the world wide web is going to take major leap in both quantity and quality by 2020 a major survey of leading technology thinkers has saidthe internet will be a thriving lowcost network of billions of devices by 2020 says the pew report on the future internet the report surveyed 742 experts in the fields of computing politics and business says the bbc news web sitemore than half of respondents had a positive vision of the nets future but 46 had serious reservations almost 60 said that a counter culture of luddites would emerge some resorting to violencethe pew internet and american life report canvassed opinions from the experts on seven broad scenarios about the future internet based on developments in the technology in recent years the correspondents were also able to qualify their answers with written responses giving more detailkey builders of the next generation of internet often agree on the direction technology will change but there is much less agreement about the social and political impact those changes will have said janna quitney anderson lead author of the report the future of the internet iishe added one of their big concerns is who controls the internet architecture they have created bob metcalfe founder of 3com and the inventor of ethernet predicted the net would be a global connection of different devices the internet will have gone beyond personal communications by 2020 he wrote many more of todays 10 billion new embedded micros per year will be on the internet louis nauges president of microcost a french information technology firm saw mobile devices at the forefront of the netmobile internet will be dominant he explained by 2020 most mobile networks will provide onegigabitpersecondminimum speed anywhere anytime dominant access tools will be mobile with powerful infrastructure characteristics all applications will come from the netbut not everyone felt a networked nirvana would be possible by 2020 concerns over interoperability different formats working together government regulation and commercial interests were seen as key barriers to a universal internetmore than half of respondents disagreed that english would become the lingua franca of the internet by 2020 and that there would be dangers associated with letting machines take over some net tasks such as surveillance and securityinternet society board chairman fred baker wrote we will certainly have some interesting technologieshe added until someone finds a way for a computer to prevent anyone from pulling its power plug however it will never be completely out of control the repondents were split over the whether the impact of peoples lives becoming increasingly online resulting in both less privacy but more transparency would be a positive outcome