The School of Communications has received financial support from a leading global technology organization.
The Internet Society has made a $28,000 gift to the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University to support its continuing efforts to illuminate Internet issues and share people’s visions for the future of communications and the future of the world.
The Internet Society, http://www.internetsociety.org/ also known as ISOC, is an international, nonprofit organization founded in 1992 to provide direction in Internet standards, education and policy. It works to improve the architecture of the Internet and to illuminate issues and cultivate constructive discussions about the future of the Internet.
ISOC’s 50,000 members include individuals and organizations that support and promote the work of the standards-setting bodies for which it is the organizational home: the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG), and the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF).
Imagining the Internet, http://www.imaginingtheinternet.org, got its start in 2000, when Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, provided funding for an investigation into early 1990s predictions about the future of the Internet. The center has grown from there to include much more, including journalistic documentation of major policy events and conferences and the foremost collection of video documenting people’s hopes and fears for the future of the Internet.
The Imagining the Internet Center has recorded a number of highlight accomplishments in the past year. The center was named a Computerworld Honors Program Laureate for its use of information technology to promote positive social, economic and educational change. Center director Janna Anderson presented a 10-minute video on the future of the Internet at the Danish Top Executives Summit in Copenhagen; led a session on the future of the Internet at the South By Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas; delivered a keynote at Webcom 10 in Montreal; and was a keynote speaker at MobilityShifts, a conference on the future of learning hosted by The New School in New York City. Cambria’s book-length version of the fourth expert-predictions survey, “The Future of the Internet IV: Challenges and Opportunities,” was published. And a team of 26 people from Imagining the Internet participated in IGF-USA 2011, and a documentary video team conducted a video survey at the global IGF in Nairobi, Kenya.