In the Future, Phones May Be the Primary Method of Internet Access

A panel of experts assembled by Pew Internet & American Life Project predicts that by 2020, most people will access the Internet primarily through their phone.

The prediction is that in another decade or so, "the mobile phone — now with significant computing power — is the primary Internet connection and the only one for a majority of the people across the world"

The panel was made up of over 1,000 Internet leaders, activists and analysts, who were asked about their reactions to a number of possible scenarios. A majority agreed with the one that had smartphones taking a prominent role in Internet access.

One of the panelists, Clay Shirky, a professor at New York University, said, "The 'phone' by 2020 will be as much computer as voice appliance, and the universal standards and protocols will be data-centric rather than voice-centric."

Voice Recognition... Check

The panel also generally agreed that by 2020, smartphones and other mobile devices will prominently feature built-in voice-recognition.

But that doesn't mean voice will be the only method people will interact with their computers. Typing and touch, including gestures, will still be around. However, a suggestion that future small models will be able to project a virtual keyboard into the air or onto nearby surfaces proved controversial.

"Touch interfaces, including multi-touch and gestural interfaces, will become an integral part of the computing environment of the future, though air-typing will probably not be a large part of it without force-feedback gloves that simulate some kind of tactile feedback. Speech will also become good enough to use for most everyday tasks,"said Jason Stoddard, managing partner/strategy at Centric/Agency of Change.

Every Is a Mobile Worker

A small majority agreed with the idea that, in the future, divisions between personal time and work time will be further erased for everyone who is connected.

The proposed scenario says:

In 2020, well-connected knowledge workers in more-developed nations have willingly eliminated the industrial-age boundaries between work hours and personal time. Outside of formally scheduled activities, work and play are seamlessly integrated in most of these workers' lives. This is a net-positive for people. They blend personal/professional duties wherever they happen to be when they are called upon to perform them-from their homes, the gym, the mall, a library, and possibly even their company's communal meeting space, which may exist in a new virtual-reality format .

One of the panelists, Anthony Townsend, a co-founder of NYCwireless, said, "The idea of separating work and home life is a distinctly Western, Victorian one. It basically doesn't exist as a concept before the late 19th century. It won't last much longer."

Not everyone agrees. "By 2020 I think people will be beginning to see this as a net negative and be looking for a return to late 20th century split of work/social time," said Adam Peake, executive research fellow and telecommunications policy analyst at the Center for Global Communications.

More detail on the "The Future of the Internet" survey can be found on the Pew Internet & American Life Project website.

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