Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

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    1. A sampling of overarching views on the metaverse

    The following incisive and comprehensive responses to our questions about the future of the metaverse represent some of the big ideas shared by a small selection of the hundreds of thought leaders who participated in this canvassing. ‘We have always been living in a quasi-multiverse’ Sam Lehman-Wilzig, professor of communication at Bar-Ilan University, Israel, and […]

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    4. Empowering individuals

    A share of these expert respondents argued that a better digital sphere would empower individuals, granting them privacy and control over their data and improving their interactions with and access to government and health services, businesses and other entities. They also seek a world where the decisions people make about what information and which people […]

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    3. Large improvement of digital spaces is unlikely by 2035: Human frailties will remain the same; corporations, governments and the public will not be able to make reforms

    Experts who doubt significant improvement will be made in the digital democratic sphere anytime soon say the key factor underlying the currently concerning challenges of online discourse is the ways in which people, with their varied and complicated motivations and behaviors, use and abuse the digital spaces that are built for them. Those who think […]

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    1. Worries about developments in AI

    It would be quite difficult – some might say impossible – to design broadly adopted ethical AI systems. A share of the experts responding noted that ethics are hard to define, implement and enforce. They said context matters when it comes to ethical considerations. Any attempt to fashion ethical rules generates countless varying scenarios in […]

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    About this canvassing of experts

    This report is the first of two to come in 2021 that will share results from the 12th “Future of the Internet” canvassing by the Pew Research Center and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center. Experts were asked to respond to several questions via a web-based instrument that was open to them from June 30-July […]

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    1. The innovations these experts predict by 2030

    Americans and many around the world are not terribly satisfied with the state of democracy and the institutions that undergird it. Experts who were canvassed about the relationship between people’s technology use and democracy also expressed serious concerns about how things will unfold in the next decade. At the same time, the experts responding to […]

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    5. Tech causes more problems than it solves

    A number of respondents to this canvassing about the likely future of social and civic innovation shared concerns. Some said that technology causes more problems than it solves. Some said it is likely that emerging worries over the impact of digital life will be at least somewhat mitigated as humans adapt. Some said it is […]

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    4. It’s all just history repeating itself

    A number of these experts said that when people try to predict the future it can be helpful to look at the past and assess today’s trends. They drew parallels from the present moment to past eras and extrapolated based on current trends. This section includes comments about how the past can inform the future. […]

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    4. Hopeful themes and suggested solutions

    About a third of the experts who responded to this canvassing said people’s uses of technology will mostly strengthen core aspects of democracy and democratic representation. This section includes comments about hopes for the future that were made by all respondents, whether or not their answer in this canvassing was that democracy will be strengthened. […]

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    2. Broader thoughts from key experts on the future of democracy at a time of digital disruption

    The following expert contributions offer deep, broad insights that represent the diversity of thought expressed by leading expert commentators in this canvassing. If we develop guardrails, the core elements of democracy will be strengthened Amy Webb, founder of the Future Today Institute, wrote, “There are too many variables in play to predict just one plausible […]