How Respondents Assessed Scenarios for 2020
| Exact prediction language, presented in the order in which the scenarios were posed in the survey | Agree | Disagree | Did Not Respond |
| 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% |
| 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% |
| 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% |
| 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% |