Today’s risk-averse, over-regulated society will drive young peop...

technology will give them enormous creative potential,” he said. The question is whether parents and govts. will stifle that inventiveness, he said, commenting on the Spiked/Orange poll of experts and key challenges for people born in 2006. The future will bring unprecedented innovation in mobile communications, U.K. Mobile Operators Assn. Exec. Dir. Mike Dolan wrote. But concern about new communications technology and infrastructure must be debated and evaluated openly, “with evidence-based science underpinning subsequent political decision,” Dolan said. As mobile telephony moves into its 3rd and 4th decades of mass use, a main theme will be individual and societal boundaries related to privacy, work-life balance, use by children and etiquette, or limits set by govts. spooked by the “power of immediate person-to-person communication,” GSM Assn. Dir.- Research & Sustainability Jack Rowley said. Tools being devised will be aware of the surroundings; society has to balance the safety benefits of location information and the privacy implications of being able to reconstruct someone’s movements, he said. By 2024, consumers will have an easier time picking and using what they read and watch on their own schedules, U. of Minn. Communications Studies Prof. Donald Browne said. Cellphones will figure strongly, and media content regulation will shrink more rapidly than in 1980- 2000. Major challenges emerging from these developments: (1) The possibility of rising assumption that access to “basic” versions of new technologies is a universal right. (2) A citizenry “heavily fractionated” by media preference, complicating or easing political and economic movements efforts to achieve their goals. (3) Continuation of today’s “culture wars” between individuals and groups with deeply held religious, environmental and other convictions. Mass- audience TV will survive -- it if makes what people want to watch, Endemol UK Showrunner Managing Dir. Paul Marquess said. Given TV’s limited creativity, he looks to digital technology and interactivity to bring viewers stories they want, he said. Technical progress creates governance issues as networked information technologies blur boundaries within and between organizations and among the local, regional, national and global, said Microsoft Public Sector Innovation Head Chris Yapp. The role of ICANN and global Internet governance exemplifies the challenge, he said, as does the task of keeping children safe online and fighting spam and phishing. Yapp called for an invention with as much impact as the limited liability company had to the industrial age “to help us learn new governance models for the knowledge society.”