Internet of Things will mushroom by 2025, report says

If you thought the world was wired today, wait until 2025.

Our bodies, homes and workplaces will be sensor-filled, spawning both big leaps in quality of life and vexing questions about everything from privacy rights to the reliability of these smart systems, according to a new report released today by the Pew Research Center Internet Project and Elon University's Imagining the Internet Center.

"The (1,600 tech) experts (canvassed) say the next digital revolution is the often-invisible spread of the Internet of Things," says Janna Anderson, director of the Internet Center and co-author of the report.

"They expect positive change in health, transportation, shopping, industrial production and the environment. But they also warn about the privacy implications of this new data-saturated world and the complexities involved in making networked devices work together," she says.

We already see glimpses of this world today in Fitbit's bracelet health monitors and Nest's smoke and carbon monoxide detectors that communicate with each other and the homeowner. But the machines are rising up fast: In 2013, there were 13 billion Internet-connected devices, and that number will soar to 50 billion in 2020, according to Cisco Systems.

The upside? "The net effect will be to reduce waste," wrote JP Rangaswami, chief scientist for Salesforce.com. "The quality of real-time information that becomes available will take the guesswork out of much of the capacity planning and decision-making."

The downside? "Every part of our life will be quantifiable, and eternal, and we will answer to the community for our decisions," wrote social media educator Laurel Papworth. "For example, skipping the gym will have your gym shoes auto-tweet to the peer-to-peer health insurance network that will decide to degrade your premiums."

The techies whose brains were mined for the report – experts ranging from social scientist Danah Boyd to Google chief economist Hal Varian – painted a picture of the future that will challenge current norms of information access as well as cause some to opt out at a potential cost of emotional and employment stability.

"There will be an expectation that successful living as a human will require being equipped with pricey accouterments," wrote librarian K.G. Schneider. "(This) makes me concerned that as the digital divide widens, people left behind will be increasingly invisible."

For those who do opt in, there will be a need for what Webby Awards founder and filmmaker Tiffany Schlain calls "technology Shabbats," during which she unplugs one day a week. "'Can we talk?' will have new meaning," she writes.

Ultimately, what a future filled with Internet-connected things looks like is a place where every question will have a ready answer, wrote Nicole Ellison, associate professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan.

"For instance, which of these two brands of coffee treats its workers better? Which of these two lunch options is best for my specific health profile?" she writes. "With more 'just in time' information, consumers will be able to make more informed ethical, economic and health-related decisions."

While possibly reaching for some aspirin in the process.