Pew Internet: Future of the Internet

In the latest shocking empirical results, guess what emerged as the single most contentious issue, with opinions split nearly straight down the middle? Yep, while the semantics may differ, the sentiments are empirically and functionally equivalent. The issue is: WHO OWNS YOU ONLINE.

Curiously, the summary statement significantly downplays the SCIENTIFICALLY OBJECTIVE dramatic split between well established business and opinion leaders on this subject. At Pew Internet: Future of the Internet, the overview chooses to truncate the findings as:

"People will wittingly and unwittingly disclose more about themselves, gaining some benefits in the process even as they lose some privacy."

While the full PDF version of the study clearly goes on to state:

"Respondents split evenly on whether the world will be a better place in 2020 due to the greater transparency of people and institutions afforded by the internet: 46% agreed that the benefits of greater transparency of organizations and individuals would outweigh the privacy costs [while the dominant plurality of] 49% disagreed."

Why the wording is so obviously overweighted to emphasize the BENEFITS of said "transparency" when the DATA leans toward the opposite conclusion, is left to the reader's analysis. It seems even somewhat more curious, considering that the report is founded upon "a non-randomized sample [wherein] a margin of error cannot be computed" (page i, Summary of Findings). But let's drill down even a bit more. On page ii, the raw data -- non-random, such as it is -- is as follows. The proposition put to respondents:

Transparency builds a better world, even at the expense of privacy: As sensing, storage and communication technologies get cheaper and better, individuals' public and private lives will become increasingly “transparent” globally. Everything will be more visible to everyone, with good and bad results. Looking at the big picture - at all of the lives affected on the planet in every way possible - this will make the world a better place by the year 2020. The benefits will outweigh the costs.

49% said, NO, THE BENEFITS WILL NOT OUTWEIGH THE COSTS while 46% said they will. That split, and it's consequent significance for all of us, seems to be entirely absent from mainstream soundbites. If I'm wrong, I'd be thrilled to see some links in the comment section to any mainstream news sources who are covering this in any detail, as opposed to dismissing or glossing over a comparatively glaringly conflict among experts' collective expectations for the future of the internet.

Summary page v:

“Privacy is a thing of the past. Technologically it is obsolete. The future of privacy: However, there will be social norms and legal barriers that will dampen out the worst excesses.” – Hal Varian, University of California-Berkeley and Google.

“We are constructing architectures of surveillance over which we will lose control. It's time to think carefully about 'Frankenstein,' The Three Laws of Robotics, 'Animatrix' and 'Gattaca.'“ – Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

“Before 2020, every newborn child in industrialized countries will be implanted with an RFID or similar chip. Ostensibly providing important personal and medical data, these may also be used for tracking and surveillance.” – Michael Dahan, a professor at Sapir Academic College in Israel.

Please, if these matters interest you, read this influential report for yourself. This is a compelling body of significant and uniquely insightful -- if anecdotal -- data of a quality that businesses, policy makers, and individual citizens need to incorporate into their wider forecasting models. There will be sufficient numbers of unintended consequences to overcome as a result of ongoing technological advances to unduly hamper ourselves with clearly anticipated maladaptive outcomes.

After all, we will create this future together -- wittingly or unwittingly -- so why not give the former every fair chance to sway the outcomes in a direction that will provide the most benefits while mitigating the deleterious effects of foreseeable harms?