Imagining the Internet: A History and Forecast

• Elon University

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24 February 2010 The Elon University/Pew Internet Project site Imagining the Internet: A History and Forecast is a multi-section resource containing thousands of pages. It exposes future possibilities while simultaneously providing a peek back at the past.

In it, you will find the words of thousands of people from every corner of the world, from today and from yesterday, making thousands of predictive pronouncements about the future of humankind.

• This resource includes special explanatory sections on the future and past development of communications networks (Forward 150/Back 150).
• It includes videos recorded at global conferences that reveal future hopes and challenges as expressed by hundreds of Internet leaders, including Vint Cerf, Douglas Engelbart and Robert Kahn (Visionaries Multimedia).
• It has informative areas targeted to benefit children under 12 (KidZone), and to help teachers of elementary, middle school, high school and college students use the site to educate (Teachers' Tips) .
• It allows you to enjoy thousands of world citizens' discussions of our future – from top experts (Predictions Surveys) to your neighbor down the block or a computer programmer in Nigeria (Voices of the People).
• It allows you to add your vision to the collection by opening up a "Share Your Prediction" form and telling us what you think. Just look for the phrase Share Your Prediction - found in the top-right corner of every page, near the website's logo.
• The site shares a look back at what people were saying in the 1990s during the "awe" stage of the development of the internet (Early '90s Predictions Database).
• And it records a legacy of predictive statements as they are made, continuously building a historic record of lasting value that documents the way we see ourselves as we move into an explosion of changes wrought by the combination of genetics, nanotechnology and robotics as they leverage our future networks.