Ha @Sana, I agree you can live for three days without water, a month without food but how long can you live without the Internet

Dear Michael,

Nothing can be said about the exact future of social media, however credibility of the information on internet/social media is becoming a big challenge now and it can be a growing problem in future.

There is something, I think, we can say with certainty: Eventually it will disappear. In a shorter term there will be so much junk information that we will need to institute a Ph D on browsing.

there's an interesting survey in cooperation with the pew internet and american life project going on at the moment on that exact same topic (what will the internet look like in 2025?). the invitation was circulated on the aoir-listserv: https://www.rationalsurvey.com/s/10669 (PASSWORD: FUTURE)

it will be cool to see the results!

Thanks Christopher. I haven't seen the new one, but they did that about ten years ago and came up with some interesting results. One of the people who participated in their survey was also in my study. I will check it out.

future of internet.............great thing to think MICHAEL.

in near future, I think internet will become as important as food.

I agree with Sahifa, the biggest concern right now is that of accuracy and reliability but I am sure over time some mechanisms will be evolved which would rectify this problem. The next serious concern is that of getting the right information at the right time with the massive amounts of data available. However, I am sure mankind can solve this issue. They landed not just on the moon but on Mars as well, didnt they? So this tiny problem should not be an issue for some future genius.

I think that the futur of Internet will likely arise in the new so called "Internet of things". Our every day objects will be connected to each other. They can exchange, store and process data to achieve common goals in an automatic way ! A lot of challenges can hinder the deployement of the web of things especially privacy and security concerns.

Ha @Sana, I agree you can live for three days without water, a month without food but how long can you live without the Internet

The Internet is just a few decades old, but in that short span of time it has experienced significant changes. It grew out of a hodgepodge of independent networks into a global entity. It serves as a platform for business, communication, entertainment and education. And you can connect to this enormous network through dozens of different devices.

What's next? When you can call up minute trivia about the most obscure subject you can think of with a couple of taps on a smartphone screen, where else can you go? The answer isn't entirely clear, but the possibilities are exciting.

What else remains for future? DIrect conversion of brain waves in order to control some external equipment, which might be the first phase. ANother phase might be both-ways transfer of feelings and emotions.

Colleagues, these are interesting answers, but in most cases much too ephemeral. Most people, even the experts, underestimate what they know. For example, I asked about the internet and what people know that no one else knows, and most people automatically gravitate toward social media and ubiquity. Tomy, for example really is on target here. Although we may not be directly tapping into the brain soon, there are interfaces online that will revolutionize the internet even more. There is a new television show in the U.S. about a guy with a chip in his brain that allows him to access the internet. We are not there yet, but we do have researchers working on eye implants and contact lens based interfaces that will allow something like the Google Glasses experience but on a more personal (and reliable) basis.

Attia and Riad talk about how the internet is (will) becoming more banal and how we can access up-to-the-minute trivia, etc. (I think we are already there). Nicholas Negroponte wrote about the impact of connectivity among every device in his 1995 book, "Being digital." He talked about how our car and refrigerator might one day talk to each other, informing a driver while s/he is on the way home that s/he needs to stop and buy milk as the driver passes the grocery store. We already can do this, if anyone wants it. Many people already have thermostats in their homes that let them adjust the temperature with their smart phones from anywhere. Smart phone based security systems already exist that allow someone to secure their doors remotely, activate a security system, turn off the water and lights, etc. Having your refrigerator outfitted with a scale where the milk sits and an internet connection would be easy.

Most of us, however, take for granted what we know about the more subtle aspects of the internet. A thriving social media network exists on YouTube, for example. I am a woodworker who recently took up a turning wood on a lathe. In watching turning vides on YouTube to learn skills and techniques I discovered a community of probably fifty turners who are networked together via their individual YouTube channels and who interact, encourage, and comment on each other's work. Similar networks exist among Redit users, book readers, and tens of thousands of other internet sites that are essentially "social media" sites. Most of us automatically think of Facebook or Twitter as social media, but Twitter is very "unsocial," used as a one-way tool in most cases, while Facebook tends to shut down dissent of different ideas (the research says Facebook users unfriend or block people who disagree with them or share different views).

The issues of integration are very important also, as some have noted, but the scale at which the integration has and will continue to take place is staggering. As the less mainstream social media become integrated and "big data" becomes more manageable, issues of privacy, identity, and relationship building will be altered.

So when I ask about what you (or experts) know that no one else knows, I intend it as a realistic question. The guy who started the famous technology blog SlashDot (Commander Taco) talked about knowing how to build communities of experts from social media sites, and "knowing how to get the best stuff to rise to the top." THAT is important and if we knew more about how to do that we could do a lot more with crowd sourced data, problem solving, etc.

So after this very long soliloquy, and hopefully some people read to the end, I want to throw the question out again: what do you know that no one else knows, or that is not widely known. The answer is not "nothing." The seemingly trivial, subtle, insights are often more important than the obvious ones. I know about what is happening with e-books and Kindle publishing, I know about how to make social media more social. I know about the largely ignored risks from social media for privacy, identity, and friendships. What do you know or know about?

Michael, TY for your appreciation, but these ideas arent my own. I have learned to rely a lot on predictions of some sci-fi writers, such as Bradbury, Lem and a few others. I just made a synthesis of that, cross-checked with development in the past, current and expectations for the future.

What I wrote about was based on novel "Hardwired" by Walter Jon Williams (1986). rather simplified desription can be found at:

http://www.examiner.com/article/book-review-hardwired-by-walter-jon-williams

What you described in your second para, had been described in Bradbury's "Martian Chronicles" (1953) and currently is this idea known as "Smart houses".These cleaning rats have already equivalent in floor cleaners, which remember furniture layout and position of power supply socket for recharging of their batteries. Evening reading of book has its equivalent in already existing Text-to-Speech converters.

What I do know is how to create virtual community, mantain and lead it. I also know about positive impact of virtual worlds and virtual identities on real life.

Tomy, I completely agree. Most of what we are have now in terms of "new technology" was envisioned by others decades before. Ebooks go back to Project Guttenberg in 1971 and my computer would "read" books to me in the mid 90s. The first commercial FAX service goes back to 1865, and the ideas behind it are still being realized in tools like Dropbox. Our "New" technologies are basically not new at all.

Hi Michael - a very interesting research project indeed.

I think we might be paying attention to the idea of 'digital presence' as it replaces 'physical presence' in so many interpersonal encounters. It has implications for the debates around future definitions of 'dialogue' and 'relationship communications' in the context of social media.

'Presence' is a very important concern in communication as it applies to e-learning, an area I've done some modest research.

I am interested to know more about the research you mention that shows Facebook users unfriend or block people who disagree with them or share different views, if you can point me towards it.

Gary,

You can find the Facebook study here. There are other similar sources:

Rainie, L., & Smith, A. (2012). Social networking sites and politics. Washington DC: Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Social-networking-and-politics.aspx.

The findings of the Pew expert study on the future of the Internet are now out. You can find a summary here: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/15-predictions-future-internet/ and the study report itself here: http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/03/11/digital-life-in-2025/