At the Imagining the Internet Center (http://imaginingtheinternet.org) we ask people how they see the future unfolding and we document their thoughts. Most people note only a tiny slice of what is happening around them; they don’t often comprehend the big picture. All of us should more mindfully consider the myriad possible ramifications of progress and its likely arc.

Networks engender positive and negative results. People should continually question their effects. Some topics that have engendered lively debate recently include: Is Google making us dumb? Will gadgets make knowledge obsolete – when anyone can find out anything anytime anywhere, why learn? Will cultures blend and differences dissolve if we are one world, or will new information tools be leveraged to extend intolerance, to spy on individuals, to build walled gardens?

PC Magazine recently carried a series of brief predictive essays by savvy Internet stakeholders, including Paul Otellini of Intel, Bill Gates of Microsoft and Vint Cerf of Google. Among their expectations: wireless devices embedded in our bodies; cameras recording all public movements; databases tracking every online move; the proliferation of massive data centers, broadband and projection surfaces in a globe-spanning information fabric; 10 times the microprocessor power at 10 times less power and real-time analysis of all bodily functions on a molecular level; globally immersive, invisible, ambient networked computing with security agents in the cloud-based OS; 100 Gb Ethernet in the next 10 years; software with humanlike thinking and no need for programmers; the direct brain-to-computer interface without the need for implants; quantum computing by 2032 and an inter-computer dialogue of massive magnitude.

The future of information is portable, personal and pervasive. In developed nations, we are already seeing information delivered in myriad formats, including new diffusion methods, from RSS feeds, social networks and text-messaging to gaming and embedded data in architectural kiosks and other surfaces of various sorts and virtual-reality worlds such as Second Life and mirror worlds such as Google Earth and Google Moon.

Thanks to the diffusion of cell phones and smartphones, millions of people in least-developed nations are gaining unprecedented access to banking, health resources, education and new career and business options that they never had before.