Examining the potential future of the Web, technology experts and scholars foresee a bigger role for the Internet in people's personal and work lives in the next decade.
On the downside, a wide-ranging survey of technology leaders, scholars, industry officials and analysts finds that most Internet experts expect attacks on the network infrastructure in the coming decade as the Internet becomes more embedded in everyday and commercial life.
Some 66% of the experts responding to a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project and Elon University agreed with the following prediction that at least one devastating attack will occur in the next 10 years on the networked information infrastructure or the country's power grid.
In addition, there was notable agreement among the 1,286 experts in this survey that in the next ten years, the Internet will be more deeply integrated in our physical environments and high-speed connections will proliferate - with mixed results.
The Pew-Elon survey asked the experts to describe what dimensions of online life in the past decade have caught them by surprise.
The experts were unhappy that gaps exist in Web access for many groups - those with low income, those with lower levels of educational attainment, and those in rural areas. And they still think there is a long way to go before political institutions will benefit from the Internet.
They were also of the view that the dawning of the blog era will bring radical changes in the news and publishing industry and while the Internet will have the least impact on religious institutions.
The survey was conducted online between September 20 and November 1, 2004. The Pew Internet Project is a non-partisan, non-profit initiative of the Pew Research Center that researches the social impact of the Internet.
