The Pew Research Center’s Internet Project has published Digital Life 2025, which summarizes the opinions of experts: “Experts predict the Internet will become ‘like electricity’ — less visible, yet more deeply embedded in people’s lives for good and ill.” Jason Hiner of ZDNet has summarized the report in his piece on ZDNET entitled, “The Internet tsunami: 8 big insights on what it disrupts next | ZDNet.”

Hiner writes somewhat humorously, “The remarks that Pew highlighted from these experts include a little navel-gazing, fear-mongering, and overly-optimistic blather. But, the interesting insights far outweigh the drivel.” I have further simplified his summaries of each trend in these eight brief statements.

1. The distinction between being online and offline will disappear.
2. We will better understand the consequences of our personal actual and our interactions with others.
3. The way we see the world will be informed by multiple views of what is happening around us.
4. Society will be able to better deal with bad actors, i.e. those that do not conform to its standards.
5. The relationship between the individual and the state as well as how states relate to other will change.
6. The same forces that disrupt how people work will  also improve how their work gets done.
7. More powerful tools and
8. The structures that determine how society organizes itself will change drastically