From November 2016 to January 2017, European Commission had opened a public consultation on Next Generation Internet to obtain more views regarding the possible scenarios of internet in 2030. Questions within this consultation are to rate and comment upon the importance of value statements and technology areas and encouraged for their views on how to support the NGI. The specific technological questions are, for instance, decentralised architectures, immersive environments and networking solutions beyond IP.
Based on the results of the public consultaion, a report on Next Generation Internet was published recently. 449 participants were involved in the process and provided their views both on technologies and values that are relevant for the Internet of the future.
As a result, the top three values for future internet are:
- Ensuring citizens’ sovereignty over their own data and the protection of their privacy
- The Internet should ensure diversity, pluralism and a right to choose
- The concentration of data in a few proprietary platforms is understood as a significant issue today
In the area of technology, the followings are considered the most important:
- Personal data spaces
- Artificial intelligence
- Distributed architecture and decentralised data governance
The type of research, actors and initiatives are also analysed within the report. The finding reveals an appetite for collaboration among interdisciplinary groups engaged in a mixture of long term and applied research projects. Citizens are encouraged to involve as “actors” in research, which includes representative bodies, policy makers and regulators but these need to encompass women, students and activists.
National and EC programmes are funding relevant initiatives. The most popular ones revealed in this consultation are:
- Smart initiatives
- 5G
- Internet of Things
- Language technologies.
Initiatives that address Policy and Societal issues are encouraged to embrace peer networks, digital learning, e-democracy, e-procurement and e-learning. These popular topics can also be referred to as potential ICT topics to collaborate with Mexico in FIWARE technologies.
It´s worth mentioning that these values and technologies for next generation internet are also welcomed to debate and provide additional input via adding comments. For the complete report, please click here.
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