C. Discuss in groups. 1. Do you think there are any negative sides of the internet or is it all positive?
2 What do you like best about the internet: (a) it helps us to communicate, (b) it opens up new realms of knowledge, (c) it creates wealth or (d) other?
3 'Well, the web is how mankind communicates nowadays.' (Bill Gates). Do you agree?
About half of the people responding in this study were in substantial agreement that the positives of digital life will continue to outweigh the negatives. However, as in all great technological revolutions, digital life has and will continue to have a dark side.
Roughly a third of respondents predicted that harms to well-being will outweigh the positives overall in the next decade. In addition, even among those who said they are hopeful that digital life will be more helpful than harmful and among those who said there will not be much change, there were many who also expressed deep concerns about people’s well-being in the future. All of these voices are represented in this section of the report.
The technologies that 50 years ago we could only dream of in science fiction novels, which we then actually created with so much faith and hope in their power to unite us and make us freer, have been co-opted into tools of surveillance, behavioral manipulation, radicalization and addiction
About half of the people responding in this study were in substantial agreement that the positives of digital life will continue to outweigh the negatives. However, as in all great technological revolutions, digital life has and will continue to have a dark side.
Roughly a third of respondents predicted that harms to well-being will outweigh the positives overall in the next decade. In addition, even among those who said they are hopeful that digital life will be more helpful than harmful and among those who said there will not be much change, there were many who also expressed deep concerns about people’s well-being in the future. All of these voices are represented in this section of the report.
The technologies that 50 years ago we could only dream of in science fiction novels, which we then actually created with so much faith and hope in their power to unite us and make us freer, have been co-opted into tools of surveillance, behavioral manipulation, radicalization and addiction