A study from the Pew Center, The Future of the Internet II, has found that greater reliance on the Internet and technology has led to growing concerns that governments and corporations will not embrace policies that maintain the freewheeling nature of the Internet.

More than 700 tech experts were interviewed on numerous topics related to the growth of technology and its influence on life by the year 2020. Looking ahead, over 42 percent of survey respondents expressed pessimism about humans’ ability to control technology in the future.

Sure, 2020 sounds like a long way off. But similar to science fiction’s attempt to offer a vision of a distant future, surveys like this actually reflect more contemporary tensions. As social networks like MySpace become increasingly crowded by advertising, the more the users who made these sites successful begin to recoil.

In another recent Pew survey, titled Politics Online, researchers noted that on an average day, 19 percent of adult Internet users, or 13 percent of all Americans over the age of 18, had been using the web for news or information about politics and the upcoming mid-term elections. The study shows that the audience for news will become more and more fragmented. And that’s bad for traditional advertising.

As people acquire more ways to evade marketers’ attempts at co-opting their favorite media, public relations appears to be the best solution. By its nature, PR is about getting an independent, third party – be it a reporter, a blogger or a consumer – to opt in, accept a message and then spread the word to other interested parties. Ultimately, the least intrusive form of marketing – i.e., PR – will win over consumers who want to exercise control over their media environment.