After the Future...

I once heard, (and I'd be grateful to anyone who could find where this quote is from) that the best indicator of future science, was science fiction. In light of this, I have been thinking about what the internet could mean for humanity in the long run.
The psychedelic philosopher , Terence Mckenna believed that the introduction of the world wide web is as important to human history as the introduction of language. For him, the internet is not so much a technology as it is the manifestation of our collective conciousness. ( I wonder what he would have thought if he had lived to see google zeitgeist).
Futurist Ray Kurzweil believed that by the next century, the human species would be completely disembodied psychic entities, communication electronically.
On a much more pessimistic note, Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem, in his novel peace on Earth, imagined a future where a poor starving humanity, lived in a collective illusion of technological luxury.
Of course, our species might just destroy the planet before any of this stuff happens.