Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/survey-finds-benefits-hurdles-in-the-internets-future Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript In a new Pew Internet and American Life Project survey, leading technology thinkers, business people, and activists agreed that the Internet will will bring both great promise and problems in the year 2020. Lee Raine, the director of the Pew Project, discusses the poll. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. JEFFREY BROWN: Who agrees that the Internet, already a vital resource and tool for many of us, will become ever more integrated into most of our lives. But just how will it evolve? Will its impact on society be for the good? What new challenges will emerge as the Internet expands?A new poll asks such questions of leading technology thinkers, business people, and activists. It was conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project working with Elon University. The director of the Pew project, Lee Rainie, joins us now.Welcome to you.LEE RAINIE, Director, Pew Internet and American Life Project: Thanks. JEFFREY BROWN: First, let's understand the poll. You were looking at what the world might look like in 2020? LEE RAINIE: We asked Internet experts, technology officials, about their predictions for the future. We gave them seven scenarios to judge and asked them to agree or disagree with the evolution of those scenarios. And we found these people by doing extensive background research on who are the smart people who had done commenting on the Internet many years ago. JEFFREY BROWN: OK, so let's look at some of the major findings. Now, first, you posit that a global low-cost network thrives, and a clear majority of your respondents agreed. Now, why does that mean? LEE RAINIE: The Internet will be evolving over time, and the cluster of technologies around it will be evolving. It will get better; it will get attached to more people; it will attach to more things.And the operative thought in this community was that mobile technology would bring the Internet to lots of places in the world now where it doesn't exist. Now, some of the respondents disputed the notion that this was inevitable. They worried about business policies and government policies that might get in the way of this rapid spread of the technology. JEFFREY BROWN: But basically the thought is that it will be more accessible to more people? LEE RAINIE: Yes. And people were excited about the idea that this would help flatten the world even more, allow more people to escape the boundaries of distance in their own geography, and meet others like themselves and innovate in new ways, so that the world would become, basically, a smaller place.