Part 3. Future of the Internet.

A. Keywords. future, everywhere, experimenting anarchy, asset, threat.

Vocabulary. vague, clerical, asset, Internet world Trade Show.

You are going to hear an interview on the future of the Internet.

Pay special attention to the main points that some specialists say about the Internet.

Complete the following statements.

We're gonna take a closer look tonight again at the future of the Internet.

Not we have anything but the vaguest idea where it's going in the long run.

One of the truly fascinating and somewhat unsettling aspects of the Internet revolution is how many technologists and scientists say that the future may hold any number of surprises.

So we're going to inch our way into the future.

At the Internet World Trade Show in New York, they see a future when the web is everywhere.

Technology is moving from the desktop into our everyday life.

Imagine work, society, economics, relationships, all transformed, when anyone, anytime can get any message or knowledge or amusement they what, anywhere on the planet without so much as a wire.

In many ways, Internet is the world's largest experimenting anarchy.

Because of all of a sudden, the citizens of the world are in charge, and no single government or governing body is in charge of what they do.

Keep in mind that the web transmitted by satellites, cellphone, cable goes through no one central location that anyone controls.

So many of the boundaries that exist today, political and economic, will be strained as never before.

Some scientists say three quarters of the world's languages will disappear as the net connects isolated the places.

Already English is what you find on most of web pages, blending cultures, no matter how much people try to save them.

Economies are changing too.

As distance becomes meaningless, white-collar clerical, accounting or administrative jobs are being exported to Asia, just as blue-collar factory jobs were years ago.

Imagine, there are 40 or 50 millions Indians, not mention the Chinese, who could deliver office work to the rich countries of the world for two dollars a hour.

So this massive web of information is both an asset and a threat, changing cultures, economics, governments in ways no one can imagine or control.

B. Keywords. networked individualism, social networks, electronic interaction.

Vocabulary. interact, contradict, flash-and-blood, hermit, make-believe, flicker, child-rearing.

B1. Listen to a report about the role of the Internet interaction.

Fill in the following chart with keywords.

There is a professor at the univeristy of Toronto in Canada who has come up a term to describe the way a lot of us North Americans interact these days.

And now, a big research study confirms it.

Barry Wellman's term is "Networked Individualism".

It's not the easiest concept to grasp.

In fact, the words seem to contradict each other.

How can we be individualistic and networked at same time?

You need other people for networks.

Here is what he means.

Until the Internet and email come along, our social networks involved fresh-blood relatives, friends, neighbors and colleagues at work.

Some of the interaction was by phone, but it was still voice to voice, person to person in real time.

But the latest study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project confirms for a lot of people, electronic interaction through the computer has replaced a great deal of social interchange.

A lot of folks Pew talked with say that's a good thing, because of concerns that the Internet was turning us into hermits who shut out other people in favor of a make-believe world on flickering computer screens.

To the contrary, the Pew study discovered.

The internet has put us in touch with many more real people than we'd have ever imagined.

Helpful people, too.

We're turning to an ever-growing list of cyber friends for advice on careers, medical crises, child-rearing and choosing a school or college.

About 60 million Americans told Pew that the Internet plays an important or critical role in helping them deal with major life decisions.

So we networked individuals are pretty tricky:

We're keeping more to ourselves, while at the same time, reaching out to more people, all with just the click of a computer mouse.

B2. Listen to the report again.

Find out what the tricky term "networked individualism" means and fill in the blanks.