European Perspectives on the Information Society: Annual Monitoring Synthesis and Emerging Trend Updates

Abstract

This report is one of the outcomes of the EPIS06 Project ¿ European Perspectives on the Information Society ¿ carried out by the ETEPS (European Techno-Economic Policy Support) network in cooperation with the Joint Research Centre Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (JRC IPTS) with the aim of providing strategic intelligence to policy makers by taking a prospective view on the evolution of ICT. This report combines the Annual Monitoring Synthesis (AMS) Report and five Emerging Trend Updates (ETU). It forms one of the main building blocks of the project, establishing an observatory of trends in technology and business evolutions of ICT. More particularly, the Annual Monitoring Synthesis Report (AMS Report) aims to identify new ICT-related developments likely to have a significant impact on the future of the Information Society, both in terms of growth and jobs for Europe and R&D policy prioritisation. By scanning and monitoring recent major foresight exercises and industrial technology roadmaps, as well as other future-oriented analysis and policy papers, the AMS attempts to detect early signals and possible disruptive forces so as to enable timely policy responses and anticipate potential challenges for policy makers. The AMS is structured along six main themes which emerged as a result of the analysis: - Convergence of infrastructures, - Human-computer convergence ¿ technologies for direct human computer interaction, - Pervasive or ubiquitous computing and ambient intelligence, - The future of the Internet, - Citizens¿ concerns, - Working life. A structured overview with a summary of each of the foresights, roadmaps and other sources studied is presented in the AMS report annex. In addition, five Emerging Trends Updates (ETU) present the results of focused briefs on emerging themes of interest for policy making, covering the following topics: - ETU1 on the state-of-the-art of the creative content sector, - ETU2 on ICT and the offshoring of services, - ETU3 on ICT and the role of ICTs as enablers for energy efficiency, - ETU4 on ICT tools and services in intelligent domestic and personal environments, - ETU5 on ICT and privacy in the Knowledge Society ¿ the case of search engines.JRC.J.4-Information Societ