Hindsight · review build · data not yet validated
Seven agree/disagree scenarios for 2020, all captured. Skipped: one question asking respondents to rank spending priorities (no named year, no agree share). Non-random sample; no margin of error.
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.
pew-elon-imagining-2006-001
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.
pew-elon-imagining-2006-002
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.
pew-elon-imagining-2006-003
As sensing, storage and communication technologies get cheaper and better, individuals' public and private lives will become increasingly "transparent" globally. [...] Looking at the big picture [...] this will make the world a better place by the year 2020. The benefits will outweigh the costs.
pew-elon-imagining-2006-004
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.
pew-elon-imagining-2006-005
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.
pew-elon-imagining-2006-006
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" [...] while others will commit acts of terror or violence in protest against technology.
pew-elon-imagining-2006-007