In 2007, the World Internet Project conducted a study that found that 43 percent of members of online communities say those communities are as important to them as the communities they belong to offline.

A lecture held Wednesday night in the Alliant Energy-Lee Liu Auditorium in Howe Hall took a look at the impact of the Internet, and what it will be in the future.

Keynote speaker Jeffrey Cole, director of the Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California Annenburg School for Communication and founder and director of the World Internet Project, addressed topics related to the Internet in front of an audience of about 90 people.

Cole began by explaining the impact that Internet has had on other forms of media.

“We think that the print and broadcast media have forever changed politics,” Cole said. “But they’ve never made their audiences feel more powerful.”

Cole cited the 2004 presidential election as a landmark in the ability of the general public to affect the outcome of something on a national level. In 2004, Internet bloggers played a large role in a scandal that disgraced veteran CBS news anchor Dan Rather and led to the unraveling of John Kerry’s presidential campaign.

“We think blogging is hugely significant,” Cole said. “Bloggers have contributed to very significant stories.”

Cole said he thinks the impact on the 2004 presidential election will repeat itself in the future.

“I think we are going to see significant changes in our political system that are going to come because of the Internet,” Cole said.

Cole also spoke of the way the Internet has shaped the life of young people in the United States, particularly with the popularity of online communities such as MySpace and Facebook.

However, Cole said that not all people, teenagers especially, remain loyal to any one online community for any stretch of time.

“To teenagers, online communities are like night clubs,” Cole said.

When too many or the wrong kind of people begin to show up in a particular community, teenagers tend to move on to the next thing, he said.

Cole also noted that the way Americans use the Internet has changed over the years as well. When dial-up Internet was the most common, families tended to put their computers in a room of their home that was isolated from their families and televisions.

As Internet users began to switch to broadband, computers moved closer to the areas of the home where more activity was occurring.

“They wanted it where they were,” Cole said.

That meant that computers soon moved into kitchens, family rooms and dens, moving Internet use to “before, during and after the natural rhythms of family conversations,” he said.

Cole ended his lecture by predicting what the Internet will do to the lives of today’s 12 to 24-year-olds. Cole believes young people will never own a land-line phone, will trust unknown peers more than experts, and will experience a total shift to mobile technology.

Kimberly Stieler, graduate student in business administration, said she thought Cole’s lecture was very relevant to her life.

“The Internet has definitely changed the world as we know it,” she said. “It has had a big impact on the acceleration of globalization.”