The Best Predictions of 2011
Drawing from a variety of sources throughout the past year, the editors of THE FUTURIST take a look at some of the best predictions for the world’s future.
What makes a prediction a good one? Like any announcement that must compete for attention in the public sphere, the predictions that gather the most notice are the strangest or the boldest, or that paint a picture of a future state that challenge expectations.
Today, we still largely cling to this somewhat misguided notion of prediction as a remarkable statement. But the nature of prediction is changing as rapidly as our world. The scope of the predictable universe is expanding, thanks to new tools for acquiring and measuring data. The number of people with a platform to share a prediction — a statement about what will happen to the world — has grown and will continue to grow as rapidly as the Internet.
With that it mind, we present to you our list of the best predictions we read in 2011. They are surprising, often conflicting, and rise from a diverse pool. We evaluated each one in terms of what made it a good prediction, what could get in the way of its coming to pass, and what it all means.
While we tried to nail the experts down to specific dates, many made interesting forecasts that could not be tied down to a specific point “In the Future.”
This collection provides, we believe, a fascinating portrait of our present as we attempt to communicate with our ever-shifting future. —Patrick Tucker, deputy editor, THE FUTURIST
Predictions: Energy
Prediction: Nano-engineered solar panels will free the world from fossil fuels by 2016.
Who: Ray Kurzweil, speaking to Lauren Feeney of the online environmental magazine “Grist” in February.
Why Great: At present, solar provides less than 1% of U.S. energy needs, despite it’s obvious merits over fossil fuels, nuclear power, and especially coal.
BUT… No matter how it’s designed, no more than 70% of the sunlight that strikes a solar panel can be converted into energy, thanks to those pesky laws of thermodynamics. Also assuming that the U.S. coal lobby still has money in five years, we’ll still be using plenty of black rocks.
Bottom Line: You don’t need a nano-engineered solar panel to ask your local utility how much of their energy comes from solar.
Prediction: Renewables will provide 80% of our energy by 2050.
Who: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in their Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation released in May.
Why Great: The most credible body in climate science is sending a clear message to policymakers: renewables can work, here’s how!
BUT… The plan is contingent on policy-makers taking action on climate change, which could mean voting against the interests of labor and big business. Good luck.
What to do about it: Check out the report. Cite the stats in your windfarm business plan. Get a bank loan. Start a company. Get rich and save the planet at the same time.
Source: http://srren.ipcc-wg3.de/report
Prediction: Photovoltaic manufacturing capacity could reach 200 gigawatts (GW) globally by 2020.
Who: 72 internationally recognized experts brought together for a workshop organized by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), results summarized in Foundations for Innovation: Photovoltaic Technologies for the 21st Century, released in April 2011.
Why Great: This is a conservative estimate; by comparison, the current generating capacity of the world’s nuclear power plants is estimated at 377 GW. Photovoltaics represents a major growth area because it could potentially produce cleaner energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
BUT… It’s an expensive alternative to other energy technologies.
Bottom Line: The challenges are to improve the engineering and design of solar cells and enhance their longevity and performance. But it’s not just a science and technology issue; the workshop participants also note the challenges of tax and regulatory policies. The United States currently has 8% of the world’s share of photovoltaics manufacturing, but this could double with technological advances.
Source: NIST, http://www.nist.gov/director/prog-ofc/solar-042611.cfm
Prediction: Solar Power will be cheaper than both fossil fuels and nuclear power within five years.
Who: Mark M. Little, the global research director for General Electric speaking to Bloomberg Business News on May 28th.
Why it’s great: Little is putting his money where his mouth his. GE is opening a new solar thin film plant in 2013.
BUT… Right now, GE’s thin film panels have an efficiency of just 12% (meaning they can convert only 12% of the light that hits them into energy.
Bottom Line: In the words of Little, “If we can get solar at 15 cents a kilowatt-hour or lower, which I’m hopeful that we will do, you’re going to have a lot of people that are going to want to have solar at home.”
Prediction: By 2020, 15% of Europe’s electricity could come from arrays of solar panels in the North African deserts.
Who: Gerhard Knies, chairman of the board of trustees, Desertec Foundation
Background: Conceived a quarter century ago, the North African solar project is a plan to erect a network of solar plants across Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan, Algeria, and Egypt, with a grid of high-voltage transmission lines that would deliver the electricity to Europe.
Why Great: According to proponents of Desertec, the controversial mega-project not only would help Europe increase its use of renewable energy (its target is 20% by 2020), but it would also create jobs and economic development in a region that sorely needs it.
BUT… Skeptics see the Desertec as yet another way for developed countries to co-opt the resources of less-developed regions. Though investment would boost the economies these North African countries, it would also increase energy demand domestically.
Bottom Line: Desertec has support from the World Bank, but like many grand visions for solving cross-border problems, time is needed as much to build trust among all interested parties as to build the project itself.
Prediction: Fossil-fuel price shocks will intensify between now and 2030 as Japan, Germany, China, and other nations turn away from nuclear energy. Japan’s fossil-fuel imports alone could rise to 238,000 barrels of oil a day and 1.2 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day.
Who: Michael Klare, professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College
Why It Is Great: Given the size of China, Germany, and Japan’s economies, if all three countries substantially increase their fossil-fuel consumption, the whole world will feel the pinch. This is especially so when the whole world is suffering higher oil prices than ever already. Further price hikes, related slowdowns in economic activity globally, and — of course — more smog and greenhouse gas emissions are all likely to follow.
BUT… Few buts, in this case. Klare’s logic is hard to dispute. Solar and wind technologies are certainly improving, to the point that the German government promises to replace all its nuclear power with wind and solar power by 2030. But that is 20 years from now, and in the meantime, these alternative systems are nowhere near ready to take up lion’s share of national energy production.
Bottom Line: In worldwide energy markets, as in any other area of life, every action — i.e., the Fukushima nuclear disaster — does indeed have an equal and opposite reaction.
Source: http://www.alternet.org/world/151201/3_massive_world_events_that_will_change_your_life?page=2
Predictions: Humanity
Prediction: The global Muslim population is projected to grow from 1.6 billion to 2.2 billion (an approximately 35% increase) by 2030.
Who: The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, in a report entitled “The Future of the Global Muslim Population: Projections for 2010-2030.”
Why Great: The growth can be attributed to increased life-expectancy rates and better living conditions in many Muslim-majority countries.
BUT… The population growth rate for Muslims is slowing. This decline is also being attributed to better living conditions in many Muslim-majority countries as well as two other developments occurring there: increased educational opportunities for women and greater urbanization.
Bottom Line: The Pew Forum reports that “globally, the Muslim population is forecast to grow at about twice the rate of the non-Muslim population over the next two decades. … If current trends continue, Muslims will make up 26.4% of the world’s total projected population of 8.3 billion in 2030, up from 23.4% of the estimated 2010 world population of 6.9 billion.”
Source: http://pewforum.org/The-Future-of-the-Global-Muslim-Population.aspx
Prediction: The United States will be 20 million college graduates short of demand by 2025.
Who: The Georgetown University Center on Education in the June 27th report “The Undereducated American.”
Why Great: Despite persistent talk of an “education bubble” the report finds that the United States has not been graduating enough college students to meet workforce demand, and this has persisted for more than 30 years now.
BUT… The alternate headline on this trend reads: University Suggests That More Kids Should Attend University.
Bottom Line: We need a more educated workforce. But there may exist multiple paths to reach that goal.
Source: http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/undereducatedpressrelease.pdf
Prediction: Half of the world’s poorest countries can escape poverty by 2020.
Who: UN, report by the Group of Eminent Persons appointed by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
Why Great: Of the world’s 48 least-developed countries (LDCs), half may be able to achieve poverty-reduction goals within the next 10 years. This will require more-targeted development aid, as well as more advantageous trade agreements (i.e., quota-free access for exports), plus investment in education and agricultural productivity.
Reducing global poverty promises also to significantly reduce conflict. Economic well-being also reduces demographic pressures and could contribute to lowering birthrates in countries least able to support increasing populations.
Many LDCs have made social and economic improvements in the past decade, including trends toward democracy, increasing opportunities for women, and strengthening weak legal and economic institutions.
BUT… Only three out of 51 LDCs have “graduated” from that status since the UN first established the category in 1970.
Bottom Line: Consider fair trade and investment schemes promoting the development of LDCs’ assets, such as strategic minerals, arable land, and eco-resources.
Source: AllAfrica news service (UN), March 29, 2011. http://allafrica.com/stories/201105120527.html
Prediction: Schools won’t have days off for inclement weather anymore. Instead, homebound students and teachers will conduct lessons online, with in-person lessons to resume once the snow/hail/etc. subsides.
Who: Sina (Chinese media company)
Why Great: It is a boost for school productivity if learning continues even when the roads are icy. Also, although the article does not mention this, school systems in heavily polluted areas or areas particularly impacted by climate change will be much better able to protect their students’ health and safety — i.e., they can stay home and learn on those days when smog is acute or floods, heat waves, or other harsh weather is in effect.
BUT… For students to reach their teachers via Internet, they must first have Internet access. Not every rural, inner-city, and low-income home is connected yet (though this is slowly changing, as more Internet services set up shop in low-income communities and more low-income young people acquire inexpensive mobile phone-based Internet connections).
Bottom Line: In teaching, as in any other human activity, it is always good to have a backup plan. Distance learning, which is clearly spreading, could provide schools with a very convenient bad-weather backup — as long as students’ Internet access spreads as quickly.
Source: http://english.sina.com/technology/2011/0517/373795.html
Prediction: India will be the largest country in terms of population in 2050, with China in second place. United States will be the third largest, with 423 million people.
Who: The U.S. Census Bureau’s International Data Base.
Why Notable: According to the census bureau, China’s population seems to be stabilizing, while western Europe’s could slightly rise. In the United States, most of the population growth is occurring and will continue to occur in minority communities.
Also, there will be around 9.4 billion people living on the planet by then.
BUT… A growing population in India could hold the country back economically and foment internal struggles over already limited resources and access to basic necessities. The same holds true for countries in Africa, especially Nigeria and Ethiopia, which according to the census bureau’s projections will experience the largest population growth in the coming decades, percentage-wise. On the other hand, declining birth rates could continue to cause problems in developed countries, particularly Japan and Russia.
Bottom Line: The United States and the world will continue to see demographic shifts. Also, in addition to birth rate, increased life expectancy (particularly in developed countries) is another variable to take into account.
Source: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2080404,00.html
Prediction: Every book will be interactive and cross-platform by 2020.
Who: Author James Warner (All Her Father’s Guns), in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.
Why Great: Say goodbye to outmoded linear text-based reading. Warner writes, “Future ‘books’ will be bundled with soundtracks, musical leitmotifs, 3-D graphics, and streaming video.” These enhanced objects of desire will also feature built-in social networking functions to provide further distraction from actually having to read them.
BUT… Digital simulations of the analog reading experience will appear in the decades thereafter. Breakthroughs in augmented reality will be able to perfectly recreate the now-illegal process of enjoying an actual book, down to the “sensation of turning the pages, the crack of the spine, and even the occasional paper cut.”
Bottom Line: Warner’s cleverly-argued, well-informed satirical take on the future of books cautions people not to be too quick to champion digital technologies over analog processes.
Source: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2011/3/24warner.html
Prediction: Medicare reform is likely doomed, whether proposed by Democrats or Republicans.
Who: Greg Ip, covering the Peterson Foundation’s fiscal summit for The Economist magazine on May 25th.
Why it’s great: This quote, which sums up the current American Medicare debate with perfect, post-partisan aplomb: “Any serious attempt to reform Medicare is going to be unpopular because it will cost the elderly something, and the elderly are on the way to becoming 30% of the voting population. Thus, the opposing party is inevitably going to use such a proposal to kill the other at the next election without advancing an alternative. And since both parties know this, the only Medicare plans they offer voters will be lemons.”
BUT… Multi-generation families are on the rise. More grandkids taking in elderly relatives could reduce reliance on social safety nets.
Bottom Line: Because no elected politician can afford to alienate the Baby Boomer voting block, Generations X and Y are going to be paying higher taxes for fewer government services than did their parents. At some point, they might decide that’s just not fair.
Source: http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2011/05/politics_medicare
Prediction: Every book will be interactive and cross-platform by 2020.
Who: Author James Warner (All Her Father’s Guns), in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.
Why Great: Say goodbye to outmoded linear text-based reading. Warner writes, “Future ‘books’ will be bundled with soundtracks, musical leitmotifs, 3-D graphics, and streaming video.” These enhanced objects of desire will also feature built-in social networking functions to provide further distraction from actually having to read them.
BUT… Digital simulations of the analog reading experience will appear in the decades thereafter. Breakthroughs in augmented reality will be able to perfectly recreate the now-illegal process of enjoying an actual book, down to the “sensation of turning the pages, the crack of the spine, and even the occasional paper cut.”
Bottom Line: Warner’s cleverly-argued, well-informed satirical take on the future of books cautions people not to be too quick to champion digital technologies over analog processes.
Source: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2011/3/24warner.html
Prediction: The number-one factor affecting quality of life for South Koreans in 2040 will be health; employment will drop from first to eighth place.
Who: Choi Hangsub, associate professor of sociology, University of Kookmin, Seoul, South Korea
Background: To foresee how satisfied citizens may be in the future, and to plan how to invest resources to improve quality of life, policy makers must be able to forecast what sectors (e.g., state of the environment, opportunities for leisure, income gaps) will be of greater importance to people in the future. A survey of specialists concluded that, whereas employment was the most important element underlying life satisfaction for Koreans in 2010, that factor will drop in rank to just eighth place by 2040, as concerns over an aging population’s health moves up from second to first place among happiness-seekers’ priorities.
Why Great: Sociologists are warning us that what will make us happy in the future aren’t necessarily the same things that make us happy now (at least according to quality-of-life researchers). As having a family decreases importance in the next 30 years, access to the Internet will increase, suggesting that the impulse for human contact will take on a more mobile character.
BUT… This particular study focused on South Korea, so it is difficult to make broad generalizations. However, the researchers’ point that happy cultures begin with happy citizens is well worth noting.
Bottom Line: Quantification of quality of life (i.e., happiness or life satisfaction) is of growing interest to policy makers and all who study macro trends underlying what we loosely call “progress.” This is a departure from traditional economic theory that looks only at GDP, income, employment, and marriage rates. (For example, those quantifying divorce rates might consider whether the impacts are perceived as positive or negative by the parties involved.)
Source: “Sociological and Futuristic Study on Quality of Life in 2040” by Choi Hangsub in Moving from Vision to Action, edited by Cynthia G. Wagner. (the World Future Society’s 2011 conference volume)
Prediction: The proportion of world population over age 65 will grow to 22.3% by 2100, up from 7.6% in 2010.
Who: UN
Why Great: World population grows two ways: more people being born and fewer people dying. The shift to a more mature world has social, economic, and political implications. More-mature cultures tend to be richer, more stable, and less violent ones.
BUT… More-mature nations tend to be weaker in terms of health and military might, making them vulnerable to threats from younger, poorer nations.
Bottom Line: Immigration is a third way that cultures can balance themselves demographically, as young people seek opportunities in wealthier countries around the world, thus offering a potential solution to the issue of the so-called pensioner crisis.
Source: UN data via The Economist, http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/05/world_population&fsrc=nwl (posted May 13, 2011)
Prediction: In the world’s wealthiest countries, spending on long-term care could double or even triple by 2050.
Who: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in new (May 2011) report, “Help Wanted? Providing and paying for long-term care”
Why Great: Increased longevity is considered good news for individuals but bad news for the institutions that need to pay for their care. The proportion of the frailest elderly in OECD countries (age 80 and older) will grow sharply to 1 in 10 by 2050, up from 1 in 25 in 2010. To meet the care gap, these wealthier societies will become more open to importing care workers as well as innovative technologies such as caregiving robots.
Bottom Line: Individuals, institutions, and governments can all invest now in future care, whether it be improving the health monitoring capability of smart houses and devices or educating a homogenous citizenry about the value of immigrant workers.
Source: http://www.oecd.org/document/12/0,3746,en_21571361_44315115_47904908_1_1_1_1,00.html
Prediction: The Middle East could be the host of a new scientific revolution that fosters huge breakthroughs in renewable energy.
Just as science in Europe was reborn in the seventeenth century following a series of political revolutions, the upheavals now sweeping the Middle East could free the region up for an intellectual liberation and the emergence of a democracy-driven science research base dedicated to people’s needs, contrasting with Western science industries that work primarily at the behest of their corporate and national-security sponsors.
Who: Dan Hind, a British science author and publicist. Commentary ran May 17, 2011, on Al Jazeera.
Why Great: The global implications would be massive: a bastion of fossil fuels becomes the source of solar energy to power the world; a region beset with tens of millions of unemployed and impoverished people could suddenly generate jobs and revenue streams; and R&D industries that are now based mostly in North America and Europe would soon have powerful new potential partners — and potential competitors. Worldwide innovation and economic growth might accelerate, emigration might slow, and terrorist movements would be further marginalized.
BUT… It depends on whether true democracy does take root in the affected countries, and that is far from assured.
Bottom Line: Hind’s vision is very desirable, but it will probably take earnest commitments from players in the Middle East and outside it to make it happen.
Source: Al Jazeera, http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/05/201151275441474476.html
Predictions: Cities
Prediction: Traffic congestion will increase by more than 30% in 18 U.S. cities by 2030. The biggest increase (54%) will be in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Who: Harvard Center for Risk Analysis (HCRA) at the School of Public Health
Background: If no further improvements are made to transportation capacity and infrastructure, cities already plagued with traffic problems will see things get worse. Smaller cities like Raleigh, which anticipate population growth as retirement meccas, will likely experience more premature deaths due to increased pollution and traffic accidents.
Why Great: Models for studying the range of trends and impacts — from urban growth to regional migration to the replacement of gas guzzlers with clean hybrids — are becoming increasingly sophisticated, thus giving policy planners in public health and transportation a great chance to invest the necessary resources for improving the quality of transportation.
BUT… In a business-as-usual scenario, the researchers project that U.S. traffic woes will cost a total of 1,900 premature deaths and $17 billion in social costs.
Bottom Line: How you get from here to there makes up a big part of your daily planning. You can also make it a bigger part of your life planning, such as simply deciding to live within walking distance of your office (or even working from home). It could save not just a lot of time, but also your life.
Source: Harvard Center for Risk Analysis (HCRA) at the School of Public Health, cited by The American Road & Transportation Builders Association http://www.artba.org/article/new-study-estimates-for-first-time-the-public-health-costs-of-traffic-congestion-in-us/
Prediction: Biofuel-powered hypersonic jets will shuttle passengers from London to Tokyo (and vice-versa) in less than two and a half hours by 2050.
Who: Airbus parent company EADS.
Why Great: High-speed international air travel that doesn’t generate air pollution would constitute a major achievement. The ZEHST (Zero Emission Hypersonic Transportation) would travel over 3000 mph powered by a combination of hydrogen and oxygen derived from seaweed, emitting water vapor instead of carbon dioxide. Also, at cruising altitudes just above the atmosphere of the Earth, it’s almost like space travel.
BUT… Commercial flights won’t be available for 40 years. What’s more, it may not be commercially viable: The aircraft will only be able to handle 100 passengers at most, so tickets would be prohibitively expensive. (MSNBC reports that seats on the ZEHST “will likely cost in the neighborhood of $10,000 to $30,000, according to aerospace industry experts.”)
Bottom Line: This ambitious project literally aims for the stratosphere.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43500622/ns/technology_and_science-innovation/
Worst Prediction of the Year Goes to
Prediction: The World will end on May 21st, 2011
Who: Preacher Harold Camping on his nationally syndicated radio show, frequently, since his last failed end of the World prediction in 1994.
Why Great: Millions of people woke up on May 22nd, pleasantly surprised to still exist.
BUT… 2012 is right around the corner.
Bottom Line: Camping joins a long-line of misinformed prognosticators — from the Jehovah’s Witnesses to former U.S. Presidential Candidate Pat Robertson — to issue public pronouncements about the end of the world and then miss by a mile. You can’t duck the future. Good news is there’s still time to make the future better, today.
Source: National Geographic and AP, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/05/pictures/110520-may-21-doomsday-harold-camping-judgement-day-rapture-end-of-the-world/#/apocalypse-prediction-rapture-may-2011_35778_600x450.jpg
Prediction: 48 metropolitan areas in the United States will not return to pre-recession employment levels until 2020.
Who: The United States Conference of Mayors.
Why Not So Great: But wait — there’s more. Most U.S. metro economies “will suffer persistently high unemployment beyond 2011, many of which will continue with high rates into the middle and latter part of the decade,” the report claims. It pinpoints 198 cities that will still face over 6% unemployment by 2015.
BUT… According to the report, “the vast majority of employment gains the U.S. will experience in the coming years will be provided by metro economies,” adding, “by the close of 2014 over half of the metro areas will have returned to their previous peak employment level.” It’s not exactly a silver lining, but it’s something, anyway.
Bottom Line: The report highlights the need for both short- and long-term solutions from federal legislators. It also calls for them to earmark some of the money being spent on military actions abroad to improving domestic cities and creating jobs at home.
Source: http://www.usmayors.org/metroeconomies/2011/
Prediction: Dubai’s airport will be the busiest in the world, serving over 75 million passengers annually by 2015.
Who: Dubai Airports.
Why Great: “Increased liberalization, GDP growth, and increasingly affluent and mobile populations in emerging markets will combine to propel air travel growth worldwide,” according to Dubai Airports CEO Paul Griffiths.
BUT… Two words: carbon footprint. Air travel isn’t exactly the most environmentally friendly way to get around. The question is: Can the planet handle an increase in fossil fuel-guzzling, greenhouse gas-emitting international air travel?
Bottom Line: Dubai will continue to be a major point of connection between emerging and established national economies.
Source: http://www.dubaiairports.ae/en/media-centre/Pages/press-releases.aspx?id=28
Predictions: Commerce
Prediction: Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, South Korea, and Russia will be responsible for over half of all global economic growth by 2025.
Who: The World Bank, in the report Global Development Horizons 2011 — Multipolarity: The New Global Economy.
Why great: These emerging countries’ economic growth will likely pave the way for improvement in other developing nations’ economies via increased financial and commercial activity across borders.
BUT… According to Mansoor Dailami, manager of emerging trends at the World Bank and lead author of the report, “A key question is whether existing multilateral norms and institutions are sufficiently strong to accommodate the passage toward multipolarity. The challenges of managing global integration among power centers makes strengthening policy coordination across economies critical to reducing the risks of economic instability.”
Bottom Line: The title says it all: Multipolarity. Global economic influence will be shared by various developed and developing countries and the U.S. dollar will no longer solely dominate the international monetary system. The likelihood of this scenario seems strong — the economic rise of these countries has been forecasted for quite some time prior to the World Bank’s report.
World Bank Pubs, Emerging economies will grow by 4.7% a year by 2025, and their global GDP will expand to 45%. Read http://ow.ly/5h2vI
Prediction: Prices for staple grains — i.e., food — will increase by 120% to 180% in the next two decades. [2030s]
Who: Oxfam
Background: Environmental, political, and economic forces are all driving up food prices, including climate change and pressure from the biofuels lobbies. Meanwhile, demand for food will increase by 70% as the global population reaches a projected 9 billion by 2050.
Why Great: Individuals, communities, and organizations are taking the future in their own hands — literally — by either growing their own food or joining cooperatives, and by supporting hunger-fighting politicians. Even Big Agriculture could benefit from nurturing the diversity of smallholder farmers, says Oxfam.
BUT… Failure to build a sustainable future for farmers could result in food wars, just as any resource scarcity provokes competition and conflict.
Bottom Line: A “new prosperity” is possible, says Oxfam: “The race to a sustainable future is on, and there will be huge opportunities for those who get there first.”
Source: “Growing a Sustainable Future” by Robert Bailey, Oxfam GB/Oxfam International, May 31, 2011, http://www.oxfam.org.uk/resources/papers/growing-better-future.html
Prediction: There may be a major cocoa shortage by 2020.
Who: Mars, the global confectionary giant.
Background: At issue is standards and certification for sustainability in cocoa production. Without sustainable practices, along with innovative agricultural technologies, “the industry as a whole can expect a shortfall of more than one million tonnes of cocoa in just nine years.”
Why Great: Mars Chocolate is a powerful influencer and has pledged to purchase 100% certified sustainable chocolate by 2020, focusing on “technology transfer that puts farmers first; innovations in agricultural science; and rigorous certification standards.”
BUT… The challenge is to improve the sustainability certification process, which will require industry investment in giving farmers access to advanced agricultural methods, including genetically improved cocoa that is more productive and more-resistant to disease.
Bottom Line: Mars recognizes that improving farming practices is good for farmers, the industry, and the planet. Whether chocoholics care much how their candy bars get to them, the prospects of major shortages could increase their interest in supporting sustainable chocolate.
http://www.mars.com/global/commitments/sustainability/cocoa-sustainability.aspx
Prediction: The world will no-longer rely on a single reserve currency by 2025.
Who: The World Bank, Tuesday, May 17th.
Why It’s Great: In the words of the study, “A multi-currency regime would more broadly distribute lender-of-last-resort responsibility and make it easier to boost liquidity during times of market distress without as much disruption as is often the case now.”
BUT… Since oil is denominated in dollars, a change to a basket of currency denomination system would send the price of oil much higher.
Bottom Line: The above-outlined emerging economies will grow 4.7% annually (on average)a year between 2011 and 2025, according to the World Bank. Advanced countries will grow on 2.3% a year, on average. This will affect the price of lots of things.
Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/17/businesspro-us-worldbank-emerging-idUSTRE74G5PJ20110517
Prediction: Student loan debt will spark worse economic turmoil in the United States than the credit-card debt crisis or the housing bubbles. Young people ages 16-24 suffer higher unemployment rates than any other U.S. demographic group, even though most have racked up gargantuan amounts of loan debt to earn their degrees. Organized student protests, and eventually civil unrest, will unfold unless the government takes action.
Who: Sarah Jaffe, contributor to Alternet.org [Michael Bloomberg predict]
When: 2010-2020
Why It’s a Great Prediction: Defaulted debts in the U.S. economy already contributed to one major global economic catastrophe in 2007-2008, one from which the world has yet to fully recover. Can any country on earth afford another, in this case tied to student loans rather than housing loans? The situation is ominous for the education itself, also: If people come to associate college degrees with underemployment and lifelong personal debt, then large numbers of young people may decide to forego college. America’s knowledge base will wither, and its standard of living — and by extension, that of the rest of the world — will sink further. The worldwide pain intensifies even more if Jaffe’s warnings of youth riots and violence come to pass.
But… Concerted political reforms and a robust economic recovery might pave the way toward a brighter alternative future. So, too, might more U.S. students turning to more fiscally sane education alternatives — like enrolling in Canadian colleges, eh?
Bottom Line: The United States is a world leader in coming up with overly expensive, credit-busting approaches to the good life. But this cannot go on forever.
Source: Jaffe, Sarah. “The Next Bubble is About to Burst.” June 2, 2011: http://www.alternet.org/economy/151149/the_next_bubble_is_about_to_burst%3A_college_grads_face_dwindling_jobs_and_mounting_loans_?page=entire
Prediction: India will become the world’s third largest auto market by 2020.
Who: J.D. Power and Associates, in the report “India Automotive 2020: The Next Giant from Asia.”
Why Great: India has already risen to become the sixth-largest market for passenger cars and light commercial vehicles. This growth is tied to general economic improvements (greater market liberalization and more foreign investment, in particular) and a growing consumer-driven culture, according to the report. “India could find itself well-positioned to fulfill the needs of the small car segment,” says John Humphrey, senior vice president of global automotive operations at J.D. Power and Associates. He adds: “That said, profit margins are thinner in the small car segment, so automakers are going to need to manage their businesses carefully to optimize profits.”
BUT… According to the report, India’s auto market has three “deficits” to overcome — in international trade, budget, and infrastructure (which is singled out as the largest challenge) — if it is to realize its full potential. Humphrey asserts, “Much of India’s future growth in the automotive sector will depend on successfully creating the infrastructure to support its economy.” The report also points to a fourth “deficit” in terms of skilled engineers and large-scale automotive parts production.
Bottom Line: 700,000 light vehicles were sold in 2000, and around 11 million are predicted for 2020.That represents some serious growth — but it’s far from guaranteed at this point.
Source: http://www.jdpower.com/news/pressRelease.aspx?ID=2011081
Prediction: The United States will need to create 21 million jobs by 2020 in order to achieve full employment.
Who: The McKinsey Global Institute, in their report “An economy that works: Job creation and America’s future.”
Why: The report’s authors looked at the current high level of unemployment (approximately seven million are still out of work as the U.S. enters into an extended “jobless recovery” period) as well as projected population growth over the next decade to arrive at this number.
BUT… If current trends continue, this is unlikely to occur. The economy will not be as strong as it needs to be and many will lack the necessary skills and education for the jobs that will likely exist.
Bottom Line: According to the report, which looks at the potential for job growth across 6 industry sectors, demand for college graduates is likely to rise, so government investment in higher education is imperative. “Our analysis suggests a shortage of up to 1.5 million workers with bachelor’s degrees or higher in 2020. At the same time, nearly 6 million Americans without a high school diploma are likely to be without a job.” The report concludes with a series of policy suggestions, including attracting greater foreign investment and supporting new industries and start-ups, which could help reverse the trends, given a healthy economy.
Prediction: Digital currency will be accepted virtually everywhere in the United States by 2015.
Who: PayPal president Scott Thompson.
Why Great: People will no longer have to worry if they have enough cash on them or go out of their way to stop by their bank’s ATMs. On a larger scale, a mostly cashless society would go a long way towards eliminating illegal underground economies and reducing criminal activity, as David R. Warwick points out in “The Case Against Cash” (THE FUTURIST, July-August 2011).
BUT… The news is coming from PayPal. Surprising? Also, it’s good news depending on how you feel about information gathering and privacy issues. There will be data on every transaction made and that data will need protecting (of course, this is already an issue).
What to do about it: In Thompson’s words, “embrace a digital lifestyle” and stop using cash and checks.
Bottom Line: Wallets may be destined to become antique collector’s items in the next few years.
Source: https://www.thepaypalblog.com/, http://mashable.com/2011/06/29/paypal-100-million/
Prediction: By 2015, the majority of organizations that manage innovation processes will galvanize innovation by making a game out of it.
Who: Gartner, Inc.
Background: “Gamification” — applying game mechanics, such as scoreboards and rules of play, to non-game systems — is a well-known trend underway in IT, Web development, and many other types of businesses and organizations. Their management teams are all looking to increase customer feedback, employee engagement, and idea generation. They achieve all three by creating game-like platforms that make the work of discussion and correspondence feel more like a game. For example, Great Britain’s Department for Work and Pensions created a social collaboration platform for its 120,000 personnel. Called Idea Street, it features points, leader boards, and a “buzz index.” In its first 48 months, approximately 4,500 users had registered and had generated 1,400 ideas, of which 63 had gone forward to implementation. The World Bank developed a similar application, called Evoke, which crowdsources ideas from players across the globe to solve social challenges.
Why Great: Plenty of adults, just like kids, enjoy friendly competition. The Department for Work and Pensions, the World Bank, and other organizations are clearly coming up with creative ways to channel grownups’ proclivities for games and, in the process, get higher volumes of serious work done. And who can argue with that?
BUT… No app is going to work magic. It is only as useful as the people who use it (or don’t use it). The two organizations above may have the dual benefits of an engaged population willing to contribute ideas and an open-minded leadership willing to receive new ideas. Both of these are important, and unfortunately, not every organization has them. Those that don’t will probably not see as much gain from gamification.
Bottom Line: Businesses and organizations are looking for, and often finding, highly productive ways to combine business and pleasure.
Source: http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1629214
Prediction: Worldwide government debt will increase another 40% by 2016 (reaching $48,100 billion; up from $34,400 billion this year). Financial stability of every major economy on earth will be in jeopardy. Advanced economies are the ones running up the negative balances; emerging market economies account for 17% of global debt now and will account for 14% in 2016.
Who: Eswar Prasad and Menjie Ding, Financial Times
Background: Debt constitutes “a major threat to global financial stability,” according to Prasad and Ding in this report, and they detail steep aggregate debt increases across the global financial system to make their case. The causes are many. Sagging economic performance is setting back the United States and Europe. Japan’s economy is underperforming, too, while simultaneously contending with the aftershocks of the 2011 tsunami disaster.
Why Great: One need look no farther than Greece and Portugal to see what happens if debt is allowed to spiral out of control. If this report’s analyses are correct, there could be many more Greeces and Portugals across the world in the years ahead: No region is free of looming debt. What’s even scarier is that the major economies, such as Europe, have the most crushing debt problems. This matters because these larger economies are bailing the troubled smaller ones out now. If the larger economies remain in the red, they will have no more bailouts to spare, and troubled economies everywhere will be on their own.
BUT… Could BRIC growth soften the blow?
Bottom Line: It happened in Greece, and it happened in Portugal. It could apparently happen in a lot of other places, too.
Source: Brookings, http://www.brookings.edu/articles/2011/0731_debt_burden_prasad.aspx
Prediction: “micro-multinationals” will dominate the planet (with a little assistance from cheap robots) by 2025.
Who: Hal Varian, chief economist for Google, in an article for Foreign Policy.
Why Great: Thanks largely to the Internet, “even the smallest company can now afford a communications and computational infrastructure that would have been the envy of a large corporation 15 years ago,” Varian writes. These small businesses, known as micro-multinationals, can distribute their products (especially those that are Web-based) — and hire employees — in virtually any country in the world. Varian points to Skype, based in Estonia, as a successful example of such a company. Micro-multinationals can help prevent “brain drains,” too, since employees can work remotely from anywhere in the world. And soon, according to Varian, inexpensive robotic devices will be available to boost these businesses. This technology, which previously only large companies could afford, will further level the playing field.
BUT… Varian adds, that terrorists and others who seek to create disruption and chaos have also “benefited enormously from the same proliferation of information technology that has enabled micro-multinationals and robotics.” He further points out that any problems with the communications infrastructure itself could cause “catastrophes.” In addition, he mentions that legislative and regulatory issues, among others, could prevent the potential of inexpensive robotic technology from fully being realized.
Bottom Line: In summing up. Varian says, “A simple way to forecast the future is to look at what rich people have today; middle-income people will have something equivalent in 10 years, and poor people will have it in an additional decade.” While this may come across as an overly-simplistic (and overly-optimistic) forecasting shortcut, it does seem applicable in the business world.
Source: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/08/15/micromultinationals_will_run_the_world
Prediction: Thanks to a rebound in housing construction, unemployment will fall below 7% by 2013, earlier than the Federal Reserve is predicting.
Who: Warren Buffet on the Charlie Rose Show, following the publishing of his most recent Op-Ed in the New York Times.
Why It’s Great: It’s a bold, direct, and unapologetically optimistic statement about the resiliency of the U.S. economy from the world’s most successful investor. More importantly, it might actually be right. U.S. Commerce Department Data released the week of August 26th showed that 165,000 new houses were on the market in the month of July. That’s the lowest inventory of new homes on the market since the government began keeping track 47 years ago.
BUT… Buffett may be a great investor, but he’s not an impartial voice. Forecasting a rebound in home construction overlooks the fact that millions of Americans still face difficult credit conditions, U.S. consumer debt remains at historically elevated levels. In this environment, the consensus credit-worthy consumers will delay home purchases until the economy improves, which is a function of unemployment receding, which is a function of people buying houses.
Bottom Line: The U.S. economic recovery is surprisingly dependent on housing and consumer spending and thus will be volatile for some time.
Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVOn371TCPo
Prediction: Baby Boomers easing into retirement will continue to dump U.S. stocks in favor of less risky assets, causing a 13% decline in the U.S. stock market by 2010 (relative to 2010).
Background: “Despite theoretical ambiguities, U.S. equity values have been closely related to demographic trends in the past half century. There has been a tight correlation between population dependency ratios… and the price/earnings ratio of the U.S. stock market. In the context of the impending retirement of baby boomers over the next two decades, this correlation portends poorly for equity values.”
Who: The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, August 22, 2011.
Why it’s Great: It’s an unusually honest appraisal of how changing demographics influence equity valuations. In broaching it, the authors of the letter are trying to look out for retail investors (which is probably more than their brokers are doing). Also, the authors use the same metric to product a robust bull market for stocks between 2025 and 2030. Good news for the grandkids!
BUT… Even the authors acknowledge that their metric is one just one among many. Technological breakthroughs creating new enterprises a loosening of immigration policy, other events could render the prediction moot.
Bottom Line: Be careful of stock brokers baring “buy” opportunities.
Source: http://www.frbsf.org/publications/economics/letter/2011/el2011-26.html?utm_source=home
Prediction: Iraq’s per capita GDP will double by 2015, thanks to oil revenues.
Who: Majid Al-Suri, a Central Bank of Iraq economist
Background: Oil may be one of the few bright spots in Iraq’s attempts to rebuild itself post-Saddam. National oil output in July 2011 stood at 2.8 million barrels a day — higher than pre-invasion oil production, which hovered at around 2.6 million barrels a day in early 2003, and equal to or higher than production at any time since. Al-Suri projects that output will keep growing and, when combined with steadily rising prices for oil in the global market, will push Iraq’s per-capita GDP from its present-day level of $4,500 up to $10,000 by the end of 2015.
Why Great: Iraq is still on the brink: Insurgent attacks are rising, security forces are weak, standards of living remain low, unemployment is horrendous, and corruption is rampant. A failed-state future looks increasingly certain, and that would be a scenario no good person wants to see: outpourings of civil warfare; mass flight of refugees; catastrophic drop-off in the global oil market; a resorgimento for Islamic terrorist networks; and the annihilation of movements for Middle Eastern democratic reform. Iraq’s government could still avert this implosion, but only if it massively boosts security, economic activity, and public infrastructure. Strong GDP growth would make all that possible.
BUT… Al-Suri sounds awfully optimistic, given the present-day mess. Does he really believe his prediction? Or is he just saying it to entice more foreign contractors and placate the U.S. government that has been getting on his country’s case of late about the lack of progress? No one disputes that Iraq has lots of oil to be drilled, but there needs to be law and order on the ground before anyone can drill it. Iraq is still plagued with sectarian violence that shows no signs of quitting. As such, the country is going to have a hard time convincing oil companies to set up shop. Ergo, revenue growth is going to be hard to achieve.
Bottom Line: Iraq needs economic growth to achieve stability, and it needs stability to achieve economic growth — it’s a nasty catch-22, no matter what rosy predictions a Central Bank of Iraq economist may dish out.
Source: Iraq Business News, http://www.iraq-businessnews.com/2011/03/14/iraqs-per-capita-income-to-double-by-2015/
Prediction: The euro zone will collapse, many of its member nations ditching the Euro for their own national currencies, by 2016.
Who: Nouriel Roubini, a French economist and the president of Roubini Global Economic LLC. He holds great renown in France for having accurately predicted the 2008 financial crisis back in 2006.
Background: France, Germany, and several other major European powers founded the euro zone in hopes that Europe’s many economies could be most successful if they pooled their resources and interests into one common market. In Roubini’s opinion, the member nations have not stuck to the plan. Their economic policies remain too divergent and too competitive with each other. Today’s European fiscal crisis is the outcome — bad fiscal management in Greece and Portugal drags down Spain and Ireland. He sees only two ways out. The first is that all euro-zone members adopt one single budgetary policy and tax system. In the absence of this, he says, the euro zone’s less successful member nations will give up the Euro and reinstate their own national currencies.
Why Great: This is bound to shake up global markets — but in a bad way, good way, or both? It’s debatable. On one hand, collapse of the Euro could hugely disrupt trade across Europe, which could wreck Europe’s stock markets. Unemployment and budget crises across the continent could worsen, possibly triggering the elections of extremist politicians and more global chaos. Immigration into Europe would slow, and emigration out of Europe might accelerate. But on the other hand, the countries who abandon the Euro might come out winners. Their new, purportedly crash-proof currencies might be held as more credible by domestic businesses and outside investors. Europe could see a new era of economic prosperity, just one with different centers of gravity.
BUT… Many European officials believe in the deep integration of which Roubini speaks and are trying to get it implemented. If they succeed, then his second, default scenario will not have to come to pass.
Bottom Line: Europe’s financial system gets few votes of confidence. Major overhaul now might be necessary to avert major collapse late on.
Source: Le Figaro, http://www.lefigaro.fr/conjoncture/2011/06/14/04016-20110614ARTFIG00351-roubini-predit-l-explosion-de-l-eurozone.php
Prediction: The present-day economic troubles now growing across the world will culminate in a new Great Depression by 2013.
Who: Nouriel Roubini, a French economist and the president of Roubini Global Economic LLC
Background: Roubini notes the simultaneous slowdowns of economic growth in the United States, United Kingdom, and the euro zone with alarm. He fears that they are the makings of a new, even worse financial crisis that will sweep the globe no later than 2013. He urges national leaders everywhere to quickly institute massive new stimulus initiatives to avert it.
Why Great: A new stimulus is definitely not going to happen in the United States. Few European governments seem disposed to it, either. In all, there is no good reason to think that Roubini’s prescription will be taken. That’s dire news for economies everywhere, if “Dr. Catastrophe” — as Roubini is sometimes called for having foretold in 2006 of the 2008 U.S. housing crash — is correct on his diagnosis of another impending global recession.
BUT… Hamilton hasn’t always been right. As Bloomberg reporter Scott Hamilton notes, “When the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index fell to a 12-year low on March 9, 2009, (Roubini) said it probably would drop to 600 or lower by the end of that year. Instead, the U.S. equity benchmark gained 65 percent for the rest of 2009.” Let’s all hope that he’s wrong about this new Great Depression, too.
Bottom Line: If you’re looking for good news on the economic front, you’re not going to get it from Roubini.
Source: Bloomberg, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-06/roubini-says-global-economic-slowdown-accelerating-next-financial-crisis.html
Prediction: By the 2020s, the Americas will supersede the Middle East as the world’s go-to source for petroleum. Geopolitics will shift considerably, as OPEC will no longer have so much clout.
Who: Mark Perry, University of Michigan economist
Background: North and South America combined hold far more underground oil reserves than the Middle East and North Africa. The Middle East was favored last century, however, because the Americas’ oil exists primarily in less accessible forms and environs — offshore deposits, shale rock, oil sands, and heavy oil formations. More recently, though, innovations in drilling and mining have made accessing these oil sources much easier. Consequently, oil industries in the Americas have grown quickly in short order. Perry thinks that the United States could become a prominent oil exporter and, in addition, share its oil-accessing technologies with European countries that want to tap their own domestic supplies instead of being at the mercy of oil-rich Russia.
Why Great: It’s good news for economic growth and job creation in the Americas. It’s not so good news, however, for environmental sustainability. A burgeoning oil industry in the United States would likely slow societal momentum toward weaning off fossil fuels and eradicating carbon emissions. Not to mention it could put a slough of hitherto-untouched wilderness areas in harm’s way.
BUT… Perry’s expectation that the United States would exploit more of its domestic oil reserves is very believable. It doesn’t necessarily follow, though, that the OPEC countries will lose business because of it. Many energy analysts expect worldwide energy consumption to grow enormously as the century wears on. Odds are there will be enough global hunger for oil that both the Middle East and the Americas will go on reaping huge oil revenues drilling their oil wells to quench it.
Bottom Line: Human civilization has room for many oil giants, though the same can’t be said of earth’s ecosystems.
Prediction High Levels of unemployment will haunt young people until 2012. The number of young people forced to delay their careers due to the recession of poor labor market will suffer diminished earnings ability for decades.
Who: Andrew Sum, an economist and director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University
Background: Today’s young adults are facing the highest unemployment since World War II. Nearly one out of five lives in poverty.
Unemployment is two to three times worse for Gen Y then it is for baby boomers.
For Gen X, debts have been rising and incomes falling. In the words of Derek Thompson at the Atlantic, “They’re working harder — a two-parent family worked 26 percent more hours in 2010 than in 1975 — and making less. Thirty-something men had an average income of $40,000 some 30 years ago; today, it’s $35,000.”
Why Great: Acknowledging the debt and dim economic prospects of today’s young people is the first step in drafting federal policies (a student loan forgiveness bill?) to fix the problem.
BUT… Robust growth could reverse this trend.
Sources: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Who-Had-Worst-Recession-atlantic-3314192070.html?x=0
Prediction: The European debt crisis could lead to war in 10 to 20 years.
Who: Polish Finance minister Jacek Rostowski, speaking before the European parliament in Strasbourg on September 15.
Why great: The sooner you recognize a worst case scenario, the sooner and easier you can avert it.
BUT… The prediction reflects the historic German fear of hyper-inflation, which some German policy makers believe will ensue if euros are printed to cover the bad debts in Greece (and elsewhere.) Hyperinflation in Germany following World War I resulted in unprecedented social unrest and, eventually, fascism. But deflation, rather than inflation, remains the larger threat to the global economy.
Bottom Line: It isn’t the 1930s. The euro zone members should focus on the crisis at hand.
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/jasek-rostowski-war-poland-2011-9
Predictions: Technology
Prediction: In the next 25 years [timeline year 2035], synthetic biology — the creation of life from nonliving chemicals designed on a computer — could produce thousands of synthetic genomes and life-forms not yet imagined.
Who: Jerome C. Glenn, director of the Millennium Project, extrapolating from the work of the J. Craig Venter Institute
Why Great: Scientists are expanding the tools available to solve a myriad of problems, from enhancing health to improving energy supplies.
BUT… If no one yet knows what can be created, neither can we know what mischief such creations could create.
Bottom Line: Technological development has always been a double-edged sword. Researchers who ignore potential side effects or the ethical implications of their work, and who do not govern their own activities, risk having government regulators (and public disdain) thwart any hope of achieving positive breakthroughs.
Source: “Global Situation and Prospects for the Future” by Jerome C. Glenn, in Moving from Vision to Action edited by Cynthia G. Wagner (World Future Society, 2011), page 8.
Prediction: Robotic aerial drones will be the must-have weapon for air forces across the globe. A global rush to build drone arsenals is on and may push global spending on drones to $94 billion — double its current level — by 2020.
Who: Teal Group, an aerospace research firm, in a 2011 market study.
Background: More than 50 countries have bought drone technology recently. Many may be attempting to catch up to the United States, whose Air Force now extensively uses drone aircraft for both reconnaissance and combat missions. China has been particularly diligent: Chinese analysts say that every major manufacturer for the Chinese military now has a center dedicated solely to drone development.
Why Great: Clearly, there is a huge new market opportunity for aerial engineering firms; expect many more collaborations between them and the world’s armed forces. Also expect a few more degrees of separation to rise up between human soldiers and the battlefields, with robots taking on more of the most dangerous missions that in years past would have claimed pilots’ lives. The prospect of wreaking more damage on enemy infrastructure while sustaining fewer casualties is real and obviously attractive to military planners the world over.
BUT… As the article points out, some academicians worry that drones will make warfare more common. They argue that since governments will perceive the drones as minimizing human casualties, they will have fewer reservations about launching military strikes on other nations. This fear sounds valid. The more that the sights and sounds of warfare become relegated to video screens, the less impact they will have on us — even if they remain as palpable as ever to the soldiers and unarmed civilians on the receiving ends of the drone attacks.
Bottom Line: Every century, a few huge technological innovations come along and change how wars are fought. The repeating rifle, the railroad, and nuclear weapons are a few examples. Aerial drones just may be the next big thing, militarily speaking. As with previous technological innovations, though, human planners will have to use moral restraint to make sure that it changes war for the better and not for the worse.
Source: Reported in the Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/global-race-on-to-match-us-drone-capabilities/2011/06/30/gHQACWdmxH_story.html?hpid=z1
Prediction: Alcohol-detection devices (to prevent a vehicle from starting if the driver’s breath indicates he or she has had one too many) could become a standard option for every U.S. automobile by 2020 and a mandatory feature sometime thereafter.
Who: Jayne O’Donnell, USA Today, reporter. She cites a Congressional proposal to develop prototype devices; a Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) spokesperson who wants to see the devices installed in every car; and an American Beverage Institute spokesperson who says that she fears this MADD aspiration will actually come to pass.
Background: Alcohol-detection devices — a.k.a, “ignition interlocks” — already exist, and courts sometimes sentence persons convicted of drunk driving to install them into their cars. These machines are flawed, however: They sometimes mistake mouthwash or caffeine in someone’s breath for booze. They are also hard to use: Drivers must blow into them several times for their cars to start. Further, they are too clunky, cumbersome, and ugly for any average driver to want to install them voluntarily. A bill proposed by two U.S. congressmen — Sens. Tom Udall, D–N.M., and Bob Corker, R–Tenn. — would direct $60 million for five-year development of new, compact, user-friendly, more effective devices suitable for automobile drivers everywhere.
Why Great: Alcohol-related driving accidents kill horrendous numbers of U.S. drivers every year. And stopping the offenders eats up massive amounts of law-enforcement budgets and manpower. Ideally, these devices could go into widespread use and prevent many drunk-driving tragedies from ever happening.
BUT… If it is only a standard feature, then will enough drivers actually buy it for it to make a tangible dent in drunk-driving accidents? Chances are most hard-core alcoholics who are responsible for most of the accidents will not. In that case, mandatory device installation would be the only solution — and it’s no sure bet that Congress will ever enact that. Industry interests are already gearing up to fight it; the American Beverage Institute spokeswoman is proof of this. Privacy hawks and libertarian groups would surely come out against it, too: “Big Brother is trying to control our automobiles!”
Bottom Line: Good intentions are behind this, but they may run aground against political realities.
Source: reported on USAToday.com, http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2011-03-27-alcohol-detection-in-new-cars.htm
Prediction: Hotels will offer customers a selection of dreams as well as the opportunity to study and learn while they sleep by 2030.
Who: Futurist Ian Pearson, in a report for budget hotel chain Travelodge entitled “The Future of Sleep.”
Why Great: According to the report, “We will be able to replay our favorite dream from a menu just like choosing a movie. Also, we will be able to link into dreams with our partner or family and friends and enjoy a shared dream experience.” Furthermore technology could also monitor a hotel guest’s health and mood and adapt in such a way to ensure them a perfect night’s sleep: “Video, audio, smells, and tactile experiences produced using our bed or bed linen will play a key role in helping to make our dreams feel real.”
BUT… Such technological breakthroughs hinge on a vastly greater understanding of the human mind than currently exists. Also, do you really want a budget hotel chain — or anyone, for that matter — controlling what goes on inside your head?
Bottom Line: These types of predictions typically garner a lot of media attention (it’s almost as if they were calculated attempts to do just that), but the report also mentions more likely ways that augmented reality will be incorporated into hotel rooms over the next two decades (guests could have the option to digitally “decorate” their rooms themselves, for example). And remember — if the spinning top keeps spinning, then you’re still in the dream.
Prediction: By 2015, people will have a direct say in 25% of the display ads they see when they go to the computers and use services like Google.
Who: Neal Mohan, Vice President of Display Advertising at Innovation Days Internet Week, June 1st.
Why Great: According to Mohan, we are on the verge of a “ user-focused revolution, where people connect and respond to display ads in ways we’ve never seen before.” He sees display ads becoming a $200 billion per year industry and predicts that by 2015:
- The number of display ad impressions will decrease by 25 percent per person. (People will see fewer and better ads)
- Engagement rates across all display ads will increase by 50 percent.
- 35 percent of campaigns will primarily use metrics beyond clicks and conversions.
- Over 40 percent of online Americans will name display ads as their favorite ad format.
BUT… The big loser in this vision is traditional media. Also, the personalized a display ad, the more personal information it’s using about you to sell you things.
Bottom Line: Web advertising is going to get more user-specific, eerily so, in the next three years.
Source: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/theres-perfect-ad-for-everyone.html
Prediction: Global Internet traffic will quadruple by 2015, thanks in large part to over 3 billion Internet users and15 billion networked devices.
Who: The Cisco Visual Networking Index.
Why Great: New business opportunities are arising for tech entrepreneurs. Also, increased Internet traffic will lead to increased economic growth in developing countries, particularly Africa and the Middle East.
BUT… In just 3 years or so? That’s really soon. On the one hand, Cisco’s previous industry predictions on Internet growth seem conservative in hindsight. On the other, the technology and telecommunications giant only stands to gain from exploding online traffic, so it’s unlikely they’d be anything other than optimistic in a public report.
Bottom Line: The world will likely enter the “Zettabyte era,” as the report refers to it, sooner or later, if not necessarily by 2015.
Prediction: The majority (61%) of Internet traffic will be via video by 2015, with annual global traffic reaching the zettabyte threshold — that’s the equivalent of 250 billion DVDs, according to Cisco blogger Thomas Barnett (June 23, 2011):
Source: http://blogs.cisco.com/news/the-dawn-of-the-zettabyte-era-infographic/
Prediction: “Computers” will cease to exist. We’ll access the Web through our contact lenses, going online in the blink of an eye — literally.
Who: Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku.
Background: Miniaturization of all things electronic will allow more technology to be embedded on the convenient contact lens.
Why Great: Imagine never having to say you’re sorry when you don’t remember your telecommuting colleague’s name or what project you’re supposed to be working on with her. The information you need will arrive discreetly and instantly on your contact lens in a 3-D display visible only to you. You’ll even get subtitles if your partner is speaking a different language.
BUT… Augmented reality has a way of taking over your life. If people can’t even text and walk at the same time. look out for those whose visual displays are distracting them.
Bottom Line: The long-term trend in communications technology has been toward integration and convenience. As cool as things like the iPad and other tablets are, they are still stuff and have to be handled and carried and cleaned and protected. Computer contacts will be seen as a great boon to many people, and not just the usual early-adopter gearheads.
Source: various individuals cited by Australian blogger James Adonis “Internet via contact lenses, as computers die out” (May 27, 2011), Work in Progress, Sydney Morning Herald
Prediction: The International Space Station won’t continue past 2020. Sometime around then, its human conductors will de-orbit it and dump it into the ocean. A replacement space station might be built thereafter.
Who: Vitaly Davydov, deputy head of the Russian Space Agency
Background: Since its first modules commenced operations in the 1990s, the International Space Station has been a focal point for human operations in space. Crews from the United States, Europe, Russia, China, and other countries have shared its facilities and jointly conducted hundreds of on-board space research initiatives. Its developers had expected to keep it up and running until at least 2020, but its future beyond 2020 had always been uncertain. Davydov apparently sees no post-2020 future for the space station at all.
Why Great: If he’s right, it would be an anticlimactic end to an endeavor on which the world’s space agencies have jointly invested several decades, hundreds of billions of dollars, and myriad space-flight missions. It would also be a major setback for the near-term future of human space exploration. That space station is the only earth-orbiting docking point that space vessels with human crews currently have. Exploring space will be considerably harder once it is gone.
BUT… Will there be a successor station? Who will take the lead on it? Russia and China seem like the most probable candidates now, all things considered.
Bottom Line: Should the space station sink into the ocean, the onus will be on the world’s government’s to not let human space aspirations sink into the ocean along with it.
Source: http://en.rian.ru/science/20110727/165412055.html
Prediction: In another 10 years, home entertainment centers could be playing movies and television shows as 3-D holographs, no television screen involved.
Who: Pierre-Alexandre Blanche, University of Arizona physicist
Background: Still-life holographic images are with us today in visual displays across the globe. They function via lasers that project off a tiny film screen on which the laser’s light shines in some spots and cancels out in others to produce a complete image. Blanche and colleagues have been working on a projector that displays moving holographic images. Their prototype uses a screen that can create one image, automatically erase it, and then create another, thus generating an ongoing image sequence like the slides that make a cartoon. Their current model is currently too slow — only two frames per second — but could eventually become a working model with more fine-tuning.
Why Great: Who wouldn’t want to experience 3-D entertainment without the klunky 3-D glasses? Or view movie scenes in all their fully dimensional glory in ther living room, free of the confines of a TV screen?
BUT… Researchers need to come up with lasers that are more refined and film that is many times more sensitive in order for commercially usable products to emerge from this technology.
Bottom Line: High-def TV is about to get much, much higher-def.
Source: Discover, http://discovermagazine.com/2011/mar/10-future-tech-looking-forward-post-screen-era/article_view?b_start:int=1&-C=
Background: Traffic on wireless services is already dominated by data, having surpassed voice traffic in 2010. Machines will increasingly communicate with each other automatically, without human intervention.
Why Great: Good news for efficient remote monitoring, such as in telemedicine and insurance companies that can monitor your driving habits and adjust your premiums accordingly.
BUT… Bad news for meter readers and anyone concerned about their machines tattling on them.
Bottom Line: M2M promises potential savings of billions of dollars in health care and other industries, and may be a boon for individuals with disabilities and other chronic conditions.
Source: Sprint M2M: http://m2m.sprint.com/news--resources/news-events/news/m2mnow.aspx Better 3
Prediction: “Voice interface systems will permit automation of about one-third of the current service sector jobs” [in the next 25-50 years]. “By 2040, robotlike machinery will inhabit the world alongside people, doing much of the work.”
Who: James H. Irvine and Sandra Schwarzbach of the Naval Air Warfare Center at China Lake, California
Background: Also, “robots could replace as much as 25% to 50% of the current, low-end labor force in the agricultural, industrial, and service sectors of the U.S. economy.”
Why Great: “This could mean vastly higher productivity for the remaining labor force.”
BUT… obviously this will disrupt the lives of many workers unprepared to move to higher-order occupations, with societal repercussions.
Bottom Line: The increased “infiltration” of robots in the workforce is not unlike immigrants taking over more and more service jobs in advanced economies. Conflicts will likely arise, but many of these jobs were not that desirable in the first place. Human–robot cultural understanding might be included in workplace diversity training to help ease some of the pain in the transition.
Source: the authors’ paper, “New Technologies and the World Ahead: The Top 20 Plus 5,” in Moving from Vision to Action (WFS, 2011)
Prediction: 50 billion machine-to-machine (M2M) devices — such as high-definition cameras, e-readers, remote sensors, and appliances — will be communicating with each other wirelessly by 2020.
Who: Sprint
Background: Traffic on wireless services is already dominated by data, having surpassed voice traffic in 2010. Machines will increasingly communicate with each other automatically, without human intervention.
Why Great: Good news for efficient remote monitoring, such as in telemedicine and insurance companies that can monitor your driving habits and adjust your premiums accordingly.
BUT… Bad news for meter readers and anyone concerned about their machines tattling on them.
Bottom Line: M2M promises potential savings of billions of dollars in health care and other industries, and may be a boon for individuals with disabilities and other chronic conditions.
Source: Sprint M2M: http://m2m.sprint.com/news--resources/news-events/news/m2mnow.aspx
Prediction: Soldiers will communicate telepathically. No longer relying on radio transmissions, microphones, or hand signals, they will relay their thoughts to each other through “thought helmets.”
Who: Gerwin Schalk, an Albany Medical College biomedical scientist, who is working with the U.S. army to develop the first functional thought helmets.
When: Soldiers outfitted with thought helmets could be deploying as soon as 2020.
Why It’s a Great Prediction: A combat area is by nature chaotic and unnerving. Soldiers operating in it could probably be a lot less overwhelmed and make far fewer mistakes if they are able to stay in touch telepathically and thereby understand each other perfectly no matter how much background noise they might be enduring. Also consider how it might cross-apply to gaining enemy intelligence. Torture will no longer have any excuse whatsoever (not that it is already hard to defend) — why go through the trouble of waterboarding or isolating a prisoner when all you have to do is strap a thought helmet onto his head and read any secret of his that you want?
BUT… How secure will it be? Enemy operatives could sow a lot of chaos if they learn how to infiltrate thought helmets and implant their own false thoughts.
Bottom Line: Technology that can read thoughts is bold, edgy, and to some a little frightening. We don’t know yet if it is feasible, much less what harms might result from its misuse. But it is an exciting — and to military personnel, potentially lifesaving — all the same.
Source: http://discovermagazine.com/2011/apr/15-armys-bold-plan-turn-soldiers-into-telepaths
Prediction: By 2030, doctors will be fitting amputees and persons who are missing limbs with “neuroprosthetics” that link to the body’s neurons and receive signals from the brain so as to move, feel, and operate just like real limbs.
Who: Will Rosellini, CEO and president of MicroTransponder (a medical device company)
Background: Machines that interface with the human nervous system are already here: Vagus Nerve Stimulation (VNS), an electrode therapy that uses electric impulses to reorder a patient’s neural circuits, has been successfully treating epilepsy and severe depression since the 1970s. Rosellini’s own company has been testing use of VNS to treat many other neurological disorders, such as tinnitus and phantom limb pain. Extrapolating from the current trajectory of development, Rossellini sees whole limbs that interface with neurons exiting labs in another two decades.
Why Great: Millions of people across the globe live without one or more limbs, either because of an amputation or because they were born that way. Any one of them would rejoice to have the kind of fully functional prosthetic that Rosellini describes. Its development would go far to expanding each person’s options in life and quality of living.
BUT… As the article points out, no electronic system today can interact seamlessly with nerves. So it’s unknown how we might make a neuroprosthetic that has all the mobility of a natural limb. And in any case, such limbs are bound to be expensive. Even if they are available by 2030, how many patients will be able to afford them? And will insurance policies cover them?
Bottom Line: We must all hope that the future prosthetic arm or leg will not only work as well as the real thing, but that it won’t cost a patient an arm and a leg to buy it.
Prediction: By 2020, the world could have a space ship capable of carrying human crews to other planets, says a NASA team. To build this ship, which the team dubs Nautilus-x, engineers would take the International Space Station and outfit it with artificial-gravity mechanisms, modules for supply storage, and hangars for landing vehicles. The whole project could be completed for a mere $4 billion.
Who: NASA’s Technology Applications Assessment Team
Why Great: Anything that could ferry human to other planets for less than $4 billion would be a momentous development for humankind. This is the kind of cost-effective infrastructure that we would need if we are to ever break free of Earth. As an added plus, it would ensure a future for the International Space Station, which the U.S. government does not plan to fund beyond 2015.
BUT… Nautilus-X’s short timetable and scant budget both sound incredibly optimistic. They may be correct, but we will never find out unless the proponents can win over a lot of skeptics within NASA’s leadership circles. The timing is anything but auspicious. Not only is there an ongoing budget crunch that would discourage bold ideas such as this, but NASA is also already planning for Orion 6, a more compact (and more expensive) vehicle for human flight into deep space.
Bottom Line: Nautilus-x represents several great ideas: recycling old space modules for new, more challenging missions; harnessing the resources of many partner nations, not just one; and cutting spacecraft construction costs by building and testing them in space. These ideas have staying power and will probably be guiding principles in many future space missions, whether Nautilus-x is constructed or not.
Source: Future in Space Operations Group, http://hobbyspace.com/nucleus/?itemid=26786
Prediction: Appliances will no longer need power cords, according to two Duke University researchers who say that laboratory-engineered “metamaterials” could be used to build outlets that would transmit energy to a device remotely, in the form of radio waves.
Who: Yaroslavl Urzhomov and David Smith, Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering
Why Great: This metamaterial method would be much more energy-efficient than wire transmission, which loses large quantities of energy as waste heat and friction. Besides, eliminating wires and cords from many household products would be a quick way to cut society’s consumption of plastics and metals. As an added plus, through further adapting this technology to broadcast media, engineers could achieve far more powerful and clearer communications transmissions, as well.
BUT… Metamaterials’ potential is so far only a theory. Urzhomov and Smith still need to build large-scale metamaterial applications and prove that it will work in real life.
Bottom Line: Cost savings, lower energy use, and getting to do away with pesky, tangle-prone extension cords are all great things to look forward to, but only time will tell if they come to pass.
Prediction: Online gambling is the future of the casino industry. Gambling venues will reap much bigger dividends if they expand into cyberspace than if they simply build more old-fashioned live casino halls.
Who: Two casino executives presenting at the 2011 East Coast Gaming Congress.
Why Great: This could spell a reshaping of many local economies throughout the world: Las Vegas, Monte Carlo, and other historic gambling meccas that have always staked their livelihoods on casino-going tourists would probably quiet down considerably, as more and more would-be tourists opt to save the airfare and travel time by squelching their gambling fixes at home on their laptops.
On a more ominous note, it might also imply a rising toll of victims: Online gambling breeds many gambling addicts, and also exposes users to malware, viruses, and identity theft. Depending on how many new online ventures emerge and how aggressively their founders market them, rates of gambling addictions and cybercrime may rise considerably.
BUT… The casinos will have to win a few rounds against lawmakers first. The U.S. federal government and many other national governments restrict online gambling activity, though some regional and local governments are more allowing. Enough casino lobbying could dilute the national laws, but even that is less than likely: Casino officials don’t rank highly in the court of public opinion.
Bottom Line: Humans have gambled for millennia and will continue to do so. The Internet just creates more opportunities for engaging in it, which also means it magnifies the societal harms. Lawmakers will need to anticipate increased pressure from gambling interests, as well as develop proactive policies for keeping online gambling in check. Individual consumers, on their end, will have to exercise their judgment as diligently as ever.
Prediction: In ten years, tablet PCs, netbooks, and laptops will be extinct, replaced by a a new device as-yet-to-be-conceived.
Who: Rama Skukia, vice president of Intel’s architecture group speaking at SEMICON (semiconductor conference) in San Francisco in July.
Why Great: The rapid evolution in the consumer technology space will affect chip makers like Intel profoundly. Skukia stood up in front of a room of Intel’s customers and said, in effect, “We’re going to have to innovate faster. You’re going to have to innovate faster, too.” (Bonus, he also forecast that graphics performance on chips for mobile devices will rise by a factor of 12 by 2015.)
BUT… Skukia would have been more convincing if he had offered a guess on the sort of device that will replace these other gizmos.
Bottom Line: Don’t fret about getting the latest consumer gadget. The platform will be passé before you download the first app.
Source: V3.Ko.UK http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2093423/intel-predicts-tablets-laptops-netbooks-history-decade
Prediction: In the future, people won’t care that sites like Facebook sell their personal data, because Facebook will pay them for the data they share.
Who: Jess Kimball, former speech writer for Faith Popcorn, on Twitter, May 13, 2011.
Why It’s Great: In May, Facebook was sued by two individuals in a California court for violating the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Stored Communications Act, and California’s Computer Crime Law and Consumers Legal Remedies Act. What happened? A group of advertisers accessed the users’ personal information from Facebook. The lawsuit came on top of numerous public assurances by company founder Mark Zuckerberg that “We do not give advertisers access to your personal information.” Oops. Kimball’s remedy means fewer lawsuits.
BUT… For this to work, the company would have to make its privacy settings easier to use and become much more transparent.
Bottom Line: People should be able to sell their information to third-party advertisers if they want to; Facebook is in a great position to serve as a broker for that sort of exchange. If you understood your private data was worth money, you would probably keep better track of it. Kimball’s idea is a win-win-win.
Sources: TechCrunch, Guardian.
Also http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/may/24/facebook-revise-privacy-zuckerberg
Prediction: By 2015, there will be no more textbooks in South Korea’s schools. All learning material will be digitized.
Who: South Korean Ministry of Education
Background: Many South Korean schools have been phasing out their printed textbooks and replacing them with netbook computers — after all, anything you can publish in a book, you can run on a computer monitor. The South Korean Ministry of Education expects this to become the standard model for curricula in all of its schools. By 2015, it projects, all of the country’s students will glean their class notes and homework not from textbooks but from smartphones, netbooks, and tablets. The ministry recently announced that it is investing $2.4 billion specifically to make this happen.
Why Great: It is impressive that any country could digitize all learning content in every one of its schools, no matter how rich or poor the school’s community might be. Consider how widely textbook quality can vary from one school district to another: Wealthy districts outfit all their students with brand-new editions while poorer districts’ students make do with either outdated, worn-out textbook copies or no copies at all. Digitized learning could be a great equalizer if a country goes about it properly.
BUT… What if a country goes about it improperly? Poorer school districts that cannot afford new laptops or phones for every student risk falling even further behind. Besides, the jury is still out on whether kids learn better from computer screens or from printed material. All the more so when the screens happen to be on small mobile devices — since those screens are much more compact than typical textbook pages, they are not as easy to read. And then there’s the matter of eyestrain — what long-term wear and tear could kids’ eyes suffer from being transfixed to computer screens every moment of the school day? We’ve never encountered this before in human history, so we’ll have to wait and find out.
Bottom Line: Ditching the textbooks and bringing in the digital notebooks sounds like a nice idea, but there may yet be some bugs to work out.
Source: Technology Review, http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/26960/
Prediction: Offices will be ubiquitous computing environments by 2025.
Who: 360KID CEO Scott Traylor in a video interview with game designer Jesse Schell. The short video is part of Schell’s YouTube series called “The Crystal Ball Society,” which is described as “a place where people make concrete predictions about the future.”
Why Noteworthy: “Computers would exist in the walls and the floor — in the elements of architecture instead of in a big machine on your desktop,” says Traylor. They would form a context-aware system that could sense where a person is and automatically access (and capture) any relevant data. “We won’t necessarily be tethered to the larger hardware devices for computing. … It will just be in the cloud, it will be in the architecture, it will be in the spaces around us,” he explains, adding that a natural user interface could boast visual components as well as verbal. Traylor believes that businesses will be the early adapters, since ubiquitous computing offers the greatest advantages there, and that it will eventually extend to public spaces and homes as well as offices.
BUT… Hardware devices will not be obsolete. In fact, they will still be needed for more complex operations. However, for more basic computing and communications activities, people could just “speak it into the walls.” Also, Traylor wonders how great demand would be outside of businesses for such a system.
Bottom Line: This concept, which has been kicking around since at least the 1980s (and begins appearing in science fiction much earlier), seems to be moving increasingly closer to becoming a reality. Traylor sees ubiquitous computing as “another step in that evolutionary chain” that has taken us from home computers to laptops to smart phones and tablets.
Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ER_bmBjvOE
Prediction: Auto safety will improve in a myriad of ways by 2020.
Who: Kiplinger.com.
Why Great: Vehicle-to-vehicle locating, pedestrian detection, night vision, collision-mitigation systems, and blind spot monitoring systems that utilize cameras and radar could become commonplace. According to the article, “rearview cameras are likely to become standard equipment, thanks to a proposal by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that would require all light passenger vehicles to have the technology by 2014.”
BUT… Cars won’t be driving themselves. Hopefully all these built-in features (not to mention the distraction that is in-car Wi-Fi) won’t cause drivers to pay less attention to the road.
Bottom Line: All of these technologies currently exist — but they are expensive and vehicles don’t come standard with them. However, this situation seems highly likely to change over the next decade.
Source: http://kiplinger.com/slideshow/car-features-in-2020/1.html
Prediction: If we don’t clear out the buildup of space junk now orbiting Earth, within a few decades, spacecraft won’t be able to leave Earth’s airspace — there will be too much floating debris crashing into them and wrecking their circuitry.
Who: National Research Council (NRC)
Background: With almost every mission that launches into space, some amount of scrap or garbage escapes and winds up drifting permanently in orbit around earth. Some space shuttles and space satellites have already suffered structural damage due to collisions with this space junk. Sometimes, the damage is severe enough to thwart the whole mission. Such accidents are about to become very common, according to a recent report by the NRC’s Committee for the Assessment of NASA’s Orbital Debris Programs. The report states that the debris already up there continually collides with each other and shatters into ever more floating pieces. The space surrounding earth will become increasingly inhospitable to space missions until we finally remove some of the junk.
Why Great: Needless to say, this space-junk dilemma makes future Moon and Mars missions just a little more impossible. But also consider everyday life on earth: GPS systems, weather forecasts, and telephone, television, and Internet connections on every continent rely on satellites in space relaying signals. They will all go out of service if we get to a point where we can no longer safely fly a satellite. The space-junk problem poses a major challenge for human life on earth and in space both.
BUT… NASA is exploring possible methods for capturing and removing the space junk. The report discusses some of them. They are expensive and not yet ready to deploy, but they do offer some hope.
Bottom Line: Littering is a bad habit anywhere — even in outer space.
Source: Discovery News, http://news.discovery.com/space/could-space-junk-leave-us-stranded-on-earth-110902.html
Prediction: There will be over 1000 embedded processors in your home by 2020.
Who: Rich LeGrand, president of robotics technology company Charmed Labs, speaking at SXSW Interactive in March (“Congratulations, Your Robot Just Accepted Your Friend Request”).
Why Great: Many smart devices in our homes will perform useful tasks, saving us time and making our lives more comfortable in the process.
BUT… Then there are those pesky privacy issues. Your home devices may know more about you than you’re comfortable with.
What to do about it: According to LeGrand, the key to making the technology feasible is ensuring that you can drive your devices (and that they can communicate with each other) on any network.
Source: www.charmedlabs.com, http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_IAP8101
Predictions: Earth
Prediction: Stemming climate change at no more than 2° Celsius — the scientifically recognized threshold for dangerous warming — seems at this point practically impossible.
Who: Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency
When: 2040-2050
Background: Despite the global economic slump, greenhouse gas emissions still climbed to their highest recorded levels in history last year, according to International Energy Agency data. In this context, it defies imagining how human civilization could realistically reform itself toward true sustainability.
Why Great: As Birol pointed out, a 2-degree Celsius rise in global temperatures would spark massive disruptions that would affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people.
BUT… Birol added that it is still not too late. If the international community undertakes radical change right now, it could yet dodge the direst after-effects.
Bottom Line: Radical action on a global scale is an unlikely scenario no matter what the issue at hand may be, least of all climate change. Birol is sounding a bleak tone, but only because he is trying to be realistic.
Source: Harvey, Fiona. “Worst Ever Carbon Emissions Leave Climate on the Brink.” The Guardian. May 29, 2011 (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/may/29/carbon-emissions-nuclearpower)
Prediction: The Maldives Islands may disappear into the Indian Ocean by the end of this century.
Who: President Mohamed Nasheed, in an interview with Utne Reader and Momentum magazine.
Background: Climate change threatens to raise sea levels by 1.5 meters during the twenty-first century, which causes President Nasheed alarm since that is his tourism-dependent island nation’s average altitude.
Why Great: The fact that a political leader has taken notice of a major threat should be heartening. Already, Nasheed notes, the Maldives suffer from other effects of climate change, such as coastal erosion. His government is looking for solutions that are appropriate to the economy (building huge sea walls is out, since it would spoil tourists’ views), and has announced a goal of becoming “carbon neutral” by 2020.
BUT… The Maldives is extremely energy insecure and heavily dependent on imported oil, making it economically vulnerable to fluctuations in global oil prices. A goal of transitioning rapidly to 80% renewable energy without increasing electricity prices is ambitious, to say the least.
Bottom Line: Global problems beg global solutions. Said Nasheed: “The Maldives will continue to plan for adaptation with the modest income that we have and we will work with reliable partners that have already provided us help, such as Denmark. If we are given further international assistance, then all well and good, but we are not holding our breath.”
Source: Mary Hoff on the Utne Blogs http://www.utne.com/Environment/President-of-Maldives-Keeps-His-Head-Above-Water.aspx
Prediction: Industrialized nations won’t really curb their carbon-dioxide emissions; they’ll just outsource the pollution to developing countries. George Monbiot notes that his native Great Britain sets emissions-reduction targets and technically meets them — because its businesses are moving more and more industrial-plant operations out to other countries, such as China, where regulations are weaker and they can pollute with relative impunity.
Who: George Monbiot, ecology writer and author
Why Great: Monbiot’s observations cast a cynical pall over most of the existing international accords on greenhouse-gas emissions. The implication is that decades from now, industrialized nations will tout on paper that they have achieved major reductions even while actual emissions continue to climb and the planet’s biosystem continues to alter.
BUT… None of this is a foregone conclusion. China and other developing nations are voicing greater environmental concern now than they did 10 or 15 years ago. If their new green consciousness really takes hold and translates to major action on curbing emissions — as it did in Europe and North America decades ago — than catastrophe can be averted, in reality and on paper both.
Bottom Line: Environmental conservationists may have to become a more effective political force at the international level, not just at the local or national level. Those who are concerned for the Earth’s well-being will need to hold public officials across the globe accountable for achieving tangible progress against climate change and other human-caused environmental ills.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/23/pollution-developing-world-emissions
Prediction: More than half of species protected in European sanctuaries could perish by 2080.
Who: Miguel B. Araújo et al., a team of European biodiversity and ecology researchers
Background: Sanctuaries are not preparing for climate change, according to a team of European biodiversity researchers. “The models predict that towards the end of the twenty-first century, some 58% of Europe’s terrestrial vertebrates and plants may no longer have suitable climatic conditions to survive in the protected areas of each country”, says Miguel B. Araújo, lead author and researcher in the department of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology at Spain’s National Natural History Museum.
Why Great: The researchers have learned that higher altitudes offer greater protection against climate change, while Europe’s Red Natura 2000 network is so vulnerable that it would lose more species than unprotected areas.
BUT… Even in higher altitudes such as in Scandinavia, species will become vulnerable. Climate change will bring warmer temperatures to the extreme north, shrinking the habitats of cold-tolerant species.
Bottom Line: The researchers urge conservationists to focus on making protective habitats more resilient to climate change and to integrate the protected and unprotected natural environments to make dispersion of local species easier when habitats become intolerable.
Source: Miguel B. Araújo, Diogo Alagador, Mar Cabeza,; David Nogués-Bravo, and Wilfried Thuiller, “Climate change threatens European conservation areas,” Ecology Letters 14(5): 484-492, May 2011. (via PlatformaSINC, a science and information news service based in Madrid)
Prediction: 80% of projected energy-related CO2 emissions in 2020 are “already locked in” and will originate from power plants either already in use or in the process of being constructed.
Who: The International Energy Agency
Why Great: The report is strikingly, if dismally, honest in its assessment. According to the IEA, there is little chance of achieving the ambitious goal set during the United Nations Climate Change Conference in December 2010 to limit the global increase in temperature to 2° Celsius (3.6° Fahrenheit) or less over the next ten years. In order to meet that goal, the percent increase in emissions from now until 2020 must be less than the percent increase that occurred between 2009 and 2010.
BUT… Because the increase in emissions was directly linked to the global economy’s emergence from recession, a double dip would send emissions back down.
Bottom Line: Climate, meet change.
Source: http://www.iea.org/index_info.asp?id=1959
Prediction: The Sun will play it cool between now and 2022, or maybe longer. Recent measurements indicate an unexpected drop in solar activity, which will manifest itself as few or no sunspots, and reduced radiation reaching earth.
Who: National Solar Observatory and Air Force Research Laboratory
Why: So far in earth’s history, periods of reduced solar activity have almost always instigated prolonged cooling of earth’s climate. Some even brought on ice ages. This cooling could be a good thing if it is steep enough to offset some of earth’s global warming. Of course, if it is too strong, then it could introduce a whole new set of problems. At the very least, it will require space satellites and telecommunications systems to reconfigure many of their settings, since they are impacted by solar output.
BUT… The observation measurements could be wrong, and the cooling might not happen at all. Or it could happen but have minimal effects on earth’s climate.
Bottom Line: We are dealing with a lot of unknowns here. They will clear up soon enough, though.
Source: http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-06-sun-major-solar.html
Prediction: The deadly triad of pollution, overfishing, and climate change are impacting the world’s oceans to greater extents than even the IPCC’s worst-case scenarios had predicted. By 2050, at the going rate, oceangoing plant and animal life will disappear on a scale equal to the five great global extinctions of the past 600 million years.
Who: International Programme on the State of the Ocean (a three-day workshop, convened by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. It brought together 27 researchers from 18 nations.)
Why Great: It would be a tragedy to lose so many species of fish, coral, aquatic mammals, and other cherished wildlife, not only for their sakes, but for humans who depend upon the oceans for their livelihoods, as well — as the report’s authors explicitly state, fishing and maritime industries, large and small, across the globe, could be driven out of business.
BUT… The world community can avert this massive loss of life, the report states, through concerted international action to mitigate greenhouse-gas emissions, rescue endangered oceanic ecosystems, and protect the oceans’ health on a global scale.
Bottom Line: Concerted international action has generated only lackluster progress so far on averting global warming. Why expect them to be any more effective at monitoring the earth’s oceans? The future may be bright for a few oceanic ecosystems, thanks to local conservationists who are pulling as much weight as they can, and certain individual nations that are making exemplary progress. But for the oceans as a whole, things will probably have to get much worse before they get better.
Source: http://www.stateoftheocean.org/pdfs/1906_IPSO-LONG.pdf
Prediction: Canada will become a climate wrecking ball. The carbon emitted during drilling of its tar sands will tip earth’s atmosphere past the threshold of irreparable climate damage by 2100.
Who: James Hansen, NASA climatologist
Background: Alberta’s soil holds reservoirs of bitumen, a hardened form of petroleum. With the prices of Middle East oil soaring, Canada and the United States have been rushing to build drills, pipelines, and other infrastructure to capture this oil alternative. All this activity bodes ill for global climate. Hansen warns that an atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentration of 350 parts per million would alter the climate enough to significantly harm life across the planet. At present, we are at 390 parts per million. Canada has enough bitumen that, were it all burned in one day, it would raise the atmospheric concentration to 600 parts per million. Clearly, the burning will take place gradually, but that only means that that it will push humanity’s carbon footprint upward over the long term.
Why Great: Earth’s atmosphere suffers enough from China and the United States’ massive carbon footprints. It would be a disastrous development if Canada, too, became a globally significant carbon emitter.
BUT… There is always hope that environmental awareness will prevail. The Canadian and U.S. governments both make job creation their top priority, not conservation, but this may gradually change after the pangs of the economic recession fully subside. Also, as the article notes, Brazil has been making remarkable progress in reducing its carbon emissions, even as Canada and the United States have been increasing theirs. Perhaps aggressive conservation in other parts of the world could offset the climate recklessness of North America.
Bottom Line: By pursuing economic growth instead of environmental well-being, Canada and the United States may ultimately forfeit both.
Source: Reported on Climate Progress, http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/06/29/256025/brazil-rainforest-canada-tar-sands/#more-256025
Prediction: Tornadoes, heat waves, dry spells, and other extreme weather events are “the new normal”; we should expect to see plenty more of them month by month through 2100. Thank human activity, which is inducing global climate change.
Who: Gary McManus, associate state climatologist for Oklahoma government
Background: Extreme weather patterns of all kinds have been occurring more and more frequently since 1980, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. McManus’s home state has borne more than its share of it. In this year alone, Oklahoma has set more climate records than the climatologist would care to count (even though it’s his job): lowest-ever temperature (-31 degrees Fahrenheit), highest 24-hour snowfall (27 inches), and the most tornadoes in one month (50 in April 2011), to name just a few. Climatologists say that its human civilization’s indirect influence on earth’s climate patterns that is behind all this.
Why Great: Extreme weather kills people. Just ask the New Orleans residents who witnessed Hurricane Katrina. It devastates the livelihoods of others, as any farmer in monsoon-prone India will surely tell you. Deaths, famines, poor health, and homelessness will run rampant across the globe if climatologists’ warnings prove true.
BUT… This prevalence of harsh weather might be just the kick in the teeth that humanity needs to take aggressive action to stop polluting and climate-altering behavior. Climate deniers can quarrel with climate scientists all they want about the hypotheticals of tree rings, ice cores, and hockey sticks. But there is no denying the tornadoes that have obliterated your neighborhood, the monsoon that has destroyed your farm fields, or the cold spell that is claiming the lives of homeless people all across your city. People will realize the depth of the problem and demand that their leaders finally act.
Bottom Line: We’re in for nasty weather, no doubt about it. But the sun will shine again — in measured, manageable quantities, that is — if we act objectively and decisively in the face of the storms.
Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-extreme-weather-20110824,0,940647.story
Prediction: It will be possible to feed everyone in the world — all 9 billion of us — by 2050.
Who: Two French organizations, the National Institute for Agricultural Research and the Centre for International Cooperation in Agronomic Research for Development, in the joint report “Agrimonde1.”
Why Great: A report that finds there are viable ways to end world hunger is good news indeed. Also, the organizations report that Africa’s agricultural productivity doubled between 1961 and 2003. However, agricultural productivity ether doubled or tripled in other continents as well. Thus, agricultural productivity in Africa is still the lowest in the world.
BUT… Many looming questions remain as to how best to address food shortages in a way that is sustainable over the long term.
Bottom Line: The report examines two possible scenarios. The first emphasizes economic growth over environmental concerns and necessitates an 80% increase in agricultural production. The second takes global ecology into account, and requires only a 30% increase in agricultural production while necessitating a cutback in overall food consumption in developed countries. Subsequent reports will look more closely at other issues, such as changing standards of living, climate change, and land usage.
Source: http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110112/full/news.2011.14.html
Prediction: Arctic ice will make a brief resurgence this decade, only to later melt away for good.
Who: National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)
Background: NCAR’s computer climate models forecast that even if temperatures keep rising, Arctic summer sea ice will stop its shrinkage and might even expand over the next 10 years. After that, however, warming will gain the upper hand. The Arctic summers will be mostly ice-free by 2070.
Why Great: Wait until the climate-change deniers get hold of this. Arctic ice sheets holding steady and even growing — see for yourselves, the planet is doing just fine; nope, no warming problem here! More science-deficient consumers and their public officials will listen, and the already-sluggish global efforts against climate change will grow more sluggish still. Never mind that it is just a temporary blip and that disaster still looms at the end of it. Regular people will not see the problem, and environmental advocates will have an even harder time making it visible to them. Like they didn’t have a hard enough time already.
BUT… A more optimistic way to read this is that the temporary ice surge could buy the Arctic some time. If the world really gets its act together on curbing climate change in the next 10 years, then by the time the Arctic ice melting is supposed to resume, the worst of global warming will have already been averted. In that case, we and the Arctic will both be spared a lot of grief.
Bottom Line: Don’t let the widening ice sheet fool you. The long-term climate change outlook still looks pretty bad.
Source: Discovery News, http://news.discovery.com/earth/arctic-sea-ice-could-make-comeback-tour-110812.html
Predictions: Government
Prediction: Algeria will be the next country to undergo an “Arab Spring” revolution (i.e., some time before 2015).
Who: Bruce Riedel, senior fellow in the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution
Background: The conditions that bred uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya exist in full in Algeria: a surging youth demographic, dearth of jobs, and a political system that allows its citizens little voice and no chance of holding officials accountable in any serious way. Plus, Algerians have already been staging massive demonstrations against their government’s oppressive ways since late last year. If any Arab country seems ripe for an upheaval, Algeria would be it.
Why Great: Algeria means a lot of things to a lot of people. First, it is the largest country in both the Arab world and Africa, so the fall of its government might mean unusually large outpourings of refugees to neighboring African countries and to Europe. Second, the country holds some of the biggest reserves of oil and natural gas in the Middle East, so Western powers are bound to intervene: Future wars, like that in Libya, are sure to follow, and given Algeria’s centuries-old tradition of localized self-rule among clans that spat with each other frequently, could become very destructive. Third, Algeria is home to several militant Islamist movements, including a large branch of Al-Qaida, which makes any Algerian power vacuum all the more dangerous.
BUT… Many outcomes could follow, some better than others. If pro-democracy revolutionaries prevail, and they receive adequate support from donor countries after the revolution, then a stable and viable new Algeria could emerge.
Bottom Line: Northern Africa won’t be quieting down any time soon. Concerned nations across the Mediterranean had best stay attentive.
Source: National Interest, http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/algeria-will-be-next-fall-5782
Prediction: Military conflict in East Asia and the Western Pacific will be centered in the South China Sea throughout the next few decades.
Who: Robert D. Kaplan, senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, national correspondent for The Atlantic, and a member of the U.S. Defense Department’s Defense Policy Board
Why Noteworthy: According to Kaplan, the author of Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power (Random House, 2010), the South China Sea will be the site of Asian emerging economies’ territorial disputes and expansion attempts. Energy resources in particular are at stake. To that end, these countries are strengthening their naval and air forces (and in some cases may attempt to further rely on the United States Navy as well).
BUT… In the event of an actual conflict, the silver lining is that civilian casualties would be greatly reduced or altogether nonexistent. “We are dealing with a naval realm, in which civilians are not present,” Kaplan states. Also, he believes that, in all likelihood, “major warfare will not break out in the area and that instead countries will be content to jockey for position with their warships on the high seas, while making competing claims for natural resources and perhaps even agreeing to a fair distribution of them.”
Bottom Line: If war breaks out in the region, then it will be at sea.
Source: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/08/15/the_south_china_sea_is_the_future_of_conflict
Prediction: Thanks to the Internet and social media, the rich and powerful will be forced to share authority with formerly disempowered individuals and groups by 2020.
Who: Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist.org, in a guest editorial on Wired.com.
Why Great: Newmark predicts that by 2020, a “new equilibrium” will arise “between the traditional holders of power and unexpected influencers arising from the grassroots.” He explains, “This will be paralleled with major changes in the media landscape, as the formerly powerless exercise power influence via evolving media, which is undergoing simultaneous change with the political landscape.” Newmark points to recent examples of this trend to back up his claims.
BUT… Newmark is more than a little vague on where everything is heading. “The big changes are barely emerging, and will arise from unexpected quarters,” he writes. “It’ll involve centuries of change compressed to a few years.” But it appears to be anyone’s guess as to what those changes will be.
What to do about it: Either utilize Internet-mediated mass media and social media to affect real change or just sit back and watch leaderless grassroots groups self-organize spontaneously.
Bottom Line: “Mass media and politics evolve together, in inseparable ways,” writes Newmark.
Source: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/06/column-singularity-newmark/
Prediction: The world will be more multilateral by 2025.
Who: Princeton University professor of politics and international affairs (and former director of policy planning for the United States Department of State) Anne-Marie Slaughter, in an article for Foreign Policy.
Why Great: According to Slaughter, the “increasingly global and regional nature of our problems” is the driving force behind this movement. As a result, regional organizations, such as the African Union and the recently created Mediterranean Union, will be more empowered. “By 2025 the U.N. Security Council will have expanded from the present 15 members to between 25 and 30,” she writes. On a slight side note, she points to Japan as the country that will be leading the way in terms of sustainable growth.
BUT… She writes, “The enormous changes on the horizon will require major crises, even cataclysm, before they can materialize.” This is a bit unnerving, to say the least — unless, like Slaughter, you purport to be a “big-picture” thinker who believes that, while this kind of tragedy may negatively impact a great deal of people in the short term, it ultimately acts as the necessary catalyst to spur positive change. In other words, if you want to make an omelette…. While she has a point that such enormous events can force systematic improvements on a global scale, it is debatable as to how integral to the process they actually are. That aside, Slaughter’s examples of potential global crises are perhaps the three most likely to sprint to anyone’s mind: climate change, large-scale terrorist actions, and global pandemics.
Bottom Line: “Multilateralization” may become one of the buzzwords of the decade. (Best not to get too annoyed with it yet.) Also, as Slaughter points out, a great deal of global change (expected and unexpected) can occur in just 15 years.
Predictions: Health
Prediction: Almost 50% of British men (and around 40% of British women) will be obese by 2030.
Who: A study published in the international medical journal The Lancet entitled “Health and Economic Burden of the Projected Obesity Trends in the USA and the UK” co-authored by Oxford University professor and National Heart Forum (UK) chair Klim McPherson.
Why Noteworthy: The study forecasts that an additional 11 million British adults are at risk for clinical obesity, which almost doubles the current number. The report’s summary states that the researchers used “a simulation model to project the probable health and economic consequences in the next two decades from a continued rise in obesity.” The results indicate that weight-related issues could contribute to around 668,000 more incidences of diabetes, 461,000 more incidences of cardiovascular disease, and 130,000 more incidences of cancer. This could cause health care costs to rise by £1.9 — 2 billion per year over the next two decades.
BUT… According to the study’s authors, taxing cheap processed “junk” food and regulating the ways that manufacturers market such products — to children especially — could help slow, stop, or even reverse this trend.
Bottom Line: Even a small reduction in obesity would make a huge difference in terms of overall quality of life, the authors note, and “effective policies to promote healthier weight also have economic benefits.” Also, the British can take some small measure of comfort in the fact that the United States continues to lead the way — according to the researchers’ projections, an additional 65 million American adults could suffer from clinical obesity by 2030, with associated medical costs increasing by tens of billion each year.
Sources: http://www.thelancet.com/series/obesity
Prediction: As many as 63% of children aged four or five in the United Kingdom will be obese in the year 2050.
Who: the United Kingdom’s National Health Service
Why Great: It might be just terrifying enough to effect a change in attitudes toward childhood obesity. The prediction accompanied the first ever exercise guidelines for children under five. (Also, since childhood obesity rates in the U.K. are comparable to those in the United States, the advice is applicable across continents.
BUT… It’s an extrapolation of current numbers, which will likely change if people adopt the recommendations.
Bottom Line: It’s never too early to be on guard against obesity.
Source: THE INDEPENDENT http://ht.ly/5BaAG
Prediction: Marijuana will not only be legalized; it will be recognized by the medical community as a “wonder drug.”
Who: Lester Greenspoon, MD, speaking to the 2011 NORML Conference.
When: 2040-2050
Background: The longstanding U.S. prohibition against marijuana is slowly chipping away. Medical applications of the drug are increasingly common, while more state legislatures seriously consider proposals to permit its medicinal use — and in a few cases, decriminalize its recreational use.
Why Great: Marijuana remains a forbidden fruit across most of the globe. Consequently it is the source of not large international black market activity, but also a large proportion of incarcerated populations throughout the world’s jails. If Greenspoon’s prediction comes to pass in the United States, and eventually other countries, also, then jail populations everywhere will dramatically shrink while the world’s law enforcement agencies will have far more officers freed up to patrolling other, more important beats. Meanwhile, hospital patients everywhere will have another low-cost and relatively safe herbal treatment at their disposal, and impoverished agricultural sectors will have a potent new cash crop to grow.
BUT… Drug laws take a long time to change. And while many countries have either decriminalized marijuana use or authorized its medicinal use — Canada, Finland, and Mexico among them — most others join with the United States in drawing a hard line against pot. This will take a long time to change.
Bottom Line: It is conceivable that marijuana could become more accepted over time, but it will probably take place slowly and over many decades.
Source: Greenspoon, Lester. “Why the Marijuana Renaissance is Here to Stay.” Alternet. May 31, 2011. (http://www.alternet.org/story/151151/why_the_marijuana_renaissance_is_here_to_stay/)
Prediction: The cost to achieve indefinite life extension technology (the so-called “Methuselarity”) will only be in the trillions of dollars.
Who: Aubrey de Grey, in an interview with Ben Goertzel for H+ Magazine.
The Good News: De Grey believes that developing indefinite life extension technology could cost less than expected, due to projected advances in artificial general intelligence (AGI), which “will cut the cost of those later stages as well as of the early stages.” Goertzel argues that the trillions-of-dollars price tag is actually not prohibitively expensive, but in fact “quite affordable by society, given the massive amount we [the United States] spend on healthcare.”
BUT… The cost to develop artificial general intelligence isn’t exactly cheap, either. Also, De Grey isn’t entirely convinced that it’s possible to achieve AGI or to make it “safe” anytime soon.
Bottom Line: Indefinite life extension remains a highly speculative area. Goertzel forecasts along two possible lines: that developed without AGI (the longer path) and that developed and enhanced by AGI (the shorter path). De Grey and Goertzel project that the “Methuselarity” could take anywhere from 20 to 50 years.
Source: http://hplusmagazine.com/2011/06/09/aubrey-de-grey-on-aging-and-ai/
Prediction: By 2018, a computer-brain interface will make it possible for a person in a medically vegetative state to fully communicate with the outside world.
Who: Adrian Owen, Medical Research Council of Cambridge, England
Background: Traumatic brain injury reduces some patients to persistent vegetative states. Activity goes on in isolated pockets of their brains, but normal functioning cannot emerge from it since the neural pathways that would connect them are severed. Presently, patients with moderate damage — i.e., impaired but not totally catatonic — can get some motion back with electronic implants that pick up lone neural signals and translate them into physical actions: controlling a computer cursor, moving a wheelchair, etc. These electronic aids will not work on patients who are severely damaged, however. Owen’s hope is that within five years, improved implants will restore function in even these latter “lost” cases.
Why Great: Around 250,000 to 300,000 persons in the United States alone are stuck in persistent vegetative states. It goes without saying how horrible an existence it is for them, as well as the loved ones who spend months, years, or longer waiting — usually in vain — for them to wake up. Bridging the gulfs that these patients’ damaged brains have erected and making possible some means for their friends and families to continue to communicate with them would be a true triumph of humanity over inhumanity. And an important corrollary: Research now shows that when vegetative patients engage in some interaction, it can jumpstart neural healing and make it more likely htat they will recover. So this technology could result in more vegetative patients waking up for real.
BUT… Brains are some of the most complex systems nature ever designed. We have a lot more learning about brain activity to do before this concept becomes practical medicine.
Bottom Line: Such an interface, if developed, would profoundly restore hope and dignity to hundreds of thousands of debilitated persons the world over.
Prediction: Physicians will more actively use social media, or they will lose patients, influence, and credibility. (The article says this will bear out “in the long run” without specifying a date range, but the trend would imaginably manifest itself in full between 2015 and 2020.)
Who: Kevin Pho, internal medicine physician
Why Great: Some medical centers discourage their medical staff from using Twitter, Facebook, and other social media, out of fear that they will post inappropriate messages and embarrass the institutions. Pho says that their concern is overblown and short-sighted: Many physicians today actually reach more patients, more effectively, and boost the public reputation of their institutions in the process, by launching professional Web sites and online profiles in which they dispense medical advice. Pho has a valid point about social media’s influence: Businesses, nonprofit advocacy groups, political movements, and musicians and artists all count on social-networking sites to help them gain more publicity in minimal time. It is a great development for public health when doctors follow suit.
BUT… Of course, no profile or Web site can substitute for in-person appointments. And just as patients who see doctors don’t always follow doctors’ orders, a large mass of people reading a doctor’s Web site aren’t necessarily putting the site’s suggestions into practice and living healthier lives.
Bottom Line: Social media is a great set of tools that doctors can put to use. But like any other tools, they are only as good as the humans who wield them.
Source: http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2011/06/hospitals-ban-physicians-social-media-long-term-losers.html
Prediction: New HIV infections among children could be eliminated or reduced by 90% by 2015.
Who: UNAIDS, launching a plan called “Countdown to Zero” at the 2011 United Nations High Level Meeting on AIDS to do just that. The plan was developed in conjunction with the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.
Why it is Achievable: According to the UN, this goal is realistic: “Providing pregnant women living with HIV with antiretroviral prevention and treatment reduces the risk of a child being born with the virus to less than 5% — and keeps their mothers alive to raise them. Neither technical nor scientific barriers stand in the way of responding to this global call to action.”
BUT… The plan will require significant investment and the price tag is steep, although initial funding from public and private sectors is strong so far. According to the report, “The annual requirements in these 22 countries are estimated to increase from about $ 900 million in 2011to about $ 1.3 billion in 2015.” Citizens and legislators in recipient countries need to support and encourage this as well. The success of the plan also hinges on improvements with regards to women’s rights in lower- and middle-income countries (mostly in sub-Saharan Africa).
Bottom Line: It’s an ambitious plan in keeping with the UN Millennial Goals and a step in the right direction no matter what, but as with the UN Millennial Goals, at this point, a successful outcome is in no way guaranteed.(So much of what is achievable is rarely achieved.)
Prediction: LSD and Ecstasy could be available as legitimate prescriptions in another 10 years.
Who: Rick Doblin, executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies
Background: A growing number of scientists attest that these hallucinogenic drugs, when administered in proper doses, are very effective and — believe it or not — safe treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and chronic pain. Their study findings suggest that drug laws should make exceptions for their medicinal use.
Why Great: Most people think of drug fests, raves, and hippies when they think of LSD and Ecstasy. It is profoundly counterintuitive to think of them as valid treatments for serious health conditions. But that is exactly what these scientists are saying that these drugs are.
BUT… Look at how difficult it is to get marijuana recognized as a legitimate medicine, hard scientific evidence in its favor notwithstanding. And its advocates have been making the case for it for decades. Could LSD and Ecstasy, both much more potentially dangerous than pot, allay all the skeptics and make the transition from forbidden street candy to federally recognized medicine in merely one decade?
Bottom Line: It could happen, but not in a mere 10 years.
Source: Reported on Alternet, http://www.alternet.org/drugs/151394/why_prescription_ecstasy_or_lsd_could_happen_much_sooner_than_you_think/
Prediction: Antibiotics will lose their potency due to overuse, leading to people succumbing en masse to new waves of evolved, antibiotic-resistant pathogens. By 2100, the worldwide rates of disease mortality rates will be close to those of the early, pre-Penicillin twentieth century.
Who: Margaret Mellon, Union of Concerned Scientists
Why: Agricultural sectors pump their livestock with antibiotics not to cure diseases, but just to make the animals grow faster, while humans use antibiotics for many infections that do not really warrant them. All the overuse spurs an aftereffect that doctors have been registering for the last four decades: more and more strains of resistant bacteria. Meanwhile, the rollout of new FDA-approved antibiotics has been slowing steadily year after year.
BUT… A lot can happen in the next few decades — and it must. Doctors need to curtail their prescriptions of antibiotics, and farmers need to stop giving antibiotics to healthy animals. And pharmaceutical companies need to ramp up their R&D into new drugs. For each of these changes to occur, it will require massive cultural shifts and re-education; and when that fails, new regulations, with working enforcement mechanisms.
Bottom Line: This is one health problem that will take many steps to solve. None of those steps will be easy, but our survival depends on us taking them.
Source: http://www.remappingdebate.org/article/return-our-old-enemies-untreatable-form?page=0,0