Looking into the future

Copyright:Marzie

Every year The Futurist makes some forecasts on changes and trends we can expect in the following year.

This year they have released an article: OUTLOOK 2009: Recent Forecasts from World Future Society for 2009 and Beyond .

The forecasts are not “predictions” of what the future will be like, but rather glimpses of what may happen or proposals for preferred futures.

So what can you expect? In a nutshell: more sex, fewer antidepressants; more religious influence in China, less religious influence in the Middle East and the United States; more truth and transparency online, but a totally recorded real life.

The forecasts is divided into sections:

• Business and Economics

China will most likely become the world’s largest economy within the next three decades.

Tourism is expected to nearly double worldwide, from 842 million international tourist arrivals in 2006 to 1.6 billion in 2020

Retirees in the United States will increasingly return to the workforce. (The report is large US-based, however, this is a global trend)

Socioeconomic disparities will become more pronounced in aging societies.Social safety nets will get cut. Governments across the industrialized world will pare down or scrap altogether their pension and health-care programs for retirees.

• Computers

Watch out! HAL from 2001 is on the way. Selfaware machine intelligence could be achieved by midcentury.

Search engines will become humanlike by 2050. With the “semantic” Web, AI-based search engines will comprehend users’ questions and queries just like a human assistant.

Rainbow traps may improve computing abilities.

“Serious gaming” will help train tomorrow’s health workers.

• Demography

Urbanization will hit 60% by 2030.

Workforces on the move will exacerbate social conflicts. Increased migrations of workers from developing countries to developed countries will help offset worker shortages in host countries.

• Energy

Access to electricity will reach 83% of the world by 2030.

Architects will harness energy from the movement of crowds.

Pursuit of alternatives to oil could help stabilize gas prices.

• Information Society

Everything you say and do may be recorded. By the late 2010s, ubiquitous unseen nanodevices will provide seamless communication and surveillance among all people everywhere.

Identity theft and other Internet crimes will increase at a faster pace.

You’ll have more friends whom you’ll never meet, and cyberfriends may outnumber real-life friends. (This has already happened in places like Facebook and MySpace, even perhaps Linked-In?)

• Technology and Science

The Internet will become more factually reliable and more transparent.

TV in 3-D.

Optical clocks may enable us to measure time much more precisely.

• Transportation

The car’s days as king of the road may soon be over.

Mobility is becoming a priority to more people in rising economies: More people will travel farther faster. Personal mobility is increasing in rapidly expanding economies.

Research labs are coming closer to “beaming” us up.

Star Trek–type transporters may soon be possible for data transmission, but not for sending people places.

• Values and Society

People will have more sex. With women’s growing economic power around the world, arranged marriages are becoming less likely. As a result, women will feel freer to express their sexuality.

U.S. cultural hegemony may be over. The days of U.S. and First World dominance over the world’s culture and economy may soon be over.

New generations, new values. Self reliance and cooperation will become prevalent societal values as Generation X and Generation Y replace the baby-boom generation.

More people will consume ethically.

• Work and Careers

Succeeding in future niche careers may mean choosing an unusual major.

Tomorrow’s high-tech cowboys will telecommute.

Professional knowledge will become obsolete more quickly.

• World Affairs

The world’s legal systems will be networked. The Global Legal Information Network (GLIN), a database of local and national laws for more than 50 participating countries, will grow to include more than 100 counties by 2010.

Militaries will use neuroscience breakthroughs to win future wars.

Climate change is already spurring armed conflict.