Imagining the Internet conducted a video survey of IGF-Egypt participants, recording formal interviews with 43 people who were willing to take credit for their responses to five questions. The convenience sample of responses to the prompt “Describe the future of the Internet in one word” was gathered at random from among the 1,800 or so people attending the 2009 event. Use the video viewer on this page to sample a selection of representative answers to the prompt asked in the five-question survey.
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>Question One: Continuing IGF
>Question Two: Hope for the Internet
>Question Three: Concern for the Internet
>Question Four: 20 years from now
>Question Five: Internet in one word
The majority of the people interviewed expressed the view that “hope” or “hopeful” best describes the future of the Internet in one word. The second most popular selection was “open” or “openness.”
Other choices included: contested, fragile, interesting, confusing, united, interoperability, inclusive, change, connection, ubiquitous, pervasive, dynamic, empowerment, limitless, promising, bright, great, cool, amazing.
And many people did not use one word to describe the Internet in one word. Among these choices were seamless universality, the source, there in the clouds, to dream, basic infrastructure, promising and growing, promoting enlightenment and a human right.
Interviews were conducted by Andie Diemer, Shelley Russell, Drew Smith and Eugene Daniel, researchers from Elon University’s School of Communications, under the supervision of Janna Anderson, associate professor and director of the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon.