This is a thought-provoking trailer to The New Digital Age, an upcoming book by Google execs Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, and it's very interesting that they describe the future of the Internet as a "virtual world":

One point seems off to me:

Five billion people are expected to come online during the next decade as information technology becomes even cheaper and more widely available. At the same time, virtual reality will become more commonplace and online identities will become less anonymous and more valuable.

Emphasis mine. They're probably right that VR will be more common, though my money is on technology like the Oculus Rift versus the augmented reality of Google Glass, which still has the a-hole problem to contend with. In any case, the idea that online identities are moving toward more anonymity seems wacky on its face. Here's why: