How Respondents Assessed Scenarios for 2020

 Exact prediction language, presented in the order in which the scenarios were posed in the survey

Disagree

Did not respond

1. A global, low-cost network thrives:By 2020, worldwide network interoperability will be perfected, allowing smooth data flow, authentication and billing; mobile wireless communications will be available to anyone anywhere on the globe at an extremely low cost.

56%

43%

1%

2. English displaces other languages:In 2020, networked communications have leveled the world into one big political, social and economic space in which people everywhere can meet and have verbal and visual exchanges regularly, face-to-face, over the internet. English will be so indispensable in communicating that it displaces some languages.

42%

57%

1%

3. Autonomous technology is a problem:By 2020, intelligent agents and distributed control will cut direct human input so completely out of some key activities such as surveillance, security and tracking systems that technology beyond our control will generate dangers and dependencies that will not be recognized until it is impossible to reverse them. We will be on a "J-curve" of continued acceleration of change.

42%

54%

4%

4. Transparency builds a better world, even at the expense of privacy:As sensing, storage and communication technologies get cheaper and better, individuals' public and private lives will become increasingly "transparent" globally. Everything will be more visible to everyone, with good and bad results. Looking at the big picture - at all of the lives affected on the planet in every way possible - this will make the world a better place by the year 2020. The benefits will outweigh the costs.

46%

49%

5%

5. Virtual reality is a drain for some:By the year 2020, virtual reality on the internet will come to allow more productivity from most people in technologically-savvy communities than working in the "real world." But the attractive nature of virtual-reality worlds will also lead to serious addiction problems for many, as we lose people to alternate realities.

56%

39%

5%

6. The internet opens worldwide access to success: In the current best-seller The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman writes that the latest world revolution is found in the fact that the power of the internet makes it possible for individualsto collaborate and compete globally. By 2020, this free flow of information will completely blur current national boundaries as they are replaced by city-states, corporation-based cultural groupings and/or other geographically diverse and reconfigured human organizations tied together by global networks.

52%

44%

5%

7. Some Luddites/Refuseniks will commit terror acts:By 2020, the people left behind (many by their own choice) by accelerating information and communications technologies will form a new cultural group of technology refuseniks who self-segregate from "modern" society. Some will live mostly "off the grid" simply to seek peace and a cure for information overload while others will commit acts of terror or violence in protest against technology.

58%

35%

7%