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: Mark Leenders

From: Canada

Bio: Programmer since 1971, employed in IT, met my wife on line in the late 1990s.

Area of Expertise: Technology Developer/Administrator

Topic: General, Overarching Remarks

Headline: Where is the Internet?

Nutshell: The internet will evolve from a thing to be observed to a place to be entered.

Vision: The internet will become a "place" to enter, in virtual reality, when computing power, bandwidth, and the availability of VR peripherals make this possible. Transmission of touch, taste, and smell will enhance the experience provided by mere eyephones.

Addiction to the internet, virtual-reality experiences, and games will become a major social problem by 2010. The first inklings of cultural awareness of this can be seen in current TV commercials in which children must be enticed away from conventional video games.

Larry Niven's SF vision of "wireheads", hopelessly addicted to electrical stimulation of the pleasure centers of their brains, will be curiosly mimicked by internet and VR addiction. Virtual Reality will also revolutionize the nature of romantic relationships over the net.

Date Submitted: 11/11/2004