Imagining the Internet

A vision for the future

This is one of nearly a thousand foresight statements shared by people from around the world. To return to the Voices of the People home page, click here. To do a refined search of the Voices of the People statements, click here. To submit your ideas to this online archive, look to the upper right corner of this page, click on "Share Your Prediction" and fill in the pop-up form.

Name: Pablos

From: California

Bio: I've watched the internet grow from Telnet and HyperTerminal to the more visual IExplorer

Area of Expertise: Author/Editor/Journalist

Topic: General, Overarching Remarks

Headline: Dual Realities

Nutshell: While at present the world is sharply defined between the real and the virtual, the children of the future will grow up in a world where the virtual and the real come ever closer to one another and eventually I believe those defining lines will blur, if not vanish completely.

Vision: The reality of today could soon find itself on the endangered species list as communications technology advances at breakneck speeds.

More and more companies are taking gambles to put out the image that they are on the cutting edge of technology. They quickly find that the cutting edge soon dulls and must be constantly resharpened, until they are caught up in a constant fight to stay on top.

The speed at which modern communications technology is filling the world is almost dazzling. Soon we will be able to network our cellular phones to our home PC's, until we are even able to play programs on our phones at broadband speeds. Soon we will be able to recieve real-time information anywhere on the globe.

What is perhaps the most frightening aspect of this race towards the future is that our children, raised in a culture of video and computer games, are already beginning to live dual lives, one online and one offline.

I myself have found that the first thing I do when I get home is check my e-mail. I predict that soon, these two lives will merge together until the social definitions of a friend being someone who is right next to you, always there for you, could begin to extend to these faceless chatters who one might never meet.

Soon after this, once real-time images can be relayed to the common man's cell phone, these faceless chatters will suddenly have faces and the distance and social barriers will break down even further.

You might meet your future wife on your cell phone, or go on a virtual date, meet a group of friends, or meet all your friends. The future is not a world of cities and countryside so much as a world of the real and the virtual, and these worlds are beginning to become one and the same.

Date Submitted: 11/11/2004