Jennifer Zaino
SemanticWeb.com Contributor

What is the future of the Internet? It's a good question to ask as we head into the last year of the first decade of the 21st century -- and it's a question that the Pew Internet & American Life Project in fact asked Internet leaders, activists and analysts.

In its just-issued report, "The Future of the Internet III," the survey delivers the perspective of these leading thinkers as it relates to how the Internet will have evolved by 2020.

Semanticweb.com readers won't be surprised to hear that the semantic web is destined to play an important role in the Internet of tomorrow -- but as has been discussed here before, we are talking about an evolution, not a revolution. Most of those surveyed by the Pew Internet & American Life Project envision that the original Internet architecture will still be in place in 2020 rather than replaced by a new "next-generation" system, but continually refined.

"Those who wrote extended elaborations to their answers projected the expectation that IPv6 (define) and the Semantic Web will be vital elements in the continuing development of the Internet over the next decade," the report notes.

That harkens to the thoughts of Nova Spivack, CEO and founder of Radar Networks, who summed up the semantic web last year thusly: "I think that the semantic web is an evolution more than a revolution. At first it won't be as radical a change as some people have hyped it. It will be an iterative, incremental, gradual improvement of all the information tools we use, and that will over time reach a tipping point. But that's more than ten years away."

The report also postulates that the Internet in 2020 will be a place of even greater transparency. It would be difficult to think that the Semantic Web -- the web of linked data -- isn't going to have a major impact on information transparency, to whatever ends the transparency of people and organizations is put (the report concludes such transparency will not necessarily yield more personal integrity, social tolerance, or forgiveness).

At the same time, the report notes that systems will be adapted to afford at least some privacy, and here too is where semantic web technologies will have a role to play. Semantic coding, one respondent to the survey said, means that almost any information can be accessed, but also it can prevent people from getting to information they aren't supposed to have. Equally important, the respondent noted that "more generally, privacy is enforced by the fact that excessive access to confidential data can be revealed." Another contributor concluded that it "is probably not major media that will guard reputations, but background Semantic Web services and pervasive agents that individuals can control."

SemanticWeb.com has seen similar views expressed by leaders in the field including Tim Berners-Lee, who noted earlier this year that, "There have to be changes in the attitude from trying to lock data down to building systems that are accountable, that track where it came from and where it's going to," and how, or if, it is allowed to be used in each instance.

Similarly, James Hendler addressed the issue when he discussed how the future of information is a future of information anywhere. Individuals will be able to get whatever data they need, whether it is on their desktop, the web, or someone else's system -- assuming they have the authorization for it. The role semantic technology has to play in that is, by enabling computers to interpret the meaning and context of words and numbers, you can enable rules-based policy access that resides within a system rather than with an individual, and you can do it in a scalable way. Yet another place where contributors to the Pew report foresee the leveraging of semantic web technologies is in the entertainment area.

Writes one respondent, "Wall-sized televisions supporting blazing-fast data transfers, voice recognition and a fully realized semantic Web will blur the lines between real and virtual. This 'Teleliving' will fundamentally change the way we shop, work, learn, and live." Click here for Delve Networks' CEO Alex Castro's take on the intersection between semantic searching and digital Hollywood.

The Pew report also cites that about 80 percent of experts responding believe that the mobile phone will be the primary connection tool for most people in the world as we enter 2020. The semantic web is sure to power many of these interactions and connections; SemanticWeb.com has reported about how semantic web technologies will manifest themselves in that capacity, too.

Finally, the report notes that some survey participants believe that the move to IPV6 and the Semantic Web will create new online opportunities.

Says one respondent, "The new forms of the Web, like Web 3.0-the Semantic Web-will begin to show us how to interact with the Web in context, ways we can hardly imagine now will provide us with new directions. The idea of specialized search will unlock much of the so-called 'dark Web'- that portion of the Internet that isn't really being searched with Google or any other engine for that matter."

Whatever of these expectations actually do come to pass, one thing is clear: We've got a heck of an interesting decade ahead of us.