Our public, private and professional lives will become interrelated and dependent on technology. This will lead to a ‘networked world’ in which separate technologies will be systematically interconnected and adjusted to specific and individual needs. The Lead Vision of the German Futur initiative ‘Living in a networked world: individually and securely’ is based on an exploration of possible trajectories for these developments that take account of how the dual process of networking – networking between technologies as well as networking between human beings and machines – can be politically shaped and directed.