essay on internet and society

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The Impact of the Internet on Society: A Global Perspective

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The Internet is the decisive technology of the Information Age, and with the explosion of wireless communication in the early twenty-first century, we can say that humankind is now almost entirely connected, albeit with great levels of inequality in bandwidth, efficiency, and price.

People, companies, and institutions feel the depth of this technological change, but the speed and scope of the transformation has triggered all manner of utopian and dystopian perceptions that, when examined closely through methodologically rigorous empirical research, turn out not to be accurate. For instance, media often report that intense use of the Internet increases the risk of isolation, alienation, and withdrawal from society, but available evidence shows that the Internet neither isolates people nor reduces their sociability; it actually increases sociability, civic engagement, and the intensity of family and friendship relationships, in all cultures.

Our current “network society” is a product of the digital revolution and some major sociocultural changes. One of these is the rise of the “Me-centered society,” marked by an increased focus on individual growth and a decline in community understood in terms of space, work, family, and ascription in general. But individuation does not mean isolation, or the end of community. Instead, social relationships are being reconstructed on the basis of individual interests, values, and projects. Community is formed through individuals’ quests for like-minded people in a process that combines online interaction with offline interaction, cyberspace, and the local space.

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• A Revolution in Business • Banking, Information, and Technology: Toward Knowledge Banking • Cyber Attacks

Globally, time spent on social networking sites surpassed time spent on e-mail in November 2007, and the number of social networking users surpassed the number of e-mail users in July 2009. Today, social networking sites are the preferred platforms for all kinds of activities, both business and personal, and sociability has dramatically increased — but it is a different kind of sociability. Most Facebook users visit the site daily, and they connect on multiple dimensions, but only on the dimensions they choose. The virtual life is becoming more social than the physical life, but it is less a virtual reality than a real virtuality, facilitating real-life work and urban living.

Because people are increasingly at ease in the Web’s multidimensionality, marketers, government, and civil society are migrating massively to the networks people construct by themselves and for themselves. At root, social-networking entrepreneurs are really selling spaces in which people can freely and autonomously construct their lives. Sites that attempt to impede free communication are soon abandoned by many users in favor of friendlier and less restricted spaces.

Perhaps the most telling expression of this new freedom is the Internet’s transformation of sociopolitical practices. Messages no longer flow solely from the few to the many, with little interactivity. Now, messages also flow from the many to the many, multimodally and interactively. By disintermediating government and corporate control of communication, horizontal communication networks have created a new landscape of social and political change.

Networked social movements have been particularly active since 2010, notably in the Arab revolutions against dictatorships and the protests against the management of the financial crisis. Online and particularly wireless communication has helped social movements pose more of a challenge to state power.

The Internet and the Web constitute the technological infrastructure of the global network society, and the understanding of their logic is a key field of research. It is only scholarly research that will enable us to cut through the myths surrounding this digital communication technology that is already a second skin for young people, yet continues to feed the fears and the fantasies of those who are still in charge of a society that they barely understand.

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Society and the Internet: How Networks of Information and Communication are Changing Our Lives (1st edn)

Director of Research and Senior Research Fellow

Professor of Internet Studies

A newer edition of this book is available.

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How is society being reshaped by the continued diffusion and increasing centrality of the Internet in everyday life and work? Society and the Internet provides key readings for students, scholars, and anyone with a serious interest in understanding the interactions of the Internet and society. Spawned from a series of lectures at the University of Oxford, this multidisciplinary set of theoretically and empirically anchored chapters address the big questions about perhaps the most significant technological transformation of the 21st century. The authors employ a diversity of data, methods, and approaches to address these questions in creative ways. Internet research needs to keep learning from the past, ground itself in a diversity of disciplinary perspectives, and continue to look to the future. In doing so, Internet Studies can address core questions about equality, voice, knowledge, participation, and power; and provide a better understanding of what the ever-changing configurations of technology and society mean not only for everyday life, but also for major developments in the politics, economic, and cultural development of societies across the world. Understanding the role of the Internet in society is critical to addressing the major issues of policy and practice, from the nature of democracy and freedom of expression to how we learn, work and play in everyday life. If you are to harness the potential of the Internet and avoid the risks that are still real for our networked society, you can start by critically examining this collection of work focused on society and the Internet.

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Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

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• Experts Optimistic About the Next 50 Years of Digital Life
• 4. The internet will continue to make life better

Table of Contents

• 1. Themes about the next 50 years of life online
• 2. Internet pioneers imagine the next 50 years
• 3. Humanity is at a precipice; its future is at stake
• 5. Leading concerns about the future of digital life
• About this canvassing of experts
• Acknowledgments

A large share of respondents predict enormous potential for improved quality of life over the next 50 years for most individuals thanks to internet connectivity, although many said the benefits of a wired world are not likely to be evenly distributed.

Andrew Tutt , an expert in law and author of “An FDA for Algorithms,” said, “We are still only about to enter the era of complex automation. It will revolutionize the world and lead to groundbreaking changes in transportation, industry, communication, education, energy, health care, communication, entertainment, government, warfare and even basic research. Self-driving cars, trains, semi-trucks, ships and airplanes will mean that goods and people can be transported farther, faster and with less energy and with massively fewer vehicles. Automated mining and manufacturing will further reduce the need for human workers to engage in rote work. Machine language translation will finally close the language barrier, while digital tutors, teachers and personal assistants with human qualities will make everything from learning new subjects to booking salon appointments faster and easier. For businesses, automated secretaries, salespeople, waiters, waitress, baristas and customer support personnel will lead to cost savings, efficiency gains and improved customer experiences. Socially, individuals will be able to find AI pets, friends and even therapists who can provide the love and emotional support that many people so desperately want. Entertainment will become far more interactive, as immersive AI experiences come to supplement traditional passive forms of media. Energy generation and health care will vastly improve with the addition of powerful AI tools that can take a systems-level view of operations and locate opportunities to gain efficiencies in design and operation. AI-driven robotics (e.g., drones) will revolutionize warfare. Finally, intelligent AI will contribute immensely to basic research and likely begin to create scientific discoveries of its own.”

Arthur Bushkin , an IT pioneer who worked with the precursors to ARPANET and Verizon, wrote, “Of course, the impact of the internet has been dramatic and largely positive. The devil is in the details and the distribution of the benefits.”

Mícheál Ó Foghlú , engineering director and DevOps Code Pillar at Google, Munich, said, “Despite the negatives I firmly believe that the main benefits have been positive, allowing economies and people to move up the value chain, ideally to more rewarding levels of endeavor.”

Perry Hewitt , a marketing, content and technology executive, wrote, “On an individual basis, we will think about our digital assets as much as our physical ones. Ideally, we will have more transparent control over our data, and the ability to understand where it resides and exchange it for value – negotiating with the platform companies that are now in a winner-take-all position. Some children born today are named with search engine-optimization in mind; we’ll be thinking more comprehensively about a set of rights and responsibilities of personal data that children are born with. Governments will have a higher level of regulation and protection of individual data. On an individual level, there will be greater integration of technology with our physical selves. For example, I can see devices that augment hearing and vision, and that enable greater access to data through our physical selves. Hard for me to picture what that looks like, but 50 years is a lot of time to figure it out. On a societal level, AI will have affected many jobs. Not only the truck drivers and the factory workers, but professions that have been largely unassailable – law, medicine – will have gone through a painful transformation. Overall I am bullish in our ingenuity to find a higher and better use for those humans, but it seems inevitable that we’ll struggle through a murky dip before we get there. By 2069, we’ll likely be out the other end. My biggest concern about the world 50 years out is the physical condition of the planet. It seems entirely reasonable that a great deal of our digital lives will be focused on habitable environments: identifying them, improving them, expanding them.”

David Cake , an active leader with Electronic Frontiers Australia and vice chair of the ICANN GNSO Council, wrote, “Significant, often highly communication and computation technologically driven, advances in day-to-day areas like health care, safety and human services, will continue to have a significant measurable improvement in many lives, often ‘invisible’ as an unnoticed reduction in bad outcomes, will continue to reduce the incidence of human-scale disasters. Advances in opportunities for self-actualisation through education, community and creative work will continue (though monetisation will continue to be problematic).”

Eugene H. Spafford , internet pioneer and professor of computing sciences at Purdue University, founder and executive director emeritus of the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security, commented, “New uses, information sources and paradigms will improve the lives of many. However, the abuses, dilution of privacy and crime will also make things worse.”

Jeff Jarvis, director of the Tow-Knight Center at City University of New York’s Craig Newmark School of Journalism, commented, “One need be fairly cynical about one’s fellow humans and somewhat hubristic about one’s own exceptional abilities to argue that most people will act against their own self-interest to adopt technologies that will be harmful to them. This is why I am driven nuts by the contentions that we have all become addicted to our devices against our will, that the internet has made us stupid in spite of our education, that social media has made us uncivil no matter our parenting, as if these technologies could, in a mere matter of a few years, change our very nature as human beings. Bull. This dystopian worldview gives people no credit for their agency, their good will, their common sense, their intelligence and their willingness to explore and experiment. We will figure out how to adopt technologies of benefit and reject technologies that harm. Of course, there will be exceptions to that rule – witness America’s inability to come to terms with an invention made a millennium ago: gunpowder. But much of the rest of the civilized world has figured that one out.”

Andrew Odlyzko , professor at the University of Minnesota and former head of its Digital Technology Center and the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute, said, “Assuming we avoid giant disasters, such as runaway climate change or huge pandemics, we should be able to overcome many of the problems that plague humanity, in health and freedom from physical wants, and from backbreaking or utterly boring jobs. This will bring in other problems, of course.”

Pedro U. Lima , an associate professor of computer science at Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, Portugal, said, “Most of the focus on technology and particularly AI and machine learning developments these days is limited to virtual systems (e.g., apps for travel booking, social networks, search engines, games). I expect this to move, in the next 50 years, into networking people with machines, remotely operating in a myriad of environments, such as homes, hospitals, factories, sport arenas and so on. This will change work as we know it today, as it will change medicine (increasing remote surgery), travel (autonomous and remotely-guided cars, trains, planes), entertainment (games where real robots, instead of virtual agents, evolve in real scenarios). These are just a few ideas/scenarios. Many more, difficult to anticipate today, will appear. They will bring further challenges on privacy, security and safety, which everyone should be closely watching and monitoring. Beyond current discussions on privacy problems concerning ‘virtual world’ apps, we need to consider that ‘real world’ apps may enhance many of those problems, as they interact physically and/or in proximity with humans.”

Timothy Leffel , research scientist, National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, predicted, “Future historians will observe that, in many ways, the rise of the internet over the next few decades will have improved the world, but it hasn’t been without its costs that were sometimes severe and disruptive to entire industries and nations.”

Dave Gusto , co-director of the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University, commented, “Fifty years is a terrifically long time for forecasting. A lot might be riding on, for example, what happens with the current conflict around net neutrality and the way that public or private interests get to shape the net from now forward. But within either pathway – public-interest dominated or private-interest dominated – the ability of some actors to enjoy the highest-end benefits and many actors to use what they can access or can manage to learn is a likely contour to the overall system. I think that a vast diversity of uses will characterize the future system, focusing on experience, entertainment and education, enhanced by AR and VR.”

A representative for a Middle Eastern telecommunication directorate wrote that online life will continue to be a plus in most individuals’ lives, adding, “As far as technological history is concerned, there has been no single case that the advance of technology and innovation has worsened the lives of individuals. This is similarly valid for AI.”

Living longer and better lives is the shining promise of the digital age

Many respondents to this canvassing agreed that internet advancement is likely to lead to better human-health outcomes, although perhaps not for everyone. As the following comments show, experts foresee new cures for chronic illnesses, rapid advancement in biotechnology and expanded access to care thanks to the development of better telehealth systems.

Steve Crocker , CEO and co-founder of Shinkuro Inc., internet pioneer and Internet Hall of Fame member, responded, “Life will improve in multiple ways. One in particular I think worth mentioning will be improvements in health care in three distinct ways. One is significantly better medical technology related to cancer and other major diseases. The second is significantly reduced cost of health care. The third is much higher and broader availability of high-quality health care, thereby reducing the differences in outcomes between wealthy and poor citizens.”

Susan Etlinger , an industry analyst for Altimeter Group expert in data, analytics and digital strategy, commented, “Many of the technologies we see commercialized today began in government and university research labs. Fifty years ago, computers were the size of walk-in closets, and the notion of personal computers was laughable to most people. Today we’re facing another shift, from personal and mobile to ambient computing. We’re also seeing a huge amount of research in the areas of prosthetics, neuroscience and other technologies intended to translate brain activity into physical form. All discussion of transhumanism aside, there are very real current and future applications for technology ‘implants’ and prosthetics that will be able to aid mobility, memory, even intelligence, and other physical and neurological functions. And, as nearly always happens, the technology is far ahead of our understanding of the human implications. Will these technologies be available to all, or just to a privileged class? What happens to the data? Will it be protected during a person’s lifespan? What happens to it after death? Will it be ‘willed’ as a digital legacy to future generations? What are the ethical (and for some, religious and spiritual) implications of changing the human body with technology? In many ways, these are not new questions. We’ve used technology to augment the physical form since the first caveman picked up a walking stick. But the key here will be to focus as much (or more) on the way we use these technologies as we do on inventing them.”

Bernie Hogan , senior research fellow at Oxford Internet Institute, wrote, “Tech will make life better for individuals but not for societies. Life-saving drugs, genetic medicine, effective talk therapy, better recommender systems will all serve individuals in a satisfying way. I am concerned, however, that these will create increased dependency and passivity. We already have trends toward better-behaved, less-experimental and less-sexually-active youth. The increased sense that one’s entire life is marked from cradle to grave will create a safer and more productive life, but perhaps one that is a little less low-risk and constrained.”

Kenneth Grady , futurist and founding author of The Algorithmic Society blog, responded, “Fifty years from now today’s notions of privacy will feel as out of date as horse and buggy transportation feels to us. Our homes, transportation, appliances, communication devices and even our clothes will be constantly communicating as part of a digital network. We have enough pieces of this today that we can somewhat imagine what it will be like. Through our clothes, doctors can monitor in real time our vital signs, metabolic condition and markers relevant to specific diseases. Parents will have real-time information about young children. The difference in the future will be the constant sharing of information, data updates and responses of all these interconnected devices. The things we create will interact with us to protect us. Our notions of privacy and even liability will be redefined. Lowering the cost and increasing the effectiveness of health care will require sharing information about how our bodies are functioning. Those who opt out may have to accept palliative hospice care over active treatment. Not keeping track of children real-time may be considered a form of child neglect. Digital will do more than connect our things to each other – it will invade our bodies. Advances in prosthetics, replacement organs and implants will turn our bodies into digital devices. This will create a host of new issues, including defining ‘human’ and where the line exists between that human and the digital universe – if people are always connected, always on are humans now part of the internet?”

Martin Geddes , a consultant specializing in telecommunications strategies, said, “I am optimistic that we will find a new harmony with technology, having been in dissonance for a long time. This will not be due to newfound wisdom or virtue, but due to the collapse of longstanding cultures and structures that are psychopathic in nature, including today’s central banking systems and mass-surveillance systems. The digital and nano/biotech renaissance is only just beginning, and it will in particular transform health care. Our ‘satnav for live’ will help us navigate all daily choices that impact well-being.”

Danil Mikhailov , head of data and innovation for Wellcome Trust, responded, “My view is that the internet and related digital tech such as AI 50 years from now will have mostly positive effects, but only if we manage its development wisely. In health, the pervasiveness of powerful algorithms embedded in mobile tech doing things like monitoring our vitals and cross-referencing with our genetic information, will mean longer and healthier lives and the disappearance of many diseases. Similarly, AI embedded in devices or wearables can be applied to predict and ameliorate many mental health illnesses. However, there is potential for there to be huge inequalities in our societies in the ability of individuals to access such technologies, causing both social disruption and new causes for mental health diseases, such as depression and anxiety. On balance, I am an optimist about the ability of human beings to adjust and develop new ethical norms for dealing with such issues.”

Dan Robitzski , a reporter covering science and technology for Futurism.com, commented, “The powers that be are not the powers that should be. Surveillance technology, especially that powered by AI algorithms, is becoming more powerful and all-present than ever before. But to look at that and say that technology won’t help people is absurd. Medical technology, technology to help people with disabilities, technology that will increase our comfort and abilities as humans will continue to appear and develop.”

Emanuele Torti , a research professor in the computer science department at the University of Pavia, Italy, responded, “The digital revolution will bring benefits in particular for health, providing personalized monitoring through Internet of Things and wearable devices. The AI will analyze those data in order to provide personalized medicine solutions.”

João Pedro Taveira , embedded systems researcher and smart grids architect for INOV INESC Inovação, Portugal, wrote, “The most noticeable change for better in the next 50 years will be in health and average life expectancy. At this pace, and, taking into account the developments in digital technologies, I hope that several discoveries will reduce the risk of death, such as cancer or even death by road accident. New drugs could be developed, increasing the active work age and possibility maintaining the sustainability of countries’ social health care and retirement funds.”

José Estabil , director of entrepreneurship and innovation at MIT’s Skoltech Initiative, commented, “AI, like the electric engine, will affect society in ways that are not linearly forecastable. (For example, the unification of villages through electric engines in subways has created what we know as Paris, London, Moscow and Manhattan). Another area AI can have impact is in creating the framework within genomics, epigenomics and metabolomics can be used to keep people healthy and to intervene when we start to deviate from health. Indeed, with AI we may be able to hack the brain and other secreting cells so that we can auto-generate lifesaving medicines, block unwanted biological processes (e.g., cancer), and coupled to understanding the brain, be able to hack at neurological disorders.”

Jay Sanders , president and CEO of the Global Telemedicine Group, responded, “Haptics will afford the ability to touch/feel at a distance so that in the medical space a physician at one location will literally be able to examine a patient at a distance.”

A director of marketing for a major technology platform company commented, “I was an early user of ARPANET at Carnegie Mellon University, and even then we were able to utilize internet technology to solve human health problems to make citizens’ lives better and improve their access to care and services to improve their health outcomes. The benefits of the internet in the health care industry have continued to improve access to care and services, particularly for elderly, disabled or rural citizens. Digital tools will continue to be integrated into daily life to help the most vulnerable and isolated who need services, care and support. With laws supporting these groups, benefits in these areas will continue and expand to include behavioral health and resources for this group and for others. In the area of behavioral health in particular, digital tools will provide far-reaching benefits to citizens who need services but do not access them directly in person. Access to behavioral health will increase significantly in the next 50 years as a result of more enhanced and widely available digital tools made available to practitioners for delivering care to vulnerable populations, and by minimizing the stigma of accessing this type of care in person. It is a more affordable, personalized and continuous way of providing this type of care that is also more likely to attain adherence.”

The cyborg generation: Humans will partner more directly with technology

Many experts foresaw a future where the integration of technology and the human body would lead to a hybridization of humanity and technology.

Barry Chudakov , founder and principal of Sertain Research and author of “Metalifestream,” commented, “In 50 years the internet will not be a place to access through a device; it will be the all-surrounding ether of actions and intentions as machine intelligence and learning merge with human intelligence. This will be a natural evolution of adopting the logic of our tools and adjusting our lives accordingly. Pathways to digital life will be neural pathways inside our bodies and brains. We will eat our technology. What is now external mediated through devices will become neural, mediated through neural triggers along neural pathways. Having gone (and living) inside us, the merger with our tools and devices will continue to accelerate due to advances in machine learning. Human identity will morph into an open question, an ongoing discussion.”

Sam Lehman-Wilzig , associate professor and former chair of the School of Communication, Bar-Ilan University, Israel, wrote, “Given the huge (and completely unpredicted) changes of the ‘internet’ over the past 50 years, this question demands out-of-the-box thinking, which I will do here. Literally. In my estimation, within the next 50 years the internet will mainly become the platform for brain-to-brain communication, i.e., no keyboard, no voice, no screen, no text or pictures – merely ‘neuronic’ communication (thought transmission) at the speed of light, with internet speeds reaching terabytes per second, if not more than that. This also means that the main ‘content’ will be various forms of full-experience VR, fed directly to our brains by professional content providers – and perhaps (a bit science-fictiony at this stage) from our brains to other brains as well. The consequences of such a ‘hive mind’ communication are difficult (if not impossible) to predict, but certainly it will constitute a radical break with past human society.”

Joaquin Vanschoren , assistant professor of machine learning at Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands, responded, “We will be able to interact with each other and the world’s information more directly, without going through web interfaces, maybe using a brain-internet interface. A lot more content will be generated automatically, by AI systems that help us fill in the holes in our knowledge and make it more easily accessible.”

Frank Kaufmann , president of Filial Projects and founder and director of the Values in Knowledge Foundation, said, “Virtually nothing from today’s internet will be recognizable 50 years from now. Connectivity will become ever more ethereal and divorced from devices. Speeds will have exceeded what can any longer be sensed by the human organism. Storage will seem limitless, as it will exceed all possible need. Most connectivity will be integrated into the biological organism.… Tech will enable creative people to create more. It will enable good people to do more good. It will enable lazy people to be more lazy. It will enable bad people to do more bad. It will enable family and social people to be closer and more loving. It will enable lonely and isolated people to become more isolated. It will enable radical advances in all things people do – sports, arts, medicine, science, literature, nature exploration, etc.”

Karen Oates , director of workforce development for La Casea de Esperanza, commented, “At the rate at which technology is evolving, the internet as we currently know it and interact with it will have morphed into something very different. I can see people allowing implants in their bodies so they can connect to whatever the internet becomes – leveraging it as an auxiliary brain. This also, however, opens the door for manipulation and potential control of people. Like anything, technology can be used for good or evil. Much will be dependent on to what extent an individual is willing to sacrifice independence for comfort, security, etc.”

Several other respondents voiced concerns about this future. A law professor based at a U.S. university said, “The book ‘Re-Engineering Humanity’ provides a reasonable description of the slippery, sloped path we’re on and where we seem likely to be heading. The authors’ big concern is that humans will outsource so much of what matters about being human to supposedly smart technical systems that the humans will be little more than satiated automatons.”

David J. Krieger , co-director of the Institute for Communication & Leadership in Lucerne, Switzerland, wrote, “Everything will be ‘personalized’ but not individualized. The European Western paradigm of the free and autonomous individual will no longer be a major cultural force. Network collectivism will be the form in which human existence, now no longer ‘humanist’ will play itself out. There will be no other life than digital life and no one will really have the opportunity to live offline. And if so, then there will probably be a three-class society consisting of the cyborgs, the hybrids and the naturals. This will of course generate new forms of social inequality and conflict.”

Despite the likely drawbacks many respondents see the hybrid future as a strong possibility.

Mike Meyer , a futurist and administrator at Honolulu Community College, commented, “The world in 50 years is likely to be very difficult to imagine or understand in today’s language. The options available will be contingent on many layers of both technology and human adaption that will occur over the next 50 years. This will be true as the steady acceleration of the rate of change continues based loosely on Moore’s Law leading to true quantum computing. Genetic engineering combined with nano components that may also be bioelectronic in nature will allow planetary network communication with implants or, perhaps, full neural lace. The primary distinction will be between those people with full communication plus memory and sensor augmentation versus those who choose not to use artificial components in their bodies. Everyone will use a planetwide network for all communication and process activity whether through augmentation or very small headbands or other options that are not implanted.”

Ray Schroeder , an associate vice chancellor at the University of Illinois, Springfield, wrote, “Connected technologies and applications will become much more seamlessly integrated into people’s lives. Technologies are emerging, such as MIT’s AlterEgo, that point to practical telepathy in which human thought will directly connect with supercomputers – and through those computers with other people. This kind of thought-based communication will become ubiquitous through always-on, omnipresent networks. Personal devices will fade away as direct connectivity becomes ubiquitous. These advances will enable instant virtual ‘learning’ of new ideas and the whole range of literature. One will be able to ‘recall’ a novel or a treatise as if one had studied it for years. Such will be the state of augmented memory. There will be attempts to apply new rules/laws, but technological capability will most often trump artificial restrictions. This will further empower people, by the power of their purchases and choice-to-use to set standards of acceptability and preference.”

David Klann , consultant and software developer at Broadcast Tool & Die, responded, “Further integration of humans and machines is inevitable. More devices will be implanted in us, and more of our minds will be ‘implanted’ in devices. The inevitable ‘Singularity’ will result in changes to humans and will increase the rate of our evolution toward hybrid ‘machines.’ I also believe that new and modified materials will become ‘smart.’ For instance, new materials will be ‘self-aware’ and will be able to communicate problems in order to avoid failure. Ultimately, these materials will become ‘self-healing’ and will be able to harness raw materials to manufacture replacement parts in situ. All these materials, and the things built with them will participate in the connected world. We will see continued blurring of the line between ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ life.”

Anonymous respondents predicted:

• “Artificial general intelligence and quantum computing available in a future version of the cloud connected to individual brain augmentation could make us augmented geniuses, inventing our daily lives in a self-actualization economy as the conscious-technology civilization evolves.”
• “There is a probability of technological singularity. So far all the trends lead to it; it is hard to imagine a future in which this does not happen.”
• “Connective symbiosis – human-human, machine-human, human-machine – will continue to thicken.”
• “Implants in humans that continuously connect them to the web will lead to a loss of privacy and the potential for thought control, decline in autonomy.”

Everyone agrees that the world will be putting AI to work

The technology visionaries surveyed described a much different work environment from the current one. They say remote work arrangements are likely to be the rule, rather than the exception, and virtual assistants will handle many of the mundane and unpleasant tasks currently performed by humans.

Ed Lyell , longtime internet strategist and professor at Adams State University, wrote, “If we can change the governance of technology to focus on common good growth and not a division of winner/loser then we can see people having more control over their lives. Imagine that the tough, hard work, dangerous jobs are done by machines guided by computers and AI. We can see the prototype of these in how the U.S. is now fighting wars. The shooting is done by a drone guided by a smart guy/gal working a 9-to-5 job in an air-conditioned office in a nice town. Garbage could be picked up, sorted, recycled, all by robots with AI. Tedious surgery completed by robots and teaching via YouTube would leave the humans to the interesting and exciting cases, not the redoing of same lessons to yet more patients/students. Humans could live well on a 20-hour work week with many weeks of paid vacation. Having a job/career could become a positive, not just a necessity. With 24/7 learning and just-in-time capacity, people could change areas or careers many times with ease whenever they become bored. This positive outcome is possible if we collectively manage the creation and distribution of the tools and access to the use of new emerging tools.”

Jim Spohrer , director of the Cognitive OpenTech Group at IBM Research-Almaden, commented, “Everyone will have hundreds of digital workers working for them. Our cognitive mediators will know us in some ways better than we know ourselves. Better episodic memories and large numbers of digital workers will allow expanded entrepreneurship, lifelong learning and focus on transformation.”

Kyle Rose , principal architect, Akamai Technologies, wrote, “As telepresence and VR become more than research projects or toys, the already small world will shrink further as remote collaboration becomes the norm, resulting in major social changes, among them allowing the recent concentration of expertise in major cities to relax and reducing the relevance of national borders. Furthermore, deep learning and AI-assisted technologies for software development and verification, combined with more abstract primitives for executing software in the cloud, will enable even those not trained as software engineers to precisely describe and solve complex problems. I strongly suspect there will be other, unpredictable disruptive social changes analogous to the freer movement of capital enabled by cryptocurrencies in the last decade.”

David Schlangen , a professor of applied computational linguistics at Bielefeld University, Germany, said, “Physical presence will matter less, as high-bandwidth transmissions will make telepresence (in medicine, in the workplace, in in-person interactions) more viable.”

Ken Goldberg , distinguished chair in engineering, director of AUTOLAB and CITRIS at the University of California, Berkeley, said, “I believe the question we’re facing is not ‘When will machines surpass human intelligence?’ but instead ‘How can humans work together with machines in new ways?’ Rather than worrying about an impending Singularity, I propose the concept of Multiplicity: where diverse combinations of people and machines work together to solve problems and innovate. In analogy with the 1910 High School Movement that was spurred by advances in farm automation, I propose a ‘Multiplicity Movement’ to evolve the way we learn to emphasize the uniquely human skills that AI and robots cannot replicate: creativity, curiosity, imagination, empathy, human communication, diversity and innovation. AI systems can provide universal access to sophisticated adaptive testing and exercises to discover the unique strengths of each student and to help each student amplify his or her strengths. AI systems could support continuous learning for students of all ages and abilities. Rather than discouraging the human workers of the world with threats of an impending Singularity, let’s focus on Multiplicity where advances in AI and robots can inspire us to think deeply about the kind of work we really want to do, how we can change the way we learn and how we might embrace diversity to create myriad new partnerships.”

Kristin Jenkins , executive director of BioQUEST Curriculum Consortium, said, “Access to information is enormously powerful, and the internet has provided access to people in a way we have never before experienced. This means that people can learn new skills (how to patch your roof or make bread), assess situations and make informed decisions (learn about a political candidate’s voting record, plan a trip), and teach themselves whatever they want to know from knowledgeable sources. Information that was once accessed through print materials that were not available to everyone and often out of date is now much more readily available to many more people. Ensuring access is another huge issue with internet 2.0/AI. Access to these tools is not guaranteed even within the U.S. – presumably one of the best places in the world to be wired. In many cases, access to current technology in developing areas of the world allows populations to skip expensive intermediate steps and use tools in a way that improves their quality of life.  Ensuring that people all over the world have access to tools that can improve their lives is an important social justice issue.”

Rich Ling , a professor of media technology at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, responded, “In the next 50 years there will be significant changes in the way that we work. The disruption of that will play through to the way people identify themselves and can also be turned into political movements. AI is on the point of eliminating a wide variety of jobs and professions (taxi driver, accountant, law clerk, etc.). At the same time a large portion of our identity often comes from an idealized sense of our work. Witness the notion of being a cowboy. This is a real job for a small number of people, but it is an identity for many. In the same way, there is an identity in being a truck driver, an insurance adjuster, etc. It often does not have the same panache as the idealized version of being a cowboy, but it’s nonetheless an identity. If that is taken away from people it can, in the worst case, lead to populist political movements. I answered that the general trend will be positive, but I expect that it is not a simple path to better lives through the application of IT. There are many social and eventually political issues that will be played out.”

Divina Frau-Meigs , professor of media sociology at Sorbonne Nouvelle University, France, and UNESCO chair for sustainable digital development, responded, “The most important trend to follow is the way game/play will become the new work. Convergence of virtual reality and immersive devices will modify the rules determining how we interact with each other and with knowledge and information in the future. These ‘alternative’ realities will enable more simulations of situations in real life and will be necessary in decision-making every step of our daily lives. We will need to be conscious of the distinction between game and play, to allow for leisure time away from rule-bound game-as-the-new-work. This will be particularly necessary for environmental issues to be solved creatively.”

Estee Beck , assistant professor at the University of Texas and author of “A Theory of Persuasive Computer Algorithms for Rhetorical Code Studies,” responded, “Society will shift toward educating the public on reading and writing code at an accelerated rate. Coding literacy will become part of K-12 curricula to prepare citizens for both STEM-related careers and consumer-oriented DIY solutions of tech problems. On the latter, because of the mass coding literacy spread in primary and secondary schooling, the ‘handyman’ will evolve into a tech tinkerer or handyman 2.0. Already acquainted with basic and intermediate home maintenance of basic lighting, plumbing and painting, the handyman 2.0 will fix code in home appliances, run software updates to modify and personalize processes in the home. The handyman 2.0 might run their own server and develop a self-contained smartphone and security system to protect against internet-related attacks. For those unable or uninterested in being a handyman 2.0, they can hire general and specialized contractors from a new industry of handymen 2.0. This industry – with public and private certifications – will employ hundreds of thousands of laborers and enjoy revenues in the billions.”

Hume Winzar , associate professor and director of the business analytics undergraduate program at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, wrote, “Working and study at a distance will be normalized, so lifestyle options will be wider. We won’t need to live/work/study in a major city to enjoy the best of what is available. Done right, it will expand opportunity for many, too.”

Barrack Otieno , general manager at the Africa Top-Level Internet Domains Organization, wrote, “I expect technology to enhance the work environment. The internet will mostly be used to enhance communication, coordination and collaboration.”

Benjamin Kuipers , a professor of computer science at the University of Michigan, wrote, “In the post-World War II era, many people believed that American society was essentially benevolent, providing opportunities for political, economic and social advancement for individuals and families over decades and generations. This was somewhat true for the majority, but dramatically untrue for many minorities. We may have the opportunity to provide this societal benevolence for everyone in our society. The technological, often digital, tools we are creating have the promise of greatly increasing the resources available in society. While it may be possible to automate some current jobs, people have an intrinsic need for meaningful work. If we can use these new resources to support them, many jobs can be created to provide meaningful work for many people, and to improve the environment for everyone in society. Some examples of such jobs are child and elder care, and creation and maintenance of green spaces ranging from urban parks to rural farms to wilderness environments and many others. A national service requirement for young people gets certain kinds of work done, but also provides training in practical skills and practical responsibility, and also exposes individuals to the diversity of our society. Technological change produces resources that allow new things to be done and reduces certain constraints on what can be done. But we need to learn which goals we should pursue.”

Lane Jennings , a recent retiree who served as managing editor for the World Future Review from 2009 to 2015, wrote, “Entire classes of humans (drivers, construction workers, editors, medical technicians, etc.) are likely to be replaced by AI systems within the next 50 years. Whether individual members of such groups feel their lives have been improved or made worse will vary depending on many factors. Suffice it to say that public support of some kind to give displaced workers the means to live in relative security and comfort is essential. Moreover, this support must be provided in a way that preserves self-respect and promotes optimism and ambition. A world of former workers who perceive themselves as having been prematurely retired while machines provide the goods and services they once supplied seems to me highly unstable. To be happy, or at least contented, people need a purpose beyond simply amusing themselves and passing time pleasantly. One of the major functions of the internet in 2069 may be to facilitate contact between people with skills who want to work and jobs that still need doing in spite of high-tech robots and ubiquitous AI.”

Mark Crowley , an assistant professor expert in machine learning and core member of the Institute for Complexity and Innovation at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, wrote, “Technology affects people asymmetrically. Diseases will be cured with machine learning, profits will rise with automation and artists, engineers and scientists will be able to do more with less time and resources than ever before. However, many people will lose the only jobs they’ve ever known, and many others will feel alienated and left behind. Will society take steps to adapt its social standards? Will education adapt to prepare each generation for the reality ahead rather than focusing on the past? Will we allow people to live, with dignity, their own life, even if rapid technological changes leave them without a job that we would traditionally call ‘useful’ or productive? That depends on politics.”

Josh Calder , a partner at the Foresight Alliance, commented, “Changes will be for the better if the wealth generated by automation is spread equitably, and this will likely require significant changes to economic systems. If wealth concentration is accelerated by automation, the average person could be worse off.”

In 2069 the ‘new normal’ will be …

If the future is to change as dramatically and rapidly as many of the survey respondents believe, the world will see seismic shifts in norms and in what might be considered “normal” life.

Cliff Lynch , director of the Coalition for Networked Information, responded, “Over the next 20 to 30 years I expect to see enormous renegotiation of the social, cultural and political norms involving the digital environment.”

Alistair Nolan a senior policy analyst in the OECD Directorate for Science, Technology and Innovation, wrote, “I speculate that individuals’ interaction with digital technologies will become much more pervasive and intimate than it is already. Digital technology will be used to counter some of the stresses created by economic development and a digital culture. Digital avatars, for example, might provide intelligent company for the old and lonely, coaching those subject to psychological disorders, encouraging and guiding the sedentary to adopt healthier lifestyles, and so on. But changes and societal stresses brought by digital technologies may require a fundamental overhaul of the social contract. A new digital social contract will likely be needed, the specifics of which we cannot be sure now, but the contours of which we see suggested today in proposals ranging from universal basic income to institutionally mandated time free from digital distraction. The hope is that political processes allow our social arrangements to adjust at a pace commensurate with broader technological change, and that dysfunction in political processes is not aggravated by digital technologies. It has been commented that when humankind attempts to take astronauts to Mars the primary challenge will not be technological. Instead, it will be social: namely, the ability of unrelated individuals to live in close confinement for long periods of time. At the level of entire polities, in a similar way, our primary challenge may be living together in civil ways, attending to the full range of human needs, while the technology brings opportunities to carry us forward, or carry us off course.”

Betsy Williams , a researcher at the Center for Digital Society and Data Studies at the University of Arizona, wrote, “Free internet-connected devices will be available to the poor in exchange for carrying around a sensor that records traffic speed, environmental quality, detailed usage logs, and video and audio recordings (depending on state law). There will be secure vote-by-internet capabilities, through credit card or passport verification, with other secure kiosks available at public facilities (police stations, libraries, fire stations and post offices, should those continue to exist in their current form). There will be a movement online to require real-name verification to comment on more reputable sites; however, this will skew participation tremendously toward men, and the requirements will be reversed after a woman is assaulted or killed based on what she typed in a public-interest discussion.”

Pamela Rutledge , director of the Media Psychology Center, responded, “Starting with Generation Z and going forward, internet and 24/7 real-time connectivity will no longer be viewed as a ‘thing’ independent from daily life, but integral, like electricity. This has profound psychological implications about what people assume as normal and establishes baseline expectations for access, response times and personalization of functions and information. Contrary to many concerns, as technology becomes more sophisticated, it will ultimately support the primary human drives of social connectedness and agency. As we have seen with social media, first adoption is noncritical – it is a shiny penny for exploration. Then people start making judgments about the value-add based on their own goals and technology companies adapt by designing for more value to the user – we see that now in privacy settings and the concerns about information quality…. Technology is going to change whether we like it or not – expecting it to be worse for individuals means that we look for what’s wrong. Expecting it to be better means we look for the strengths and what works and work toward that goal. Technology gives individuals more control – a fundamental human need and a prerequisite to participatory citizenship and collective agency. The danger is that we are so distracted by technology that we forget that digital life is an extension of the offline world and demands the same critical, moral and ethical thinking.”

Geoff Livingston , author and futurist, commented, “Technology will become a seamless experience for most people. Only the very poor who cannot afford technology and the very rich who can choose to separate themselves from it will be free from connectedness. When I consider the current AI conversation, I often think the real evolution of sentient beings will be a hybrid connectedness between human and machine. Our very existence and day-to-day experience will be through an augmented experience that features faster thinking and more ethereal pleasures. This brings a question of what is human? Since most of us will be living in a machine-enhanced world, the perspective of human reality will always be in doubt. Most will simply move through their existence without a thought, able to change and alter it with new software packages and algorithms, accepting their reality as the new normal. Indeed, perception will become reality. There will be those who decry the movement forward and wish for yesteryear’s unplugged mind. The counter movement against the internet of 2070 will be significant, and yet much like today’s Luddite, it will find itself in the deep minority. For though the cultural implications will be significant, the internet of 2070 offers the world a much more prosperous and easier life. Most will choose comfort over independence from devices.”

Meryl Alper , an assistant professor of communication at Northeastern University and a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, wrote, “Parents will be inundated by non-intuitive, AI-sourced information about their children (e.g., their moods, their behaviors) through the data collected about them in their everyday lives. Parents will face a choice about knowing too much about every single aspect of what their child does and says (be it with them or without them) or not knowing all the details – while being aware that someone else (teachers, doctors, law enforcement) is compiling this information for later determinations of some kind about their child. Parents will ultimately be encouraged to automate this data-intensive parenting, but this itself will create more work for parents (and thus more work for parents to outsource).”

Uta Russmann , professor in the Department of Communication at FHWien der WKW University of Applied Sciences for Management & Communication, warned, “In 50 years every aspect of our life will be connected, organized and hence, partly controlled, as technology platform and applications businesses will take this opportunity. A few global players will dominate the business; smaller companies (startups) will mostly have a chance in the development sector. Many institutions, such as libraries, will disappear – there might be one or two libraries that function as museums to show how it used to be. People who experienced today’s world will definitely value the benefits and amenities they have through technology (human-machine/AI collaboration). If technology becomes part of every aspect of our lives we will have to give up some power and control. People thinking in today’s terms will lose a certain amount of freedom, independency and control over their lives. People born after 2030 will probably just think these technologies produced changes that are mostly for the better. It has always been like this – people have always thought/said ‘in the old days everything was better.’”

Danny Gillane , a netizen from Lafayette, Louisiana, commented, “The content owners will become the platform companies (Disney, Time Warner, etc.), and the platform companies will become the content owners (Comcast, Netflix, etc.). In the U.S., we will give up more privacy to gain more convenience. We will have to choose between paying with our wallets or paying with our personal information in order to keep up with the Joneses. Collaboration and communication will become less personal as more of it will be done through virtual reality and through our devices. The promise of worldwide connection will lessen as Europe places restrictions on tech companies to protect its citizens’ rights, but the U.S. will pass laws to protect shareholders even at the expense of its citizens’ rights. Unless the focus of technology innovation moves away from consumer entertainment and communication products (such as social networks) and more toward medical and scientific advances, we will see fewer people truly benefiting from the internet. The money that fuels America’s politics already fuels its legislative efforts, or lack of, with regard to technology. So, I actually don’t think we’ll see any actual change, unless one considers for-profit companies having an even larger presence in more parts of our lives more often and in more ways.”

Justin Reich , executive director of MIT Teaching Systems Lab and research scientist in the MIT Office of Digital Learning, responded, “The trends toward centralization and monopolization will persist. The free, open internet that represented a set of decentralized connections between idiosyncratic actors will be recognized as an aberration in the history of the internet. Today’s internet giants will probably be the internet giants of 50 years from now. In recent years, they’ve made substantial progress in curtailing innovation through acquisitions and copying. As the industry matures, they will add regulatory capture to their skill sets. For many people around the world, the internet will be a set of narrow portals where they exchange their data for a curtailed set of communication, information and consumer services.”

Michael R. Nelson , a technology policy expert for a leading network services provider who worked as a technology policy aide in the Clinton administration, commented, “We will see more change and disruption in the next 10 years than we have seen in the last 20. If governments and incumbents allow it, we could see twice as much. All we know about 2069 is that data storage, network capacity and tools to turn data into knowledge will be basically unlimited and cost almost nothing. But, we also know that the wisdom needed to use the power of technology will not be available to everyone. And we also know that political forces will try to create scarcity and favor some groups over others. Let us hope that the engineers innovate so fast that consumers have the tools and choices they need to overcome such constraints.”

Guy Levi , chief innovation officer for the Center for Educational Technology, based in Israel, wrote, “Digital tools will be part of our body inside and remotely, and will assist us in decision- making constantly, so it will become second nature. Nonetheless, physical feelings will still be exclusively ‘physical,’ i.e., there will be a significant difference between the ‘sensor-based feelings’ and real body feelings, so human beings will still have some advantages over technology. This, I believe, will last forever. Considering this, physical encounters among people will become more and more important and thus relationships, especially between couples, will prosper. It will be the return of LOVE.”

No need to give it orders – your digital assistant already knows what you want

Many of these experts expect that – despite some people’s worries over privacy issues – digital experiences will be far more personalized in 2069. One likely trend: Instead of having to directly communicate requests to a device, AI-enabled, database-fed digital technologies will anticipate individuals’ needs and provide customized solutions.

Michael Wollowski , associate professor of computer science and software engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, expert in the Internet of Things, diagrammatic systems and artificial intelligence, wrote, “Much of our lives will be automated. Better yet, we will be in control of the degree of automation. Technology will assume the role of a polite personal assistant who will seamlessly bow in and out. Technology based on learned patterns of behavior will arrange many things in our lives and suggest additional options.”

Peter Reiner , professor and co-founder of the National Core for Neuroethics at the University of British Columbia, Canada, commented, “The internet will remain a conduit for information about us as well as a tool for us to access information about the world. Whilst many commentators rightly worry about the degree to which apps can know about us today, we are only at the early stages of corporate and governmental surveillance of our inner lives. In 50 years’ time, apps will be remarkably more sophisticated in terms of their knowledge about us as agents – our wants and desires, our objectives and goals. Using that information, they will be able make decisions that align with our personal goals much better than they can do today, and as this happens they will become bona fide extensions of our minds – digital (or as seems likely, quantum-based) information-processing interfaces that are always available and seamlessly integrate with the human cognitive toolkit. These cognitive prostheses will be so much a part of our everyday lives that we will barely notice their existence. Our reliance upon them will be both a strength and a weakness. Our cognitive prowess will substantially expand, but we will feel diminished in their absence.”

David Zubrow , associate director of empirical research at the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute, said, “Networked devices, data collection and information on demand will become even more ubiquitous. I would hope that better curation of information along with its provenance occurs. The trend of digital assistants that learn your preferences and habits from all the devices that you interact with will become integrated with each other and take on a persona. They may even act on your behalf with a degree of independence in the digital and physical worlds. As AI advances and becomes more independent and the internet becomes the world in which people live and work, laws for responsibility and accountability of the actions of AI will need to be made.”

Daniel Siewiorek , a professor with the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, predicted, “We will all have virtual coaches that learn and grow with us. They will be in communication with the virtual coaches of others, allowing us to learn from the experience of others. For example, my grandfather could teach me how to swing a baseball bat through his virtual coach even though my grandfather passed away before I was born.”

Gary Kreps , distinguished professor of communication and director of the Center for Health and Risk Communication at George Mason University, wrote, “Future computing systems will be fully integrated into everyday life, easy to access and use, and adaptable to meeting individual preferences and needs. These devices will serve as integrated personal assistants that can intuitively provide users with relevant information and support. There will be no need for typing in requests, since systems will be voice- and perhaps even thought-activated. These systems will adapt to user communication styles and competencies, using familiar and easy to understand messages to users. These messages will be presented both verbally and visually, with the ability to incorporate vivid examples and relevant interesting stories for users. Information content will build upon user preferences, experiences and needs. These personal computing systems will learn about users and adapt to changing user needs, assisting users in accomplishing important tasks and making important decisions. These systems will also automatically network users to relevant personal and professional contacts to facilitate communication as desired by users. The systems will also help users control other forms of technology, such as transportation, communication, health care, educational, occupational, financial, recreational and commercial applications. Care must be taken to program these systems to be responsive to user preferences and needs, easy to use, adaptive to changing conditions and easy for users to control.”

Ian Rumbles , a quality-assurance specialist at North Carolina State University, said, “Fifty years from now the internet will be available to us through us thinking, versus using a keyboard or speaking. The display of data will be visible only to the user and how that display is shown will be totally customized for that user. The ability to obtain answers to questions and look up information in a format that is defined by the user will greatly improve the lives of people.”

More leisure time expected in ‘real life’ and virtual worlds

Could it be true that technology will finally create more free time? Some respondents in this study expect that the evolution of digital technologies will allow for more leisure activities and less “work.” Some predict people may choose to live most of their lives in a virtual reality that lacks the messy authenticity of real life. They also predict that in the widening global media marketplace of the future individuals will have access to a wider range of entertainment options than ever before.

Dan Schultz , senior creative technologist at the Internet Archive, said, “The world is about to have a LOT more time on its hands, a culture-redefining level of newfound time. Governments will need to figure out how to ensure people are compensated for that time in ways that don’t correlate to capitalistic value, and people are going to need creative outlets for their free time. We’re going to need better mental health services; we’re going to need to finally redefine the public education system to shift away from the 19th century factory model. It will either be a golden age for invention, leisure, entertainment and civic involvement, or it will be a dystopia of boredom and unemployment.”

James Gannon , global head of e-compliance for emerging technology, cloud and cybersecurity at Novartis, responded, “In 50 years machine-to-machine communication will have reduced a lot of menial decision-making for the average person. Smart-home technology manages the basic functions of the household, negating the need for many manual labor roles such as cleaners and gardeners. Many services are now delivered remotely such as telehealth and digital therapeutics…. Technology and the internet have already dramatically increased the standard of living for billions of people; this trend will not cease.”

Chao-Lin Liu , a professor at National Chengchi University, Taiwan, commented, “If we can handle the income and work problems, lives will be easier for most due to automation.”

Paola Perez , vice president of the Internet Society chapter in Venezuela and chair of the LACNIC Public Policy Forum, responded, “Technology will make everything in our lives. We won’t drive, we won’t cook. Apps are going to be adapted to all our needs. From the moment we wake up we are going to have technology that cooks for us, drives for us, works for us and suggests ideas for our work. Problems are going to be solved. But all our data is going to be known by everybody, so we won’t have private lives.”

Alex Smith , partner relationship manager at Monster Worldwide, said, “Everything will be centered around saving us time – giving us back more time in our days.”

A professor of communications said, “Simple, mundane tasks will be taken care of by AI, allowing more time for creative thinking, arts, music and literature.”

David Wells , the chief financial officer at Netflix at the time of this canvassing, has an idea for how to fill all of that free time. He predicted, “Continued global connectedness with our entertainment, music and news will mean global popularity of some media with a backdrop of local flavor that may be regional and/or hyper local. 3D visual (virtual) rendering will evolve and become integrated into user interfaces, discovery interfaces along with AI assistants, and will heavily define learning and entertainment.”

Gabor Melli , senior director of engineering for AI and machine learning for Sony PlayStation, responded, “By 2070, most people will willingly spend most of their lives in an augmented virtual reality. The internet and digital life will be extraordinary and partially extraplanetary. Innovations that will dramatically amplify this trajectory are unsupervised machine learning, fusion power and the wildcard of quantum computing.”

Valarie Bell , a computational social scientist at the University of North Texas, commented, “While the gadgets and tools we may have in the future may result in more conveniences, like when ovens turned into microwaves, we find with technology that we trade quality and uniqueness for convenience and uniformity. What tastes better and provides a better experience? The homemade chocolate cake Grandma made from scratch with attention to great ingredients and to baking the cake until it’s perfectly moist OR the microwaved chocolate-cake-for-one? The microwave cake takes less than 10 minutes and you simply add water, but Grandma’s cake is not over-processed, and you taste the real butter, real vanilla, real chocolate instead of powdered butter flavoring and powdered chocolate substitute. Technology will bring us things faster, perhaps even cheaper, but not necessarily better.”

Michel Grossetti , a sociologist expert in systems and director of research at CNRS, the French national science research center, wrote, “The boundaries between private life and work or public life will continue to blur.”

Social connections, community and collaboration will be improved

Some experts expect that digital advances will lead to better communication among disparate groups, resulting in stronger interpersonal relationships and positive community development. A number of respondents said that physical barriers to communication and community building will mostly disappear over the next half century. They are hopeful that greater connectivity will lead to better collaboration in response to major world problems, more equitable distributions of wealth and power and easier access to information and resources.

Tomas Ohlin , longtime professor at Linköping and Stockholm universities in Sweden, predicted, “AI will exist everywhere. The internet will, after a few decades, be replaced by a more value-added surface on top of our present system. Its governing will be truly decentralized, with participation from many. Cultural differences will exist on this surface, with borders that will differ from the present. However, there will not be as many borders as today; this new information society is a society with flexible borders. Human beings are friendly, and the world we create reflects this. Communication and contact between everybody is a fundamental and positive resource that will lead to fewer conflicts.”

Bryan Alexander , futurist and president of Bryan Anderson Consulting, responded, “I’m convinced we’ll see individuals learn how to use technologies more effectively, and that collectively we’ll learn how to reduce harm.”

Charles Zheng , a researcher into machine learning and AI with the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health, commented, “Life will not qualitatively change much for people in the middle and upper classes of society. The biggest impact will be to the lower classes, and will mostly be positive. The increase in information gathering in all levels of society will also improve the efficiency of social welfare programs. Access to information becomes democratized as cities start offering free, basic Wi-Fi and the government hosts AI educational programs which can teach young people how to find jobs and access public resources. The increase in networking also makes … social nonprofits more effective at helping the disadvantaged. Government accountability is also improved now that people at all levels of society can leave reviews about government services online.”

Craig Mathias , principal at Farpoint Group, an advisory firm specializing in wireless networking and mobile computing, commented, “Civilization itself centers on and thus depends upon communication of all forms. The more we communicate, the better the opportunities for peace and prosperity on a global basis. It would be difficult to imagine communications without the internet, now and especially in the future.”

Gene Crick , director of the Metropolitan Austin Interactive Network and longtime U.S. community telecommunications expert, wrote, “Genuine universal technology access has become a vital issue for every community. AI/IT can make powerful tools, resources and opportunities available to anyone interested. To help rhetoric become reality, we could adopt and insist on a few fundamental principles, including standards for openness and accountability. How? Just a notion but perhaps a modernized version of the National Science Foundation internet administration transfer two decades ago.  Though the outcome was far from pretty, those who participated felt we got the job done. Today’s improved communications tools could make possible a much simpler, more widespread ‘grassroots’ discussion and decision process.”

Liz Rykert , president at Meta Strategies, a consultancy that works with technology and complex organizational change, responded, “We will see more and more integration of tools that support accountability. An early example of this is the use of body cams by police. The internet will let us both monitor and share data and images about what is happening, whether it is a devastating impact of climate change or an eventful incident of racism. Continued access to tools of accountability and access to knowledge and collaborative opportunities will support people to be both bold and collaborative as they seek new solutions. The internet will be the base to support these efforts as well as the platform that will continue to serve as the means for how we will work together to respond to problems either urgent (like a flood or fire) or longer-term like solving problems like affordable housing.”

Matt Belge , founder and president of Vision & Logic, said, “Humanity has always strived to be connected to other humans, and writing, publishing, art and education were all efforts to serve this desire. This desire is so deeply seated, this desire for connection, that it will drive everything we do. Privacy will become less of a concern and transparency will become more of the norm in the next 50 years. Therefore, I expect technology to enable deeper and more personal connections with fewer secrets and greater openness. Specifically, AI will help people with like interests work together, form deeper relationships and collaborate on advancing our entire species. I believe humans are always striving for more and more connection with other humans and technology is evolving in ways to facilitated this.”

Sam Ladner , a former UX researcher for Amazon and Microsoft, now an adjunct professor at Ontario College of Art & Design, wrote, “We will continue to see a melding of digital and analog ‘selves,’ in which humans will now consider their digital experiences less and less divorced from their face-to-face experiences. Face-to-face social connections will become ever more precious, and ever more elusive. Having an ‘in real life’ relationship will be a commodity to be exploited and a challenge to keep. Physical experiences will increasingly be infused with digital ‘backchannel’ experiences, such as an ongoing digital conversation either in text, images or VR, while the physical event carries on. Likewise, IRL (in real-life) events will become even more exclusive, expensive and a source of cultural capital. Isolated people will fail to see their isolation before it reaches a desperate point, because collectively, we will fail to see physical connections as a key ingredient to ward off loneliness. Loneliness will take on a new meaning; digital friends will assist some isolated people, but loneliness will focus more on lack of human touch, and face-to-face eye contact. New medical disorders will emerge, based on this social withdrawal, and given the aging demographic, a public policy crisis will overwhelm nation-states’ budgets and capabilities. Lonely, aging, physically infirm people may find relief in online forums of all sorts, but we will be surprised to learn what a total absence of IRL interaction will yield.”

Peggy Lahammer , director of health/life sciences at Robins Kaplan LLP and legal market analyst, commented, “Historically access to natural resources, with limited intelligence on how to best use those resources, provided the means to survive and prosper. As we continue to become more specialized in our expertise and less skilled in many tasks required to survive, we are more dependent on others with specialized talents. I believe the internet and a connected world have fueled this transformation and will continue to do so in the next 50 years. The internet will continue to connect people around the globe and cause instability in areas where people have limited resources, information or specialized skills necessary to thrive.”

Bert Huang , an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech focused on machine learning, wrote, “I believe the internet can meet the promise of helping people connect to all of humanity. The main concern I see with the internet is that it plays counter to human intuitions about scale. When humans see thousands of like-minded individuals on the internet, it is too easy to believe that those thousands of people represent all of humanity. One promise of the internet is that it would allow people to interact with, and learn from, individuals with widely different backgrounds, unifying the human species in way that was previously impossible. Unfortunately, the more recent effect has apparently been that people are further entrenched in their own narrow views because they are surrounded on the internet with inconceivably large numbers of people sharing their own views. These large numbers make it difficult for people to fathom that other valid views exist. I believe technology can and will help alleviate this problem.”

A technical information science professional commented, “The daily living ‘operations’ will change drastically from today – how we work, how we take care of family, how we ‘commute’ from place to place, how we entertain and so on. However, the fundamental of living, creating and maintaining meaningful relationships with others will be more dominant focus of our lives, and those concerns and efforts will not change.”

Several of the expert respondents who said they believe humanity will be better off in the future thanks to digital life said that in 50 years individuals will have greater autonomy and more control over their personal data.

Eileen Donahoe , executive director of the Global Digital Policy Incubator at Stanford University, commented, “I envision a dramatic change in terms of how we think about people’s ownership and control of their own data. People’s data will be seen as a valuable commodity and platforms will arise to facilitate data sovereignty for individuals. If we move toward development and deployment of platforms and systems that allow individuals autonomy to choose when and where they exchange their data for goods and services, this will constitute an important positive step toward wider distribution of the benefits of a data-driven society.”

Greg Lloyd , president and co-founder at Traction Software, responded, “The next 50 years will see performance of hardware, storage and bandwidth increase and cost decrease at a rate no less than the past 50 years. This means that the resources available to any person – at the cost of a current smartphone and network subscription – will be close to the resources supporting a Google regional center. This will turn the advertising supported and privacy invasive economic model of the current internet on its head, making it possible for anyone to afford dedicated, private and secure resources to support a Prospero and Ariel-like world of certified and secure services. That people agreed to grant access to their most private resources and actions to platform companies in order to support use of subsidized internet services will become as oddly amusing as the fact that people once earned their living as flagpole sitters. Your smartphone and its personal AI services will be exactly that: your property, which you pay for and use with confidence. When you use certified agents or services, you’ll have choices ranging from free (routine commerce, public library or government services) to fabulously expensive (the best legal minds, most famous pop stars, bespoke design and manufacturing of any artifacts, membership in the most exclusive ‘places’). In all cases your personal smartphone (or whatever it turns into) will help you negotiate enforceable contracts for these services, monitor performance and provide evidence any case of dispute. Think Apple with a smart lawyer, accountant, friend and adviser in your smartphone, not Facebook becoming Silicon Valley’s version of Terry Gilliam’s ‘Brazil.’”

James Scofield O’Rourke , a professor of management at the University of Notre Dame specializing in reputation management, commented, “I foresee two large applications of digital connections such as the internet over the next half century. First, I see access to information, processes and expertise that would either be delayed or inaccessible today. Second, I see a much larger degree of autonomy for the individual. This could mean everything from driverless trucks, automobiles and other vehicles to individual control over our immediate environment, our assets and possessions, and our ability to choose. In exchange, of course, the notion of privacy will virtually disappear.”

R “Ray” Wang , founder and principal analyst at Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research, said, “The new internet can also be a place where we decentralize human rights, enabling an individual to protect their data privacy and stay free. Keep in mind privacy is not dead. It’s up to us as a society to enforce these human rights.”

Susan Aaronson , a research professor of international affairs and cross-disciplinary fellow at George Washington University, responded, “I admit to being a techno optimist. I believe that true entrepreneurs ‘see’ areas/functions that need improvements and will utilize technologies in ways that make it easier for, as an example, the blind to see.”

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The Internet, Globalization and Network Society Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

The internet has overhauled the way people live and interact. It has been able to improve what was there in communication and bridged a big gap of distance enabling people to use it in every aspect of their lives. The advent of the internet has made people view the world as a small global village whose very service can be tapped into by clicking a mouse. Such activities like shopping, travel arrangements, dating, and the overall search for information and communication have become very easy with the advent of the internet. Finding spouses and the romance scene has been overhauled with people using a maximum of the internet to strike that goal.

Though this has been some of the major benefits of the internet it has greatly affected the social lives of human beings especially their relationships. The children are in constant danger of getting to morally bad sites that may be detrimental to their growth and development. There is a constant need for security in the transactions carried out on the World Wide Web. The social networking sites such as Facebook Twitter and constant blogging as people want to fit in the world of the internet and air their views are ruining workplaces. This has presented modern-day management with a paradox where it is crucial to embrace technology and strike a balance so as not to harm business (Mayo and Newcomb, 14).

The problem of the internet has also penetrated families, marriage relationships, and general friendships creating a lot of discussions. The advantages are insurmountable while the dangers are so real and are like ghosts. The friendship lines cannot be drawn anymore as people engage in flirtatious commentaries in-wall postings on social sites and as they chat. They may be claiming it is not romantic but platonic although the degree of deepness is questionable. Husbands and wives are finding it hard to strike a balance between their work and commitment to family and spouse. This problem is the reason this paper tries to look at the views of different scholars on this subject which has become interesting and paradoxical. This is going to help me to understand more and draw a conclusion on this topic (Mayo and Newcomb, 12).

The embracing of the internet’s usage as a means of communication in the future will depend on the evolvement of people’s quality of online relationships and the amount of time people are bound to be online. Further studies they conclude show that online relationships do not have the gloss and this makes them weaker compared to other relationships. Therefore it is the vibrancy with which people embrace social groupings in the internet that will determine the shift towards them being as real and pronounced as the other relationships. These relationships are also going to be dependent on the personality types of people. The extroverts are mainly going to be the winners while the introverts are going to struggle to form a relationship online.

The issue of internet addiction is tackled by the two who conclusively say that addiction is very real. They explore the manner in which it has been detrimental to families and to an individual. They continues to offer ways you can be able to ascertain whether you are an internet addict. Mayo and Newcomb (13) tries to counter an earlier conclusion that internet is being put to bad use by conducting follow up study. The study successfully concludes that internet is acting as a catalyst in the development of societies the world over instead of hubs for spreading terror and hate. This makes me to learn that I can use that in my field of education to spur growth of internet in the rural schools like in the third world countries.

Newcomb looks at community and its view on the internet. He says that it is the prerogative of communities to define the use if internet to their benefit. As a student I find that I can involve myself in sensitizing the nearby communities or those from third world countries on the manner in which it can change their wellbeing. This can further happen during my career as an educationist. Mayo and Newcomb give insights as to why people are feeling so much attraction to internet relationships. They say that it appears cool and a person is always likely to say more about him or herself over the internet than face to face. I learn to judge and urge people to beware of forming relationships that would not last and to be absolutely sure when engaging in one. As noted by Mayo and Newcomb (30) the manner of the effect of online relationships is two-pronged and has both advantages and disadvantages. It spurs the development of community socially and communication wise while on the other hand touches on the very core that makes a social setup respected. That is the morality of the community which is grossly affected by the availability of all sorts of information (good and bad) which can spur insecurity.

Mayo, Keenan & Newcomb, Peter. How The Internet Was Won . 2010.

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Impact of Internet on Society

Introduction, the argument for the positive impact, the argument against the positive impact.

Society has existed and functioned for a long time without such innovative technology as the Internet. This is the argument of supporters that this innovation hurts people. However, this work aims to prove that the Internet positively contributes to modern life. Henceforth, the arguments for this opinion are access to a large amount of information and the possibility of unlimited communication. The counterarguments are an excess of information on the Internet, which may be false and harm people’s health.

Therefore, the first argument for the lasting impact of the Internet on society is access to information. With the development of this technology, people have gained the ability to easily and quickly get information about everything that interests them. Moreover, they can now educate themselves on this platform, so all knowledge is structured and understandable. Further, the Internet allows unlimited communication. Internet messengers and social media help people stay in touch and maintain communication (Akram & Kumar, 2017). Moreover, the Internet is used for business communication when working remotely.

On the other hand, it is essential to remember that due to the excess of information, it is necessary to take a responsible attitude toward her selection and understand what is true and false from what is provided. Moreover, it is worth noting that the Internet has a detrimental effect on the fact that people spend too much time communicating on it. Thus, physical health, such as vision, suffers, and the culture of speech and the way of thinking deteriorates significantly.

Therefore, the importance of Internet technologies in the life of society cannot be underestimated. Despite some negative aspects, this innovation significantly improves many aspects. Hence, the Internet provides access to a massive amount of data that can be intimidating. However, it can become a precious source with proper and responsible use. The Internet is also a tool for many people to communicate, both for those living nearby and for those who live on different continents.

Akram, W., & Kumar, R. (2017). A study on positive and negative effects of social media on society. International Journal of Computer Sciences and Engineering, 5 (10), 351-354.

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Home — Essay Samples — Information Science and Technology — Internet — The Importance of the Internet in the World

The Importance of The Internet in The Modern World

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The Changes That the Internet Has Brought to Our Lives

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Essay On Internet for Students and Children

500+ words essay on internet.

We live in the age of the internet. Also, it has become an important part of our life that we can’t live without it. Besides, the internet is an invention of high-end science and modern technology . Apart from that, we are connected to internet 24×7. Also, we can send big and small messages and information faster than ever. In this essay on the Internet, we are going to discuss various things related to the internet.

Reach of Internet

It is very difficult to estimate the area that the internet cover. Also, every second million people remain connected to it with any problem or issue. Apart from that, just like all the things the internet also has some good and bad effect on the life of people. So the first thing which we have to do is learn about the good and bad effect of the internet.

Good effects of the internet mean all those things that the internet make possible. Also, these things make our life easier and safer.

Bad effects of the internet mean all those things that we can no longer do because of the internet. Also, these things cause trouble for oneself and others too.

You can access in any corner of the world. Also, it is very easy to use and manage. In today’s world, we cannot imagine our life without it.

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Uses Of Internet

From the time it first came into existence until now the internet has completed a long journey. Also, during this journey, the internet has adopted many things and became more user-friendly and interactive. Besides, every big and small things are available on internet and article or material that you require can be obtainable from internet.

Tim Berners-Lee can be called one of the main father of internet as he invented/discovered the WWW (World Wide Web) which is used on every website. Also, there are millions of pages and website on the internet that it will take you years to go through all of them.

The Internet can be used to do different things like you can learn, teach, research, write, share, receive, e-mail , explore, and surf the internet.

Read Essay on Technology here

Convenience Due To Internet

Because of internet, our lives have become more convenient as compared to the times when we don’t have internet. Earlier, we have to stand in queues to send mails (letters), for withdrawing or depositing money, to book tickets, etc. but after the dawn of the internet, all these things become quite easy. Also, we do not have to waste our precious time standing in queues.

Also, the internet has contributed a lot to the environment as much of the offices (government and private), school and colleges have become digital that saves countless paper.

Although, there is no doubt that the internet had made our life easier and convenient but we can’t leave the fact that it has caused many bigger problems in the past. And with the speed, we are becoming addict to it a day in will come when it will become our basic necessity.

{ “@context”: “https://schema.org”, “@type”: “FAQPage”, “mainEntity”: [ { “@type”: “Question”, “name”: “What are the limitation of internet?”, “acceptedAnswer”: { “@type”: “Answer”, “text”: “Although internet can help you with anything but there are certain limitation to it. First of it does not have a physical appearance. Secondly, it does not have emotions and thirdly, it can’t send you to a place where you can’t go (physically).” } }, { “@type”: “Question”, “name”: “What is the ideal age for using internet?”, “acceptedAnswer”: { “@type”: “Answer”, “text”: “Nowadays everybody from small kids to adult is internet addicts. So it is difficult to decide an ideal age for using internet. However, according to researches using internet from an early age can cause problems in the child so internet usage of small children should be controlled or banned.” } } ] }

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IoT Standardization and Implementation Challenges

The lesser-known side of isaac asimov, openmind books, scientific anniversaries, jane goodall, the human voice of chimpanzees, featured author, latest book, change: 19 key essays on how the internet is changing our lives.

As a tool available to a reasonably wide public, the Internet is only twenty years old, but it is already the fundamental catalyst of the broadest based and fastest technological revolution in history . It is the broadest based because over the past two decades its effects have touched upon practically every citizen in the world. And it is the fastest because its mass adoption is swifter than that of any earlier technology.

It is impossible today to imagine the world without the Internet: it enables us to do things which only a few years ago would be unthinkable, and impinges on every sphere of our lives.

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Games and the Internet: Fertile Ground for Cultural Change

The music industry in an age of digital distribution, first the media, then us: how the internet changed the fundamental nature of the communication and its relationship with the audience, the internet's influence on the production and consumption of culture: creative destruction and new opportunities, the internet: changing the language, distributed innovation and creativity, peer production, and commons in networked economy, how is the internet changing the way we work, the internet and business, the way of the dodo, how the internet has changed everyday life, the internet and education, designing connections, the internet, politics and the politics of internet debate, the impact of the internet on society: a global perspective, cyber attacks, who owns big data, the internet of things: outlook and challenges, knowledge banking for a hyperconnected society, "ch@nge" comes to madrid: health, banking and connections that will change our lives, do you already know what the latest openmind book is about are you ready for ch@nge, francisco gonzález presents the latest openmind book: ch@nge, openmind launches the book “ch@nge” in madrid, david gelernter presents "cyberflow", iñaki vázquez: the origins of the internet of things, mikko hypponen: who owns the internet, evgeny morozov: internet and politics, federico casalegno: connections, neil selwyn presents "internet and education", mexico hosts the launch of the openmind book "ch@nge", openmind reflects on the social influence of the internet in the home of mit, thomas malone explains how the internet is changing the way we work, presentation at mit: how the internet is changing our lives, distributed innovation and creativity, peer production, and commons, lucien engelen and the medicine of the future, "the challenge is to turn data into information, and then into knowledge", dan schiller: geopolitical information, zaryn dentzel and the social media "ch@nge", paul dimaggio and cultural industry on the internet, edward castronova: games and the internet, sustainability, smart cities and "sensor citizens" in spain, peter hirshberg and the new communication environment on the internet, patrik wikström: the transformation of the music industry, david crystal: the language of the internet, we recommend "to save everything, click here", by evgeny morozov, do you want to stay up to date with our new publications.

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The Evolution of Technology in the Classroom

Technology has always been at the forefront of human education. From the days of carving figures on rock walls to today, when most students are equipped with several portable technological devices at any given time, technology continues to push educational capabilities to new levels. In looking at where educational methods and tools have come from to where they are going in the future, technology’s importance in the classroom is evident now more than ever.

A History of Classroom Technology: The Primitive Classroom

In the Colonial years, wooden paddles with printed lessons, called Horn-Books, were used to assist students in learning verses. Over 200 years later, in 1870, technology advanced to include the Magic Lantern, a primitive version of a slide projector that projected images printed on glass plates. By the time World War I ended, around 8,000 lantern slides were circulating through the Chicago public school system. By the time the Chalkboard came around in 1890, followed by the pencil in 1900, it was clear that students were hungry for more advanced educational tools.

• Radio in the 1920s sparked an entirely new wave of learning; on-air classes began popping up for any student within listening range.
• Next came the overhead projector in 1930, followed by the ballpoint pen in 1940 and headphones in 1950.
• Videotapes arrived on the scene in 1951, creating a new and exciting method of instruction.
• The Skinner Teaching Machine produced a combined system of teaching and testing, providing reinforcement for correct answers so that the student can move on to the next lesson.
• The photocopier (1959) and handheld calculator (1972) entered the classrooms next, allowing for mass production of material on the fly and quick mathematical calculations.
• The Scantron system of testing, introduced by Michael Sokolski n 1972, allowed educators to grade tests more quickly and efficiently.

The pre-computer years were formative in the choices made for computers in the years following. Immediate response-type systems (video, calculator, Scantron) had become necessary, and quick production of teaching materials, using the photocopier, had become a standard. The U.S. Department of Education reports that high school enrollment was only 10% in 1900, but by 1992 had expanded to 95%. The number of students in college in 1930 was around 1 million, but by 2012 had grown to a record 21.6 million. Teachers needed new methods of instruction and testing, and students were looking for new ways to communicate, study, and learn.

The Entrance and Significance of Personal Computers

Although the first computers were developed in the ‘30s, everyday-use computers were introduced in the ‘80s. The first portable computer, in 1981, weighed 24 pounds and cost $1,795. When IBM introduced its first personal computer in 1981, the educational world knew that it was on the verge of greatness. Time magazine named The Computer its “ Man of the Year ” in 1982, and aptly so: the foundation of immediate learning capabilities had been laid. Time declared, “it is the end result of a technological revolution that has been in the making for four decades and is now, quite literally, hitting home.”

• Toshiba released its first mass-market consumer laptop in 1985 (the T1100), and Apple’s infamous Mac (which later evolved into the Powerbook) was available starting in 1984.
• In 1990, The World Wide Web was given life when a British researcher developed Hyper Text Markup Language, or HTML, and when the National Science Foundation (NSF) removed restrictions on the commercial use of the Internet in 1993, the world exploded into a frenzy of newfound research and communication methods.
• The first Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) were released by Apple Computer Inc. in 1993, and with that, computers were a part of every day, if not every moment. By 2009, 97% of classrooms had one or more computers , and 93% of classroom computers had Internet access. For every 5 students, there was one computer. Instructors stated that 40% of students used computers often in their educational methods, in addition to interactive whiteboards and digital cameras. College students nowadays are rarely without some form of computer technology: 83% own a laptop, and over 50% have a Smartphone.

The Future of Technology in the Classroom

It seems like years since MySpace, first introduced in 2003, Facebook (2004) and Twitter (2007) have changed both the communication and business worlds. Instant connectivity has branched out from merely a tool of personal communication, to a platform for educational instruction and outreach. Social media is now being recognized as an accepted form of instruction in some instances, and groups such as Scholastic Teachers provide excellent support and tips for instructors. Many instructors use social media to communicate directly with their students, or to form forum-style groups for students to communicate with each other, and the method seems to be proving valuable in providing one-on-one attention to student’s questions and concerns.

With the classroom having already evolved into a hotbed of technological advances, what can the future possibly hold that could further educational proficiencies even more?

• Biometrics, a technology that recognizes people based on certain physical or behavioral traits, is on the technological horizon. The science will be used to recognize the physical and emotional disposition of students in the classroom, altering course material to tailor to each individual’s needs based on biometric signals.
• A second up-and-coming technology is Augmented Reality (AR) glasses , rumored to be on Google’s release list, and this technology could be a whole new world for education. AR Glasses (or even contact lenses) will layer data on top of what we naturally see, to allow for a real-world learning experience. For example, a student wearing AR Glasses could potentially sit at his desk and have a conversation with Thomas Edison about invention. It was Edison, after all, who said that “Books will soon be obsolete in schools. Scholars will soon be instructed through the eye.”
• Multi-touch surfaces are commonly used through equipment such as the iPhone, but the technology could become more relevant to education through entirely multi-touch surfaces, such as desks or workstations. This could allow students to collaborate with other students, even those around the world, and videos and other virtual tools could be streamed directly to the surface.

Educators and the Evolution of Technology in the Classroom

With the evolution of technology, educational capabilities are growing and changing every day. The Internet is a vast electronic library of information, and both research and instruction can be achieved through a click of the mouse. With these advances come new responsibilities to the instructor and therefore increase the value of a Master of Science in Education in Learning Design and Technology. As technology advances, an educator’s abilities will grow by leaps and bounds, and without the knowledge of these changes and capabilities, an instructor has a good chance of being left behind.

A career in education requires hard work and dedication, but, for the diligent educator, can prove very rewarding. For those who are serious about success in the education field, staying well-informed of current and changing technologies is imperative. As the world of technology evolves, the learning environment, both on-campus and online, will equally progress, and the need for teachers who are educated in technology and design will continue to grow.

Learn more about the online MSEd in Learning Design and Technology at Purdue University today and help redefine the way in which individuals learn. Call (877) 497-5851 to speak with an admissions advisor or to request more information.

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The Impact of Hammurabi’s Code of Laws on Ancient Babylonian Society

This essay about Hammurabi’s Code of Laws highlights its establishment by King Hammurabi around 1754 BCE and its profound impact on Babylonian society. It formalized the legal system, reinforced social hierarchies, regulated economic activities, and promoted moral principles. The essay also discusses the Code’s historical significance, its influence on subsequent legal systems, and its enduring legacy in shaping our understanding of ancient civilizations.

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Hammurabi’s Code of Laws, established around 1754 BCE by King Hammurabi of Babylon, stands as one of the earliest comprehensive legal codes known to history. Encompassing 282 laws etched meticulously on a stele and publicly displayed, this code profoundly influenced the ancient Babylonian society, molding its legal, social, and economic structures. Celebrated not just for its legal advancements but also for the cultural insights it offers, Hammurabi’s Code serves as a crucial window into the civilization that created it.

Hammurabi’s Code significantly advanced the formalization of Babylon’s legal system.

Before its implementation, Babylonian society likely depended on a mix of customary laws and arbitrary rulings. Hammurabi’s laws provided a written, standardized legal framework, allowing judges to refer to a consistent set of rules, thus ensuring a more predictable administration of justice. This codification limited the arbitrary use of power by local officials and promoted uniformity in justice throughout the kingdom.

The Code addressed diverse aspects of daily life, ranging from property rights and trade regulations to family law and criminal justice. This comprehensive legal structure helped create a more orderly society where citizens were aware of the rules and the consequences of breaking them. The often severe penalties, including corporal punishment or death, underscored the importance Hammurabi placed on maintaining law and order.

Hammurabi’s Code also significantly impacted the social hierarchy of Babylonian society. The laws explicitly differentiated between social classes, imposing varying penalties for the same offense based on the social status of those involved. For instance, an injury inflicted on a nobleman was punished more severely than the same injury inflicted on a commoner or slave. This legal recognition of class distinctions both mirrored and reinforced the existing social stratification.

By embedding inequality within the legal framework, the Code institutionalized social hierarchy. While this may seem unjust by modern standards, it provided a clear and structured social order that helped maintain stability in ancient Babylon. Laws concerning slaves, for instance, outlined specific protections and rights, albeit limited, which helped regulate and somewhat humanize the institution of slavery.

The economic life of Babylonian society was also deeply influenced by Hammurabi’s Code. The laws addressed various aspects of economic transactions, including trade, loans, property rights, and labor. This legal oversight facilitated trade and economic activity by providing a clear framework that protected property rights and contractual agreements.

For example, the Code included regulations on loan repayments, tenant and landlord obligations, and penalties for theft and fraud. This legal clarity fostered a more predictable economic environment, encouraging commerce and economic development. By regulating trade and commerce, Hammurabi’s Code contributed to Babylon’s prosperity, making it a significant economic hub in the ancient world.

Agricultural issues, crucial to Babylon’s economy, were also covered in the Code. Regulations on irrigation practices, crop damage, and land use helped ensure stable and efficient agricultural production. By protecting the rights of farmers and landowners, the Code supported the agricultural foundation of the economy.

Beyond its legal and economic implications, Hammurabi’s Code had a profound impact on the moral and ethical principles of Babylonian society. The Code reflects the values and beliefs of the time, embedding a sense of justice within its laws. For instance, laws designed to protect the weak and vulnerable, such as widows and orphans, show a moral concern for social welfare.

The famous principle of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” (lex talionis), while harsh by modern standards, aimed to ensure proportional punishment for offenses. This principle sought to deter crime by making the consequences of wrongdoing clear and severe and aimed to prevent excessive retribution and blood feuds by establishing state-administered justice rather than personal vengeance.

The Code also emphasized honesty and integrity. Laws against false accusations, perjury, and cheating underscored the value placed on truthfulness and fairness in Babylonian society. By promoting these moral values, the Code helped cultivate a sense of ethical conduct and social responsibility among the populace.

Hammurabi’s Code’s influence extended far beyond Babylon. As one of the earliest and most complete legal codes, it served as a model for subsequent legal systems in the ancient Near East and beyond. Elements of Hammurabi’s legal principles can be seen in later codes, such as the Mosaic Law in the Hebrew Bible and the legal traditions of ancient Greece and Rome.

The historical significance of Hammurabi’s Code is immense. It provides modern scholars with valuable insights into the social, economic, and legal fabric of ancient Babylon. The stele bearing the Code, now housed in the Louvre Museum, remains a powerful symbol of the enduring legacy of Babylonian civilization and its contributions to the development of human society.

In conclusion, Hammurabi’s Code of Laws had a transformative impact on ancient Babylonian society. It formalized and standardized the legal system, reinforced social hierarchies, regulated economic activities, and promoted moral and ethical principles. Its legacy continues to influence modern legal systems and our understanding of ancient civilizations. Through Hammurabi’s Code, we gain a deeper appreciation for the complexity and sophistication of Babylonian society and its lasting contributions to human history.

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Bands with the most internet attention in Taiwan 2024

Mayday was the most buzz worthy music group on Taiwan's internet. From May 18 to June 17, 2024, the rock band was mentioned in over 295 thousand social media feeds, forum discussions, blog posts, online news articles, and other comments. Another local band Won Fu followed with 33 thousand online responses.

Bands garnering the highest internet responses in Taiwan as of June 2024

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May 18 to June 17, 2024

The selected groups include female, male, and mixed groups, as well as orchestras (with more than two members, no upper limit) that have officially debuted in the entertainment industry across Great China area.

The statistics were compiled based on internet responses garnered by each group over the past month.

Algorithms and data were collected by the source from relevant articles and comments from the internet and utilized AI for semantic and sentiment analysis.

Data collection included a wide range of websites such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, PTT, Dcard, news media, blogs, and other social platforms.

Internet responses serve as a metric for visibility ranking, calculated from mentions and discussions in articles by netizens and reported in news sources over the past month. Higher internet responses indicate a stronger online presence. To be included in this ranking, a minimum of 25 online mentions was required, ensuring relevance and reliability.

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Statistics on " Grammy Awards "

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• Interest in streaming awards shows in the U.S. 2020
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• Reasons for watching award shows on TV in the U.S. 2019
• Gender distribution of Grammy Awards nominees in the U.S. 2013-2023, by category
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• Share of female popular music artists in the U.S. 2023
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• Basic Statistic Most Grammy-winning country musicians of all time 2020

Ratings and advertising

• Premium Statistic Grammy Awards - number of viewers 2000-2024
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Sales impact

• Basic Statistic Growth of music sales following the Grammy Awards in 2020
• Premium Statistic Grammy Awards - growth in music sales 2020
• Basic Statistic Growth of song sales following the Grammy Awards 2020

Audience opinion

• Basic Statistic Grammy Awards favorability in the U.S. 2020, by generation
• Premium Statistic The Grammys relevance in the U.S. 2019, by ethnicity
• Basic Statistic Interest in streaming awards shows in the U.S. 2020
• Premium Statistic Viewing frequency of red carpet coverage on TV before awards shows in the U.S. 2019
• Premium Statistic Reasons for watching award shows on TV in the U.S. 2019

Gender and music

• Premium Statistic Gender distribution of Grammy Awards nominees in the U.S. 2013-2023, by category
• Premium Statistic Gender distribution of Grammy nominees in the U.S. 2013-2023
• Premium Statistic Share of female popular music artists in the U.S. 2023
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1 mln yuan rewards for papers in top journal spark debate.

Reports that teams led by two Chinese mainland professors have each been awarded 1 million yuan ($138,000) for publishing papers in Nature, a leading international science journal, have sparked heated discussion in academic circles.

While some said universities have the right to reward scholars in any way they want, others questioned whether the practice goes against government efforts to move away from an overemphasis on the publication of papers in academic evaluation.

According to media reports, Zhu Jiapeng, a professor at Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, and his team were given 1 million yuan by the university for publishing a paper in Nature. They became the first people from the university to publish a paper in the journal in 70 years.

Peng Li, who was an associate professor at Guizhou University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and his team were also awarded 1 million yuan for publishing a paper in Nature. They were the first people from Guizhou province to publish a paper in the journal.

Liu Xingde, the president of Guizhou University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, said the reward was for outstanding academic results and the contribution Peng has made in medicine.

Peng has since been promoted to full professor and deputy director of the medical studies laboratory at the hospital affiliated with the university.

Zhu said academic papers were like a "spell" for researchers. Writing papers had given him pain, headaches and also joy, he said, asking people to pay more attention to his studies rather than the fact he had a paper published in a top journal.

According to a notice issued by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Science and Technology, universities should stop using papers listed in the Science Citation Index as the top criterion in the evaluation of academic research. However, the notice also stressed that the authorities encourage academic researchers to publish high-level, high-quality and innovative academic papers in international journals.

Tian Wentao, a PhD candidate at a university in Hunan province, said he knows how hard it is to get papers published in top journals like Nature, as they only publish innovative and influential papers that require a massive amount of time-consuming work.

However, the researchers are generally not rewarded enough for their contributions, at least financially, which results in a lack of motivation to work on arduous but pioneering problems, he said.

"Giving high bonuses to such researchers is a great way to pay them back for their hard work and encourage other researchers to work on groundbreaking subjects," Tian said.

A PhD graduate from Central South University in Changsha, Hunan, surnamed Liang said there is nothing wrong with universities giving money to researchers who have published papers in top journals.

"Although the authorities have stressed making academic papers less important in talent evaluation, they are still widely used in getting funds and higher professional titles," he said. "They are also the proof that your hard-earned academic results are recognized."

Liang said people do not realize how hard it is to publish a paper in Nature or Science, especially for researchers from lesser known universities, because most academic resources are allocated to China's top universities.

Chu Zhaohui, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Educational Sciences, said publishing in top journals can increase the reputation of a university, increasing its competitiveness in student enrollment and in getting resources and funds from the government, which is why the two universities gave such large cash rewards to the researchers.

Xiong Bingqi, director of 21st Century Education Research, said he disagrees with the universities' practice.

Medical universities and hospitals are notorious for placing too great an emphasis on the publication of academic papers, he said, and many paper retractions and frauds in recent years have happened in the medical sector.

That is why people should not equate academic achievements with publishing papers, Xiong added.

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Call for Papers: AI and warfare (Conference, 16-18 October 2024, Berlin)

Dear colleagues,

The Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG) and the Department of Media Studies, University of Bonn invite submissions to an international conference on the topic of  artificial intelligence and future warfare  in Berlin from 16-18 October, 2024. The deadline for the abstracts is  7 July, 2024 . More information is also available at  www.hiig.de/events/ai-warfare/ .

Call for papers: An International Conference in Berlin, Germany, 16-18 October 2024

AI and warfare – Investigating the technological and political domains of current conflicts

Global conflicts and challenges to international security are among the most pressing issues of our time. Artificial intelligence is increasingly shaping the ways in which warfare is conducted, adding both complications and urgency to the issues caused by the current major geopolitical shifts. AI is one of the driving factors of technological change in warfare in general, with its major effects mainly related to new degrees of complexity in automation and new forms of human-machine interaction. On the one hand, this change introduces new capabilities in weapons systems, in particular in the fields of processing information, generating knowledge and the automation of decision-making. Most prominently, this results in a decreasing level of human intervention and control, thereby reshaping the relationship between human operators and autonomous weapons systems. On the other hand, AI-related developments do not only concern the kinetic dimension of warfare but also expand into what military theory calls the ‘information domain’. Shaping and controlling narratives has been an integral part of conflicts and warfare for a long time, with disinformation and propaganda campaigns utilising the most recent (media) technologies for this purpose. The functionality of AI applications will increasingly be integrated in these efforts, as can already be observed with the dissemination of manipulated content on social media. AI-based technologies are also deployed in cyber warfare, which is not limited to the singular hacking of a system, but rather targeted to directly affect whole digital military infrastructures or civilian entities in politics, the economy or research.

The objective of the conference is to explore these domains of modern warfare in order to develop a more accurate picture of the various effects of AI in military contexts. Another goal is to broaden the perspective of the military deployment of AI beyond questions of weapon systems and their control, by particularly looking at adversarial uses of AI in hybrid forms of warfare in the information domain. The conference particularly aims to develop and establish a dialogue between the research on these two domains that are often explored separately. 

Against this background and in this spirit, we invite contributions along the following lines of inquiry:

(1) AI in military technologies and the relationship between humans and machines

The developments of machine learning and automated decision-making in networked and data-rich environments do not simply change weapons systems but rather have to be modelled as elements in complex systems of humans and machines. Military applications of AI, for example, pose various kinds of problems at the level of human control over these systems which can exert potentially lethal effects. They are also at the core of networked information processing (for example to select targets) and decision-making based on complex forms of synthesising data. Information superiority, situational awareness and electronic warfare are crucial issues for an understanding of the contemporary forms of military applications of AI-based weapons systems.

Talks in this section may address historical or contemporary examples for AI-based information processing in military systems and decision making such as target selection, including various forms of cyber liabilities of military networks and infrastructures (for example communication infrastructure as well as logistics or energy supply). It may also explore current technologies based on concepts of human-machine interaction, with questions on the role of interfaces, including battlefield management systems, or human-machine teaming in the interactions between manned and unmanned systems. Relevant contributions in this section may also analyse how research and development of military technologies are informed by larger cultural narratives of AI-enabled weapons.

(2) AI and the relationship between political processes and information warfare

Automated and autonomous forms of information generation and processing also extend deeply into the media systems of societies, its respective militaries, civil institutions and political systems. Corresponding questions concern various forms of automated manipulation of public opinion, via bots or targeted misinformation (including deep fakes) on social media platforms. This domain particularly addresses the political decision-making processes in an information and media environment that is increasingly influenced by AI technologies. 

Talks in this section may address topics such as the use of AI in efforts to manipulate public opinion or political processes as part of hybrid attacks or warfare in the information domain. Besides the use of generative AI in producing manipulated content, phenomena also include AI-enabled mass surveillance, as well as the targeting, profiling and tracing of individuals in exerting power or with manipulative intentions (particularly evoking emotional responses). Other issues concern the question of how these developments challenge the idea of democratic legitimacy or mechanisms of regulation and accountability (e.g. democratic control of autonomous decision-making in military contexts). 

We welcome contributions from scholars of diverse disciplines such as computer science, cultural studies, political science, international relations & security studies, media and communication studies, military studies, psychology, sociology and science and technology studies. Interdisciplinary approaches as well as perspectives from practitioners and developers are also encouraged.

Submission process

Abstracts of approximately 2,500 characters in length (excl. references) should be submitted no later than  7 July, 2024  to  [email protected] .

Speakers will be notified at the latest by  31 July, 2024 .

More information is also available at  www.hiig.de/events/ai-warfare/ .

Karoline Kozlowski, Student Assistant

Research Project: Scenarios of Interaction - Human-Machine Interfaces in the Discussion on Autonomous Weapon Systems

Department of Media Studies University of Bonn Lennéstr. 1 53113 Bonn, Germany

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Electricdreams - Between fiction and society III / CONFLICTS AND MARGINS: IMAGINING OTHERNESS, ECOCATASTROPHES, PERPETUAL WAR, TECHNOLOGICAL IMBALANCE, AND SYSTEMIC INJUSTICE THROUGH SPECULATIVE FICTION

Electricdreams - Between fiction and society III / CONFLICTS AND MARGINS:  IMAGINING OTHERNESS, ECOCATASTROPHES, PERPETUAL WAR, TECHNOLOGICAL IMBALANCE, AND SYSTEMIC INJUSTICE THROUGH SPECULATIVE FICTION

Call for papers for an international in-person three-day conference on speculative fiction, science fiction and fantasy fiction to be held in Milan, Italy, October 9-10-11, 2024. The conference is organized and hosted by IULM University of Milan, in collaboration with Complutense University of Madrid and the HISTOPIA research group.

 Fields of interest: literature, cinema, TV series, comics, games/videogames, new media, performative arts, cultural studies.

 The international conference Electricdreams - Between Fiction and Society III invites a discussion on how speculative fiction, science fiction, and fantasy fiction focus on the tropes of conflict and marginality across different media. According to von Clausewitz “war is (...) an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will.” The idea of conflict is not just inherently military, it can also be broadened to personal and societal relations of power, including forms of opposition and domination between different entities and groups. Conflicts lead to marginalization, bias, control, ecocatastrophes, technological imbalance, and systemic injustice. At the same time, conflicts also originate during processes of resistance and transformation: margins can be the liminal space where individuals emerge or distance themselves from the system and regain some degree of freedom and agency.

 “The category of the Other is as primordial as consciousness itself”, de Beauvoir wrote in The Second Sex because “the self” needs to “categorize and classify” interactions and subjects to build its identity. And, as Bauman affirmed, “to classify means to set apart, to segregate. It means first to postulate that the world consists of discrete and distinctive entities; then to postulate that each entity has a group of similar or adjacent entities with which it belongs, and with which – together – it is opposed to some other entities; and then to make the postulated real by linking differential patterns of action to different classes of entities”. Biopolitical power relations model social and private bodies not only through homologation but also through opposition. According to Foucault, individuals can be considered a “useful force” when they provide a body that is, at the same time, productive and subjugated and that fits homogeneously into the social, economic, ethical, sexual, and political standards of society, despite the persistent presence of internal hierarchies.

Non-aligned, rebellious, and marginalized bodies become a danger, an element of trauma, a justification for spatial, linguistic, and psychophysical control and repression. Fear, hate, prejudices, and stereotypes fuel a dystopian and debasing treatment of “others”: the monstrous transformation of otherness in the collective imagination leads to unbearable conflicts and to the dehumanization of the subjects that colonial, racial, patriarchal, environmental, and capitalist policies negatively depict as discordant, different, marginalized. Countless and dramatic pages of human history remind us of this tendency: Colonialism and Imperialism, wartime genocides, slavery, Apartheid, systemic racism, anti-immigration policies, women and LGBTQIA+ limitation of civil rights (including reproductive rights), an aggressive use of and a predatory relationship with technologies, ecocatastrophes and apocalyptic conflicts for survival in depleted natural environments. As Magneto says in the recent animated series X-Men ’97 : “In history’s sad song, there is a refrain. Believe differently, love differently, be of different sex or skin, and be punished. We sing this song to one another.”

Utopian promises of peace, justice, and progress have influenced speculative fiction, but the 21st century has continued to witness complex and dramatic series of traumatic events affecting both our collective imagination and the fictionalization of a perpetual-conflict state where the marginalization of the Other is the ground for a clash involving multiple factions and entities. When society is infected, culture often recognizes, exacerbates, and denounces the infection, promoting empathy, knowledge, and consciousness, and helping to shed light on “illnesses”.

Literature, film, TV series, comics, video games, new narrative media, performative arts, and popular culture have often given voice to the voiceless, the underdogs, minorities. Conflicts and margins stand at the core of literary speculative fiction, i.e. the galactic wars between powerful houses in Frank Herbert’s Dune Chronicles , with the marginalized people of the planet Arrakis acting as balance. But the link between conflicts and margins is a trope also present in many other media: CRPGs like Baldur’s Gate 3 , where the conflict between Mind Flayers and Githyankis across the worlds is at the center of the marginalization of the main characters, with their parasitic tadpole trying to mutate them into their enemies; films like Ex-Machina , where the exploiting relations between human and posthuman, as well as between men and women, are explored; YA speculative fictions like The Hunger Games and Divergent , where the conflict is between districts and factions with their orders and marginalized groups; dystopian novels like Agustina Baxterrica’s Cadáver Exquisito ( Tender is the Flesh ), where hegemonic capitalism and systemic injustice lead to intensive (poor) human livestock  farming; comics like X-Men , where the violence against otherness and the repercussions of discriminatory actions on society is depicted through the mutant metaphor; films like Gattaca or video-games like Orwell where the conflict is visualized as an elusive technique in which hegemony forces could employ technology to draw a border among the recognised and the excluded.  In choreographies such as The Trilogy ( The Millennarium , Aeon , and Sulphur ) or in performances such as Una Isla , humans and machines endeavor to establish a dialogue and a point of convergence on stage, which transforms into a dystopian landscape. Avatars, robots, and humans challenge each other, vying to assert their supremacy in a dynamic display of capabilities and values. This interplay often causes a glitch, disrupting the seamless integration of their interactions and highlighting the underlying tensions between technology and humanity. The 4.0 human experiences a profound conflict with the biological limits of their body, striving to overcome these organic restrictions through technological and scientific advancements, as argued by Donna Haraway and Rosi Braidotti. This clash reflects the tension between the physical reality of the human body and the aspirations towards a post-human condition, as described by N. Katherine Hayles, which is also mirrored in contemporary performing arts.

How have we imagined the reasons and the agents behind conflicts, what is the role of the margins and marginalized categories in the conflicts, what are the scenarios for a possible resolution of conflicts? We hope that the analysis of speculative fiction could help us promote peace, inclusion, redistribution of power, intersectional empowerment, empathy, and hope, helping in visualizing a different society and an empowered mode of interaction with the Otherness.

Proposals may cover the following themes, although they are not limited to them:

●      The conflicts between socio-political and technological entities and/or individual bodies;

●      The traumatic embodiments of otherness (gender, LGBTQIA+, queerness, ethnicity, disability, nationality, religion, ideology);

●      The postcolonial and neocolonial critiques of dominant/Western canons;

●      The climate in/justice and climate change;

●      The conflict between human and post-human agents;

●      The encounter with non-human entities and the issue involving communication and miscommunication;

●      The opposition between anthropic and other species or the natural environment for the survival;

●      The utopian/dystopian possibilities of margins, spaces, and geographies;

●      The idea of borders as spaces of conflict and the opposition between clear divisions and the possibility to engage with the Other;

●      Imagining worlds, societies, and the life of living beings after the conflict;

●      Possible ways of being at the margins - i.e. the choice of opposing society, the determination of living outside society, …;

The conference will be held in English and in-person. We will be happy to consider proposals from researchers and scholars at any level of career advancement. You may send proposals containing an abstract (maximum 300 words) for a 20-minute presentation, a brief biographical note (maximum 100 words), and affiliation and contact information to [email protected] by July 30, 2024. Whole panel proposals consisting of three/four talks are also welcome: please include a brief introduction about the theme of the proposed panel, along with an abstract and a brief biography of each participant.

Important dates

Abstract submission deadline: July 30, 2024

Notification of acceptance: August 23, 2024

Confirmation of participation : by September 3, 2024

The international conference will be held in-person on October 9-10-11, 2024 at IULM University in Milan (Italy), as part of the "Sognielettrici"/Electricdreams International Film Festival (October 7-12, 2024).

Conference registration: 40 €

Social dinner ( optional ): 20 €

(Payments will not be refundable)

Scientific committee

Gianni Canova (IULM University)

Manuela Ceretta (University of Turin)

Elisabetta Di Minico (Complutense University of Madrid, UNA4CAREER)

Ester Fuoco (IULM University)

Stefano Locati (IULM University)

Francisco José Martínez Mesa (Complutense University of Madrid, HISTOPIA)

Anna Pasolini (University of Milan)

Juan Pro Ruiz (CSIC - Spanish National Research Council, HISTOPIA)

Federico Selvini (IULM University)

Nicoletta Vallorani (University of Milan)

Contact information: Stefano Locati ( [email protected] ), Elisabetta Di Minico ( [email protected] ), and Federico Selvi