[ Sample | Summary | Voting | Access | Devices | Sites | Companies | Conclusion | Appendix ]

Conclusion

In ten years time the chances are that we'll be voting on important issues using the Internet, and probably in governmental elections. Most people will take advantage of this, with a majority of households having Internet connections, many of which will be high speed. Accessing the Net wherever and whenever one chooses will be commonplace thanks to both the small wireless devices most people carry and the variety of alternate points of access. The landscape of 2010's Internet will be very different to that of today, with few of 1999's top websites making the grade.

In general there were few large differences between British and American respondents. The latter were expecting electronic voting marginally sooner while the British were more optimistic about the numbers of households with Internet access ten years from now (given current levels). The largest difference was that far fewer Americans expect to be using set-top boxes or games consoles to access the Net in 2010. Britons were slightly more pessimistic about the chances of current domains staying popular and traditional companies surviving Internet challenges.

It should be noted there are a number of caveats. The sample comes from four extremely Net-literate groups so the results should not be regarded as an indicator of the opinions of general populations. It is likely, however, that this sample is able to give more educated answers about the effect of the Internet than a more wide-ranging sample might.

However, it is a far from random sample of Internet professionals. Firstly the groups polled are four of which I am a member and felt would give a good balance between British and American respondents. Secondly respondents were simply asked to take part in the questionnaire, rather than being randomly selected. Thirdly there is a fair margin of error given the number of respondents (76 in total), so I have tried not to draw too much from small differences between countries (for this reason no comparison has been made using the eight votes from the rest of the world).

[ Sample | Summary | Voting | Access | Devices | Sites | Companies | Conclusion | Appendix ]