A prepared speech by Pew's Lee Rainie at today's Internet Governance Forum USA in DC neatly lays out four key uncertainties about where the Internet will go from here, each of which anyone working in the politics and technology space should take personally. That the Internet's future is as an open, accessible, boundless wonderland of plenty isn't the only possible way this story plays out, warns Rainie:

The first area of critical uncertainty involves the kind of internet we have -- from the standpoint of the internet’s architecture and its adoption.

The second involves what kind of information policies we have – that is, the kind of rules we develop about information property such as copyright, patents, and trademarks and the marketplace norms that apply to property.

The third involves the kind of policies and norms we develop about our online identities -- specifically, the policies and practices we construct about online privacy, anonymity, and surveillance.

The fourth area of uncertainty is that we do not yet know the full impact of the internet when it comes to economic, medical, social, and political outcomes. The social science community is just beginning to tackle issues related to the value of the internet -- both good and bad -- in empirical terms.

Worth a read. (Photo by violinha under a Creative Commons license)