• A low-cost global network will be thriving and creating new opportunities in a “flattening” world.
• Humans will remain in charge of technology, even as more activity is automated and “smart agents” proliferate. However, a significant 42% of survey respondents were pessimistic about humans’ ability to control the technology in the future. This significant majority agreed that dangers and dependencies will grow beyond our ability to stay in charge of technology. This was one of the major surprises in the survey.
• Virtual reality will be compelling enough to enhance worker productivity and also spawn new addiction problems.

• Tech “refuseniks” will emerge as a cultural group characterized by their choice to live off the network. Some will do this as a benign way to limit information overload, while others will commit acts of violence and terror against technology-inspired change.
• People will wittingly and unwittingly disclose more about themselves, gaining some benefits in the process even as they lose some privacy.
• English will be a universal language of global communications, but other languages will not be displaced. Indeed, many felt other languages such as Mandarin, would grow in prominence.

Om Malik comments that these predictions are surprisingly pessimistic, and I completely agree. Nearly all of the negative issues highlighted in this precis — lack of control, privacy, addiction, luddism — are already very apparent. It seems a bit bleak to suggest that we won’t do anything to address problems that are staring us in the face over the next 14 years.

If you look further into the report, though, its findings become less startling. The respondents were presented with headlines with which they could either agree or disagree. This is a good way to generate headlines, but not a way to explore original thinking. And the 304 experts polled were very much less than unanimous. Only 56%, for example, agreed with the first point on the list, with similar divides throughout.

Next month Starwood Hotels is going to preview a new hotel brand called Aloft inside the Second Life virtual world. The physical hotels will open to the public in 2008. They have launched a blog that shows how the virtual hotel is being created.

In response to a comment, I heard from Marc Schiller at Electric Artists, the company running the electronic side of the construction project. He hopes that this virtual town planning will allow the hotel’s architects to learn about any problems with their buildings before they are built:

We’re interested in seeing how people interact in the different areas of the hotel in the virtual world to see if there are learnings that can be used when building the real world hotel. If it turns out that there are, then this could indeed change the way architects and designers develop commercial property. By letting in “virtual guests”, we will, hopefully, learn what works and what doesn’t work. We’ll keep you posted on how it goes!

It’s a great idea. I’d love to see this as part of a trend to testing out public architecture — or even stuff as basic as home extensions — online in places where the public actually go. If virtual visitors get the chance to say “This is really ugly” , “My shop next door has been driven out of business because people can’t see me” or “I’m in a wheelchair, I can’t get in”, then it increases the chances of not making silly mistakes.