Mobile phone to be main Web tool

CRYSTAL BALL GAZERS at the Pew Internet & American Life Project have peered into the beyond and decided that mobile phones will be the main web tool by 2020.

It is a pretty safe thing to say. If you are still alive in 2020, and the earth has not been eaten by a rogue star badger, you are not likely to turn around to Pew Internet and say "Hang on... 12 years ago you said I would be doing this Internet stuff on my mobile instead of my computer."

Pew says that voice-recognition and touch-screen interfaces will be much more prevalent, although it didn't say when we would get our own jet packs.

Apparently artificial and virtual reality will be part of our everyday lives and love will rule the stars... or something.

Generally the report is stating the obvious. Mobile technology is going to be the next big thing and the Mobile Phone will be the gadget that most punters will use to get onto the World Wide Wibble.

More than 77 per cent of experts surveyed said they "mostly agree" that mobile technology will be the world's number one interface while 22 per cent said they "mostly disagree" and one per cent did not respond. It is safe to assume that the 22 per cent who said 'no way' were thinking that in 12 years we might have come up with something a wee bit better than an Iphone.

More than half of the experts mostly agreed with the statement that in 2020, "many lives will be touched by the use of augmented reality or spent interacting in artificial spaces."

30 per cent said they mostly disagree while 15 per cent were not in touch with any reality right now and would get back to the question later.

One more amusing aspect of the survey is that the experts didn't think that DRM or other forms of copyright protection would stop the Wibble.

Asked whether "content control through copyright-protection technology dominates" in 2020, 31 per cent said they mostly agree while 60 per cent said they mostly disagree. Nine percent did not respond due to the fact that their intellectual property was their own affair.

Lee Rainie, director of the project said that experts were suffering from a bit of anxiety.

While they are quite sure the Internet and mobile phones will advance faster than Homer Simpson advances on a doughnut, they are not at all sure humanity will make the same kind of progress.

The world will not be a better place, even if technology gives people the power to be stronger actors in the political and economic world. µ

L'Inq
The Survey