There are five top MegaTrends which will alter the structure of Human civilization, the quality of life for all peoples, the methods by which we deal with industrial and healthcare issues, the way in which we communicate [reference: The Sending Signals Blog], and the dominant and dangerous dependencies which will become all the more powerful because of our A) failure to find alternatives, and our B) building virtually every aspect of our socialization and commerce upon them. As said before in The Global Futurist Blog, these are neither all good nor all bad -- they are just megatrends to be prepared for in terms of our basic behavioral responses, as Human Beings, to change:
- Acceptance (a passive approach, wherein we accept what is given us and do not exert our will to shape the anticipated change, nor do we exert our will to resist the change heading toward us) -- which is the reaction of the greatest percentage of our species;
- Active Participation -- An approach where we do not leave the future to chance, but instead proactively and aggressively participate in an effort to change the course of the future or to pointedly build the future to our anticipated needs and desires (this is the rarest of responses from the standpoint of behavioral psychology and sociological dynamics;
- Revolt Or Revolution -- A purely reactive response to predictions, when we are sufficiently threatened by the likelihood of their coming true. This is the second most popular type of anticipatory response to change when it is already happening
Here are the predictions, outlined cursorily, and in no particular order temporally or in terms of priority, greatest potential effect, or any other ordinal criteria:
1) Demographics - Amongst the educated and intellectually superior individuals in the most industrialized nations, marriage will become less popular, reproduction will become less popular, and the family unit and geographical "neighborhood" concept will all but disappear. Amongst the uneducated and poor, reproduction will continue at its present rate, creating an even greater disparity between social classes, and imposing an impossible strain upon governments seeking to "reallocate" via fiscal policy or monetary policy, resources to provide for all citizens and residents. Governments will become either resource-depleted and abandoned by the most resourceful and promising individuals, or they will try to enslave their peoples with tighter monitoring and controls both fiscally and physically.
2) Privacy - Electronic communications of every sort will not be private or protected by any means, and will have been completely compromised by a wide variety of agencies with a wide variety of motives and for an ever-increasing variety of uses. There will be no privacy between Human Beings where electronic, satellite, wave or other physical technologies are employed. Privacy will be very rare, hard to orchestrate and very expensive to arrange.Variations on RFID, GPS and other tracking technologies will be used to geo locate every inventoriable pereson. A small percentage of the population of the world will attempt to circumvent this intrusiveness by living "off the grid" in self-sufficient hideaways.
3) Health, Wellness And Medicine - The quality of life for those very few who will be able to afford it will be quite good, with excellent prospects for healthy, robust longevity of at least 33.33% greater than it is at present. The technologies employed will include: genetic engineering and re-engineering: cloning, nanotechnology, stem cell 'directing', electromagnetism and auto-donorship or regrowth of body parts, systems, organs and tissues. Such issues as skeletal, muscular, ocular and cardiac deterioration (as associated with telomere shortening) will occur much further on (i.e., later) in life, and diseases of the brain and nervous system will all but have been eliminated.
4) Mechanical Creationism - Through the utilization of three-dimesional computer-generated real-world objects, the ideations of visionaries will be birthed into the real world via computer design, programming and production. Whole objects, from individual molecules of a chemical substance for industrial or medical use to cars and buildings will be generated from diagrams -- rather like putting dough into a pasta-making machine. There will be a spate of mechanical "concept to corporeal" designs and increasing unemployment as manual skills will be in ever-diminishing demand, and only highly-skilled technicians, project managers and senior-level management will have any means of entry into a limited, telecommuter-filled marketplace. This bodes well for a better work-life balance, but it also portends further economic class divisions and poverty for those who cannot become entrepreneurs or solopreneurs in various niche markets.
5) Home and office security, as well as data and device access will have become multivariate biometric, with voice recognition to accompany the various reads and scans, and with passwords or smart cards (chip- or strip-implanted) only as a final line of defense in the security protocol of people, property, processes and data. And then again, data are never truly safe if transmitted by way of electrons, referring back to item #1, listed above.
Thank you as always, for reading me, and for sharing The Global Futurist Blog and The Internationalist Page Blog Articles with your connections and colleagues through your social media dashboards and channels.
Douglas E. Castle
Join me on LinkedIn at http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/douglascastle
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*And now, a brief contemporary social observation and commentary (as public laughter and open amusement are legal for the time being, and because the Future, with the exception of certain major geological or astronomical events, can still be quite bright if that is how we choose to make it...:
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| FORGIVE ME READERS, FOR I KNOW NOT WHAT I'M DOING (Too Much Of The Time!) |
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