feels over the next few
decades,” said Janna Anderson, assistant professor and
director of internet projects in the School of
Communications.
The Pew Internet and American Life Project teamed with Elon
in the fall of 2000. For the past two years, the internet
database has been created by Anderson, Lee Rainie, director
of the Pew Internet and American Life Project, and a member
of the School of Communications Advisory Board, and with the
help of more than 60 Elon students. These students spent time
gathering almost a quarter of the 1990-1995 predictions.
In his 1991 Scientific American article “Future
Computers,” Mark Weiser wrote, “The most profound
technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves
into the fabric of everyday life until they are
indistinguishable from it.” New technology brings micro
devices and sensors that can be embedded into most consumer
products and public facilities. As the demand for new
technology increases, these devices may become commonplace
and virtually invisible to consumers.
“As information technology is quickly becoming an
unnoticeable part of everyday objects, the era of privacy is
coming to an end,” said Anderson.
In early 2005, Elon and the Pew Internet and American Life
Project will issue a survey to participants from Microsoft,
IBM, AOL and other companies asking, “How will the
Internet change between 2004 and 2014?”
Additionally, the database will release its book, titled
“Imagining the Internet: Personalities, Prescience, and
Predictions” in the summer of 2005, from Roman and
Littlefield.
The Pew Internet and American Life Project regularly funds
projects exploring the impact of the Internet on different
communities and groups of people. Each year, 15-20 pieces of
research are released by the Project. The Project is a
non-profit branch of the Pew Research Center for People and
the Press.
For more information, visit the “Imagining the
Internet” database at
<http://www.elon.edu/predictions/>.
Contact Sarah McGlinchey at pendulum@elon.edu or
278-7247. | 
