A Pew survey of internet leaders, activists and analysts shows they expect major technology advances as the phone becomes a primary device for online access, voice-recognition improves, artificial and virtual reality become more embedded in everyday life, and the architecture of the
internet itself improves.

They disagree about whether this will lead to more social tolerance, more forgiving human relations, or better home lives.

Here are the key findings in a new report based on the survey of experts by the Pew Internet & American Life Project that asked respondents to assess predictions about technology and its roles in the year 2020:

* The mobile device will be the primary connection tool to the
internet for most people in the world in 2020.

* The transparency of people and organizations will increase, but
that will not necessarily yield more personal integrity, social
tolerance, or forgiveness.

* Voice recognition and touch user-interfaces with the internet
will be more prevalent and accepted by 2020.

* Those working to enforce intellectual property law and copyright
protection will remain in a continuing “arms race,” with the “crackers”
who will find ways to copy and share content without payment.

* The divisions between personal time and work time and between
physical and virtual reality will be further erased for everyone who is
connected, and the results will be mixed in their impact on basic social
relations.

* “Next-generation” engineering of the network to improve the
current internet architecture is more likely than an effort to rebuild
the architecture from scratch.

Full report from here.

Good summary here.