Predicting the web's future

It's easy to make jokes about the internet – cat gifs and short attention spans and complicated series of tubes. But the internet is, for most of us, an essential part of our daily lives. Which makes the question of what you'd like it to look like in 25 years pretty important.

Last week, The Wireless helped out at a youth forum, at Nethui, a yearly event hosted by Internet NZ. We spent a day talking about education, safety, net neutrality and accessibility.

Green Party MP Gareth Hughes told the forum that keeping a free and open internet is one of the defining challenges of our generation. He also pointed out that in an election year, politicians need to be where the people are, and in 2014, that's on the internet.

The group discussed the internet as an educational tool, and the tension between young people's easy interaction online, and teachers who have been in a staff room for 25 years. Teachers present talked about the fact that New Zealand's education system is creative and open by defined by assessment criteria. “You get what you measure,” said one.

 

A key question is also what to do about the increasing digital divide – what one speaker said was making some families feel completely excluded from society. Tanya Gray from Gather Workshops told the group that students now are preparing for jobs that don’t even exist yet. So what does that mean for the people who don’t have access to technology?

Much of the discussion over the three days of Nethui was about privacy, and how much people should give up online. “There’s no lack of concern at the growing power of big companies,” said the Privacy Commissioner, John Edwards. “You could argue we are seeing the rise of multinational information aristocracies. But importantly there is no intermediary between us and them. We all use these services and we give our information to them of our own free will.” We’re voting one clock at a time, he said.

 

You can find more about the Nethui youth forum in the collaborative document, and here are the recommendations the group came up with:

Net neutrality: The internet should be open and accessible. We recognise the benefits of traffic prioritisation – but want it (prioritisation) to be transparent. We recommend regulatory oversight – rather than regulation – of Net Neutrality to protect small innovative organisations. We want to be free to share our views and opinions.

Education: We recommend increased investment in digital citizenship education to prepare New Zealanders for the challenges of the digital age. Teachers need the support to be able to teach digital literacy, but parents play a really important role too. Encourage employers and educators to understand the free and open relationship we have with the internet, and in particular social media.

We need to be flexible in order to adapt to the challenges that will come our way.

Media literacy: This critical skill for Digital Citizens and should be delivered through the compulsory schooling system. It should be the fourth national standard. News and information should be freely available, but we are interested in a better way to process and consume the masses of online content at our leisure.

Safety: We need to be creating resilient young people who understand the causes of and reactions to trolling - not creating artificial boundaries between online and offline life. Safety should be taught in all areas - not just crossing the road from an early age.

Accessibility: Everybody should be able to access all tools equally, especially in education. Providers and developers should be thinking about accessibility from the beginning - not tacking it on at the end.

The future: Education can come from the bottom up. We are already living our lives online and creating content - we need to continue exploring the tools that allow us to do that well. We need to be flexible in order to adapt to the challenges that will come our way.