If you take a break from your everyday life and just sit a few hours to think about the stuff that's going on in the world right now, you might come across some interesting ideas. I'm not going Nostradamus on you, but just think about how technology has evolved over the past 10 years, look at how fast things are evolving today, and try to assess how things will be after approx. ten years.

A study conducted by Pew Internet has come to the conclusion that by the end of 2020, most people will only use their mobile devices to access the Internet. Touch-control interfaces and voice control will also grow in popularity after improved voice recognition algorithms will be developed. It looks though that piracy and law enforcement will remain pretty much at the same stage as they are today. This is something that can't be avoided in the IT world by means of technology. Not completely, anyway.

The study also shows that the line between virtual reality and social bonding will fade over time, resulting in a complete merger by 2020. As far as the Internet infrastructure goes, things will evolve from what we already have today and there is little chance of a completely new concept to take over.

I don't doubt the Pew Internet study is comprehensive and that there was a lot of work involved, but the truth is that they haven't really come to any new conclusions which weren't already obvious to many decent observers.

Regarding the concept of a portable device becoming the primary Internet access tool, I can only say that that it is pretty much possible today. Lots of phones allow for more than one way to access the Internet, and some multimedia phones even come with TV output. So you can even go past the small screen problem. Now, I imagine that, by 2020, somebody would have come up with holographic displays or wireless displays which would connect seamlessly to a mobile device. I admit this is a bit of a stretch these days, but it is possible nevertheless.

Virtual-reality wise, things are somewhat of a blur. First of all, we have to define what VR is, but if socializing on the Internet is considered VR, than we're already there. Of course, the future will bring incredible technologies regarding VR, but it's more than an overstatement to say that by 2020 “The divisions between personal time and work time and between physical and virtual reality will be further erased for everyone who is connected,”.

Technology evolution is and will be kept on a leash in order for some people to control the world as they see fit, so SciFi movies will have to wait a bit more than 10 years until they are not SciFi anymore.


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