Introduction

The future of the Internet in 2015 has been the subject of a group project managed by 28 RSM MBA students during the course of Scenarios and Strategies for the Internet and Organizations from October to December 2004. The process of scenario thinking has been used, where old assumptions related to the Internet were challenged to develop new ones. To come up with four plausible scenarios, various learning stages were covered, from storytelling to systems thinking to web site creation and driving forces. Some of the questions the class addressed included:

• How could the Internet be a more interactive, creative medium?

• Are you worried about privacy on the Internet?

• Do you shop online? What do you think about the E-Commerce?

• How do you see the Internet shapes the new, knowledge-based economy?

• Peter Drucker has predicted that information technology will bring about the demise of the university as currently constituted. Do you share this view?

• What changes will the Internet help bring to education?

We could keep writing many questions about the evolution of the Internet and its impact on our society. The Internet today is a widespread information infrastructure, the initial prototype of what is often called the National (or Global or Galactic) Information Infrastructure. Its history is complex and involves many aspects - technological, organizational, and community. And as it can be seen in the above questions, its influence reaches not only to the technical fields of computer communications but throughout society as we move toward increasing use of online tools to accomplish electronic commerce, information acquisition, and community operations.

The Internet has changed much in the two decades since it came into existence. However, should we conclude that the Internet has now finished changing and impacting our society? Is there a future of the Internet, and if so, what will it be?

These pressing questions are easy to ask but hard to answer. The form of the Internet and its impact will be difficult to guess, given the large number of concerned driving forces and stake-holders. Thinking of its past evolution and present situation from our mindset will lead us to default projections. Added to this, we live in a world increasingly shaken by discontinuities and sudden changes, which makes the activity of constructing the future complex. A new approach is needed to support both very short-term thinking and long-term planning with a ‘‘futures’’ methodology that escapes our mindset and contemplates multiple alternative backdrops.

In the class project, different means of communication--including the information system 'Wiki', workshops with speeches, and e-mails--have also helped to share a common language and ideas about the subject. Additionally, the project sponsor and our facilitator, Daniel Erasmus has guided the students in the design of scenarios while helping with scenario building, especially their principles of construction, and facilitating the live workshops to ensure proper engagement with the process and effective sharing of mental models.

This report will first present the timeline of the whole process by summarising each session of the course. Then, the methodology used to vote for four final plausible scenarios:

More of the Same

Real Net,

Virtual Society, and

Separate Directions will be described.

An analysis of the key uncertainties, which may or may not make these scenarios happen, will follow. Finally, the weak signals, showing which direction the future will take regarding the Internet, will be identified and their implications will be analysed.

Click here to return to Group 4: The Scenario Logic