The Future and the Internet

The Future and the Internet R1

The media often portrays the Internet as the next frontier for business, the commerce of the future, the world's biggest shopping mall and the source of much disinformation. Is this its only value? It seems there is much more to its current use and future potential.

"Communication and Consumption On The Internet" - The Futurist, July 5, 2000

"An overwhelming majority of people use the Internet for communication, not shopping, according to a recent report by the Boston Consulting Group. The report, which studied 12,000 Internet users in the fourth quarter of 1999, found that 80% went online to communicate, while only 2% said they logged on to shop.

"The report found that 43% of Internet time is spent communicating, primarily via e-mail. Information gathering was the next most popular activity at 27%. Only 8% of time was spent shopping. The typical online consumer engaged in 10 transactions totaling $460 in the past year.

"Even so, electronic commerce and information technology have become "the driving force of the American economy," according to former U.S. Secretary of Commerce William M. Daley, who released another report, DIGITAL ECONOMY 2000, in June.

Other thoughts about the Internet

Duane Elgin speaks of the Internet as having a twofold impact:

1) an indirect impact of a rising global consciousness in which the Web is a substitute for the nation and some aspects of community. Being only a few years old, he views the Web as "in its infancy, driven currently by the primal urges of lust and greed that will eventually evolve into a provider of knowledge and an arising collective consciousness."

2) a direct impact as a new medium of communication to broadcast to the entire world, if any one wants to listen.

I would add a third, as a tool to facilitate social transformation and human evolution. On the power of the Internet, Duane said recently that when he operated a nonprofit in the 1980s three calls a day were significant; today the Web brings 500-2,000 visits per day to his web site.

The "commercial view" is illustrated by the Milken Institute 2000 Global conference, attracting 1200 participants to Beverly Hills to showcase Nobel Laureates and the global future. One of the sessions was entitled, "The Revolution: Telecommunications, Information and Entertainment."

There is another revolution underway that has less to do with entertainment and more with democracy. The Internet enabled 600 nonprofits, led by Ralph Nader's group Public Citizen, to band together to oppose and in 1999 stop the proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment at the OECD. In 1999 at the Seattle WTO talks, the Internet enabled individuals and groups seeking environmental protection, labor standards, human rights, economic justice and other concerns to align as "communities of interest" to protest against the continued expansion of corporate power they deemed inappropriate. In the process, they raised the level of awareness about these issues and shocked the conveners and participants.

The ultimate benefits of the Internet depend on how we use it. It will be both a tool and a "capacity being built" for transformational learning, sharing successes and failures, community empowerment, environmental and other decision making, building political support around a constellation of values, AND a source of commercial activity. It is up to us to determine what we want from it.