The global fiber optic network will move into space, with data relayed with lasers from one point on earth to another via lasercom satellites at rates in the Terabit per second range- in fact that will happen far sooner than 25years from now.

Within 25 years we will see data rates in the Gbps from moon missions and 10's of Mbps from Mars. Space agencies will build global optical ground terminals on the same scale that they have for Radio frequency communications.

There will be a revolution in ground based astronomy - the ability of ground based telescopes to compensate for the blurring effects of atmosphere will improve by leaps and bounds- the new Thirty Meter Telescope will approach the resolution of a 30meter space telescope for wavelengths approaching the visible spectrum for some observational targets.

Spectroscopic Chemical analysis of the atmospheres of extrasolar planets will become more and more common - opening up the possibility of finding the chemical signatures of life on planets in another solar system.

Computing will continue to advance forward- progressively more and more computer electronic integrated circuits will be replaced with integrated photonic components, possibly with all optical computers existing in 25 years.

There may be a brief period where we slow down relative to Moores law, but we will likely exceed it as Integrated photonic technology hits its stride. What that will mean for society is anyone's guess... Right now my home computer has more computing power than the world class supercomputers of the 90's-- could anyone in 1990 have predicted that in 2020 an out of date cell phone would have 5.3 billion transistors on its cpu? Maybe, but would they have predicted all the changes to daily life that would bring?

Quantum computing will progress, revolutionizing a subset of computing applications.

Finally, I hope that fusion power is perfected in the next 25 years - because if it isn't, I am afraid the predictions for 50 years from now are extremely grim...

This is the rosiest scenario I predict for the next 1-2 decades- the far darker projection- and increasingly likely projection-I will save for another time.