The Online World of the Future: Safe, Productive, and Creative

Abstract

A safer online world is required to attain higher levels of productivity and creativity. We offer a view of a future state of the online world that places safety, productivity, and creativity above all else. The online world envisaged for 2030 is safe (i.e., users communicate with accuracy and enduring confidence), productive (i.e., users make timely decisions that have an ongoing global effect), and creative (i.e., users can connect seemingly unrelated information online). The proposed view differs from other views of the future online world that are anchored around technology solutions, confrontation, deception, and personal or commercial gain. The following seven conditions characterize the proposed view of the online world: i) global-scale autonomous learning systems; ii) humans co-working with machines; iii) human factors that are authentic and transferrable; iv) global scale whole-brain communities; v) foundational knowledge that is authentic and transferrable; vi) timely productive communication; and vii) continuous technological adaptation. These conditions are expected to enable new social-behavioural, socio-technical, and organizational interaction models.