| 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% |
| 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 individuals to 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% |
| 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% |
Source. Pew Internet & American Life Project Survey, November 30, 2005–April 4, 2006. Results are based on a nonrandom Web-based survey sample of 742 Internet users recruited via e-mail. Since the data are based on a nonrandom sample, a margin of error cannot be computed.