The Napa Valley Register is reporting the results of a survey conducted by the Pew Center for the People and Press' continuing Internet Project, which asked a panel of "experts" -- those who lead in the industry or have a major stake therein -- to predict the future of the Internet in 2020.

Among other Web predictions, the respondents said that virtual worlds will gain in prevalence, which seems a solid forecast. Interestingly, though, the respondents said users will become "increasingly engaged" with them, indicating they feel virtual worlds will play a stronger role in people's lives than they currently do. Though the survey seems to indicate that some of the panelists felt that virtual world connectivity will have a positive impact on workflow and socialization, others felt that "much productivity will be lost" to a growing epidemic of virtual world addiction.

Lately there have been many reports on virtual worlds being developed specifically for business purposes, to enable interaction and connectivity within the professional workplace. IBM is a major pioneer in these kinds of efforts, as their "code of conduct" for employees in virtual worlds indicated that they see the potential in the space for business uses.

Virtual worlds and online games are developed specifically with encouraging high levels of user engagement in mind -- high average-time-spent numbers are a measure of an online world's success. It seems that even the experts are concerned, though, that these coveted high engagement levels might translate to social or professional problems.

[Via Napa Valley Register]