Devastating Attack In The Net's Near Future, Experts Say

Count on at least one devastating attack on the Internet in the next 10 years, an overwhelming majority of technology experts and analysts polled by a major research group said Monday.

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project's survey on the future of the Internet, which polled over 1,200 tech experts and social analysts, 66 percent of the experts agreed with the prediction that a large-scale, damaging attack on the Net, or an assault on the nation's power grid will occur by 2014.

"Given the current terrorist context we live in and the interest in hackers to show off their skills this is inevitable, as is the unfortunate human quality to only fix the problem once it has occurred," wrote one of the experts.

The survey, which was conducted in conjunction with North Carolina-based Elon University, laid out a list of 10-year predictions and asked the experts to give thumbs up or thumbs down.

"We wrote statements that were a mix of positive and negative outcomes," said Susannah Fox, the associate director at Pew and a co-author of the survey. "We're not necessarily saying they'll come true. In fact, we have no idea. But we came up with predictive statements that we wanted the experts to comment on."In some ways, she added, the results are a reflection of the rationality that's returned to the Internet since the dot-com disaster around the turn of the century.

"A lot of the predictions made about the future of the Internet in 1990, 91, 92, and 94 came true," she said. "But then in the 1995 through 2000 time frame, people were just saying crazy things." The consensus of the experts today -- when there is consensus one way or the other, agreement or disagreement -- is more realistic, she observed, more like the opening days of the Internet.

Once past the agreement that the network infrastructure is vulnerable to attack, for instance, the experts' second-most agreed upon prediction was that as computing devices become embedded in everything from clothes and cars to phones and pharmaceutical packaging, governments and businesses will use them to snoop on citizens and consumers.

Fifty-nine percent of the experts polled gave this prediction the thumbs up, although some see government's part as secondary. "It seems to me that most of this surveillance will be private in nature," wrote Susan Crawford, a law professor and policy fellow with the Center for Democracy & Technology, in her response to the survey question. "I agree there will be lots of surveillance, but I don't see it being turned over to government authorities. Instead, it will be used to market to us in ever-more-personalized ways."

Not every predictive statement got the okay from the experts, however. One that said online medical resources will substantially improve the problems facing health care was shot down by 41 percent of those surveyed."I was really surprised at how caustic the health experts were on the impact of the Internet," said Fox. "Some called their industry 'intractable,' and many don't see health care changing much for the better because of the information explosion."

In the end, Fox was impressed with the guarded optimism of the experts about the future of the Internet. "Early predictions were full of hope and the possibility that the technology would bring people together," she said. "There's still a sense of that here in 2004."

The full report can be read and/or downloaded in PDF format from the Pew Web site.