Challenges and Opportunities: The Future of the Internet, Volume ...

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media changes a lot of fundamental social, intellectual, and legal realities. Some of my favorite expert answers on this:

  • Quinnipiac University Professor Alex Halavais described how privacy notions for the Millennials generation are different because they live in a “networked society” rather than a “mass society.” He wrote: “Disclosure is not as influenced by youth as it is by changes to the media environment.”
  • Stephen Downes of the National Research Council of Canada described how the imperatives of social networking will encourage people to “assert their identity in order to protect their own interests” rather than yearn for constant anonymity. He elaborated: “Where [personal] authentication is voluntary, and clearly in the client’s interests, and non-pervasive, people will gladly accept the constraints.”
  • Wired magazine senior editor Dylan Tweney described how intelligence is changing in a world where social networks help people more readily solve problems. He wrote: “Being able to build social networks and interactive software that helps you answer specific questions or enrich your intellectual life is much more powerful. This will matter even more as the Internet becomes more pervasive. Already my iPhone functions as the external, silicon lobe of my brain. For it to help me become even smarter, it will need to be even more effective and flexible than it already is.”
  • O’Reilly Media editor and blogger Andy Oram described how social networking use could allow people to solve some of their own problems through ad hoc collective action that bypasses formal institutions or it could allow those institutions to conduct unprecedented surveillance and control: “The widespread sharing of information and ideas will definitely change the relative power relationships of institutions and the masses, but they could move in two very different directions. In one scenario offered by many commentators, the ease of whistle-blowing and of promulgating
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