What will the Internet be like in 2025? How much bigger will it have grown from today’s 2 billion users and $3 trillion market? Will it have achieved its full potential to connect the world’s entire population in ways that advance global prosperity, business productivity, education and social interaction? Or will it be something less?

In an effort to address these questions, Cisco and Monitor Group’s Global Business Network (GBN), the world leader in scenario planning, collaborated to publish “The Evolving Internet: A Look Ahead to 2025.” The report examines the driving forces and uncertainties that will—in whatever combination—shape the path of the Internet over the next 15 years.

To accompany the report, GBN’s Peter Schwartz and Cisco’s Enrique Rueda-Sabater—one of the report’s co-authors—sat down with Steven Weber, a GBN consultant and political scientist from the University of California at Berkeley, to discuss the various issues and opportunities that will arise as the Internet continues to evolve.

On the much-debated issue of net neutrality, Peter Schwartz and Enrique Rueda-Sabater note that this has become a uniquely American problem, as other areas of the world are in the process of building out their networks, mostly led by government-owned public entities. The issue then becomes one of competition, and how competition can be used to stimulate the adoption of technology in a way that maximizes social and economic benefit.

As the Internet evolves, the issue of privacy will become more and more difficult to pin down. Enrique Rueda-Sabater and Peter Schwartz note the future of privacy is uncertain, as different generations and cultures prioritize it differently. Yet it is fairly safe to assume that the issue will continue to be a hotly debated one, and any attempts to address it will likely be met with huge barriers of cost and difficulty.

Peter Schwartz outlines the potential of direct neural control, noting that in the next 15 years it will be feasible to see direct neural control of cursors and other movements through virtual environments.

Peter Schwartz notes that Internet security is already a huge challenge, and will only become an even bigger issue in the future. Because Internet crime is so lucrative, it will likely be a lasting problem that actually attracts a good deal of innovation. However, Enrique Rueda-Sabater argues the increasingly collaborative nature of the Internet may actually work in our favor, as Internet users come together to help solve security problems.

Peter Schwartz discusses the future of augmented reality, and the business opportunities it may bring. In fact, one of the key dynamics in this scenario, he notes, is already starting to play out—the question of control of consumer information.

Peter Schwartz is cofounder and chairman of GBN and a partner of Monitor Group. An internationally renowned futurist and business strategist, Peter specializes in scenario planning, working with corporations, governments, and institutions to create alternative perspectives of the future and develop robust strategies for a changing and uncertain world. He has authored five books—including the renowned The Art of the Long View—with the most recent being Inevitable Surprises: Thinking Ahead in a Time of Turbulence. Peter is also a venture partner of San Francisco-based Alta Partners, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the board of trustees of the Santa Fe Institute, the Long Now Foundation, and the World Affairs Council.

Enrique Rueda-Sabater is the senior director of strategy and economics for emerging markets at Cisco. His main focus is on developing and piloting investment strategies as well as other components of strategic business models for different types of emerging countries. Prior to his work at Cisco, he served as director of corporate strategy and integrated risk management at the World Bank.

Steven Weber is a professor of political science at the University of California at Berkeley, director of the university’s Institute of International Studies, and a longtime consultant for GBN. He has held academic fellowships with the Council on Foreign Relations, worked with the U.S. State Department and other government agencies on foreign policy issues, risk analysis and forecasting, served as a special consultant to the president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London, and served as a consultant to the U.S. Commission on National Security in the 21st Century. Steven is the author of The Success of Open Source, which chronicles and analyzes the open-source software movement.