Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
In laying out the important data collection questions, workshop participants touched on five themes, to be discussed in detail in this section of the essay: Productivity: Why are accurate measures of broadband and other information and communication technologies (ICTs) important to measuring the economic productivity? Public policy and government intervention: If government chooses to intervene […]
Introduction This section discusses in greater detail some of the major datasets identified by the speakers and their limitations. Problems with these datasets fall into two principal categories: inappropriate and inconsistent definitions; and limitations, bias, and error arising from multiple sources. These problems result in misuse of terms and affect coverage, availability, and reliability of […]
Key West, Florida Some of the nation’s leading journalists gathered in Key West, Fla., in May 2007 for the Pew Forum’s biannual Faith Angle Conference on religion, politics and public life. Richard Bushman, an emeritus professor at Columbia University and author of several books about Mormon history, discussed the relationship between The Church of Jesus […]
Washington, D.C. Every year as the holiday season gets underway, debates break out across the country over the appropriateness of religious displays in public spaces, such as crèches and menorahs placed in town halls. But the so-called “Christmas wars” are only a small part of a much larger debate concerning the proper place of religion […]
The Blogosphere After emerging as a force in the 2004 presidential election—and showing up some mainstream media mistakes on election night—bloggers were raring to go Nov. 7. They were anticipating several issues. There was the impact of the Iraq war, anticipated ballot box debacles related to new technology, absentee mania and early allegations of voter […]
The issues are the same, but the stakes are higher than ever before; looking ahead instead of simply looking backward is of vital importance. Hope and fear are threaded through the material shared by respondents to this survey. This is a predictable outcome, since all human progress has had its negative and positive influences; as […]
Prediction and Reactions Prediction: By 2020, intelligent agents and distributed control will cut direct human input so completely out of some key activities such as surveillance, security and tracking systems that technology beyond our control will generate dangers and dependencies that will not be recognized until it is impossible to reverse them. We will be […]
Prediction and Reactions Prediction: By 2020, worldwide network interoperability will be perfected, allowing smooth data flow, authentication and billing; mobile wireless communications will be available to anyone anywhere on the globe at an extremely low cost. An extended collection of hundreds of written answers to this question can be found at: http://www.elon.edu/e-web/predictions/expertsurveys/2006survey/globalnetworkthrives.xhtml Overview of Respondents’ Reactions […]
A selection of biographical data about some of the leading internet stakeholders who participated in the survey and were willing to take credit for their remarks. This collection of more than 250 brief biographies describing some of the 2006 Survey respondents includes data about some of the top participants who were willing to be quoted […]