Not too many people realised it, but the Internet just turned 25 early this year. In an article written by Kimberly Weisul for Inc., she reports that in honour of that occasion, the Pew Research Center in collaboration with Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Project conducted a survey of more than 2,000 experts about how they think the internet and life in general would look like 10 years from now, and the answers really aren’t as encouraging as you might think.

A rather bleak future

Save for the one about education being accessible to all and health care delivery being quicker due to wearable devices, the opinion of those experts surveyed paint a rather bleak future 10 years from now. Governments losing control, the gap between rich and poor becoming wider and leading to violence, and bad people making people’s lives more miserable through new tools are just a few of those predictions that one can’t certainly be looking forward to.

Then again, much of the gloomy things they are predicting are already happening today, particularly the one about saying goodbye to privacy. These days, having your email and social media accounts hacked is already a common occurrence. The prediction that “only the relatively well-educated and affluent will have the ability to maintain their privacy” by 2025 makes everything a bit more depressing.

Still, despite the dreary outlook, the report closes on a positive note. For all the depressing forecasts, the fact remains that “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” Now that is one opinion I can completely get behind.

To read the full article, click here.