This report is distinctive in both its scope and method, looking as it does toward a vision of the Web in the year 2020. It aims to provide an outline and analysis not only of projected technological developments but also their social, political and economic implications. What will the Web look like in 2020? What will it do? Where will it be? How will we use it?

SIRC’s starting point has been the notion that the Web in 2020 will meet human needs more fully than it does at present, with many resulting social and political implications. It will have come to provide a renewed forum for social cohesion and democracy as well as continuing as a platform for information, entertainment, communication, shopping, etc. But will it, as some predict, provide a digital alternative to ‘real life’, with the distinction between Human and machine becoming ever-more blurred? Or will it, as we believe, be not so indistinguishable from the Web we know today.