Assignment 12: The Future

While accurately predicting the future is impossible, it is still possible to make decent guesses as to what tomorrow will bring to the world of Internet communication. The field is evolving astonishingly quickly; theories valid today might be obsolete tomorrow. It is thus all the more important to make predictions about the future, because unlike with some other fields, "the future" of CMC is quite literally every day.

No theory can be considered totally safe from eventual invalidation, but of all that have been discussed, the hyperpersonal model in particular seems likely to remain relevant, at least in part due to the fact that it's really more of a synergy of other theories. The phenomenon of over-attribution isn't likely to change anytime soon, barring a sudden advancement into the sorts of technologies and invasion of privacy of 1984, where absolutely everything about a person is known from the get-go. Behavior confirmation is a phenomenon that extends beyond CMC and isn't necessarily reliant on computers at all, so it too would have little cause to change.

Selective self presentation is another phenomenon that occurs both in real world and computer mediated interactions, but on computers it is even more pronounced, since it is obviously easier to hide aspects of yourself than it is in person. Even so, this component of the hyperpersonal model is less stable than the others, for the simple reason that so much information is available on the Internet that the "getting the goods" phenomenon may circumvent people's attempts to conceal certain information when they overlook the fact that it may be available elsewhere to somebody skilled at looking. This affects the developmental aspect too: accurate impressions will likely be formed more quickly thanks to this abundance of information. And of course, the reallocation of cognitive resources will change in accordance with selective self presentation; if somebody finds things out about you that you don't want him to find out, you'll have less control over where your cognitive energy is being exerted.

Caplan's model for problematic Internet use is another theory unlikely to change. With the Internet becoming more and more prevalent, it stands to reason that more and more people will be drawn into games and communities that are really best described as alternate lives, thereby abandoning their real ones - the real world problems of people that first draw them into these games probably won't change, after all- and as computer technology becomes better, these worlds will only grow more appealing and more accessible.

One thing that will change - and indeed probably already has - is the fact that no longer is it true that online getting to know a person comes before seeing a picture. Facebook and similar sites have made it so that, much as in FtF interaction, now first impressions will still be based on looks: a fine example of a phenomenon made obsolete within only the past year or so.

As for new technologies, the wave of the future lies, at least to some extent, with video games. Playing games online through X-Box Live, using the Nintendo Wii as an Internet browser - these are all things that would have been considered unthinkable twenty years ago. The Internet is entering into more and more facets of everyday life. Who can possibly claim to be able to predict just how big it will be 20 years from now?