The Future of The Internet

A wide-ranging survey of technology leaders, scholars, industry officials, and analysts finds that most Internet experts expect attacks on the network infrastructure in the coming decade as the Internet becomes more embedded in everyday and commercial life.

Some 66 percent of the experts responding to a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project and Elon University agreed with the following prediction: At least one devastating attack will occur in the next 10 years on the networked information infrastructure or the country's power grid.

In addition, there was notable agreement among the 1,286 experts in this survey that in the next 10 years the Internet will be more deeply integrated in our physical environments and high-speed connections will proliferate – with mixed results. They believe the dawning of the blog era will bring radical change to the news and publishing industry and they think the Internet will have the least impact on religious institutions.