Those who think about the future are best poised to influence it. The visionary 20th century engineer, mathematician and architect R. Buckminster Fuller argued that, “We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims.” One of his eminent successors, Alan Kay, a prolific and thoughtful digital innovator, added a practical epigram to Fuller’s thought: “The only way you can predict the future is to build it.”

Those sentiments guide this effort. Many futurists, scientists and long-term thinkers today argue that the acceleration of technological change over the past decade has greatly increased the importance of strategic vision. Technology innovations will continue to impact us. The question is whether this process will reflect thoughtful planning or wash over us like an unstoppable wave. If the developmental record of 20th century computing continues for only another 30 years, we will rapidly and permanently move to a different world. Are we prepared to react in ways that will make that world a good one?

This survey is aimed at gathering a collection of opinions regarding the possibilities we all face because, as Robert Louis Stevenson put it in 1885: “Sooner or later, we sit down to a banquet of consequences.”