As the author of The Global Futurist Blog, I take the more conservative road in predictions.
When I forecast for the near-term, I endeavor to keep my visionary insights turned off to the greatest extent possible, while I choose certain specific variable relating to equally specific trends which I feel will either peak and fall (in the fairly near-term), or which have sufficient gravity (as used here, I am speaking of combination of such factors as: their importance to the economy; widespread media coverage; ongoing research grant allocations and investment; the amplitude of the change they would create; the power of the established industries or technologies which they would have to -- David and Goliath style -- disrupt and displace; and the views of other futurists and prognosticators looking at the same variables in the shorter-term) to be carried forward and create a serious rippling effect, radical sociological paradigm shift or revolutionary technological change.
I've only chosen a few items to focus on, and they are in areas where: the trending is swelling in amplitude; there are limits in accessibility to depletable resources (a finite quantity parameter); there are artificially subsidized or sustained institutions, industries or practices;
there are untenable compromises which foster instability; there are urgent changes required for society's and Humanity's survival; or, where there are institutions which are fatalistic by their nature, and have a "loot and pillage all that we can RIGHT NOW" mentality while the New Rome (or Babylon) burns, or while the Titanic slips into the freezing depths of an unforgiving dispassionate ocean.
I'll limit my global forecasts for the 50-year time frame to a simple outline form without going into the reasoning behind them in great detail:
1) The world's supply of potable water will be scarce, and Israeli desalinization technology will be used, subject to license, by many nations. There will be mass starvation and famine in Africa, parts of the Middle East, island republics and the Amazon;
2) Climate change, unpredictable and increasingly volatile, will create great damage to world infrastructure, significant alterations to continental positions, the decimation of some island civilizations and will make travel increasingly difficult;
3) There will be increased clashes between deprived and infuriated citizens (or servants or subjects) and the governments which have bankrupted them and helped to enslave them;
4) Asia will lose its economic advantage, and that advantage will move to parts of industrialized Europe, with some benefit to the United States.
5) The Caucasian and poorly educated minority of the U.S. citizenry will become increasingly armed and hostile toward the government, and violent (but media-suppressed)skirmishes will ensue; the demography of the U.S. will shift in favor of Latinos and Asians, and virtually all employment with the exception of the entrepreneurial sector, will be by governments or their agencies;
6) There will be bloody war in the Middle East and parts of Africa between Shiite Muslims and Sunni Muslims;
7) Fossil fuels will decrease in use and utility as their availability is compromised by surface transport issues;
8) The United States will be militarily involved in multiple wars throughout the world;
9) Complete invisibility cloaking will be in use by covert and acknowledged government agencies domestically and internationally.
10) Plasma, laser and other wave-based or radiation-based weapons will be in ordinary use.
11) Mexico will become a rogue state, run by a coalition of corrupt government officials and the drug lords. Other countries will likely follow suit;
12) There will have been a shift toward atomic energy;
13) There will have been a shift from internet to satellite communications;
14) Entire limbs and organs will be grown utilizing stem cells combined with electromagnetic technology and genetic engineering, and for the few who can afford it, the Human lifespan will have been increased to in excess of 130 years. Females will outlive males. The average lifespan due to environmental and socio-economic factors will decrease significantly from where it is today;
15) Those persons who can get work will be telecommuting from their secured residences, and most recreation will not take place outside secured zones in enclosed areas;
16) A great deal of recreational time will be spent in virtual reality, as an escape into fantasy from the harsh realities of future life;
17) Society will not have attained Kurzweil's point of Singularity, but substantially all menial, physical or clerical jobs will be undertaken by robots. Machines will build machines, but none will exhibit genuine Artificial Intelligence;
18) There will be movements amongst various governments to eliminate paper currency to facilitate better tracking of money, materiel and personnel, as well as to simplify the tax collection process. There will be riots in otherwise civilized countries over this;
19) Most device and access security will be by a combination of biometrics instead of encryption;
20) Humanity will be de-socialized to the extent that we will be living in a sort of high-technology Medieval revival, with corporate-government cartels being the lairds of their respective territories, and individuals will serve them, putting country and citizenship affiliations second;
21) Most of the world's wealth will be controlled by less than 1% of the total population -- the other 99% will be struggling for survival in a polluted, unsafe, violent world -- a world overcome by the madness that comes of hyper-vigilance and constant fear;
22) Most educated couples will choose not to have children, while the uneducated will continue to create families which they cannot responsibly support;
23) Pollution in Asia and in certain parts of Latin America will make the air quality so poor that people will not be able to spend any time outdoors, except with air filtration gear;
24) Most of the world's peoples will be living in abject poverty, and will literally be fighting for their their lives;
25) The tremendous resurgence which we are witnessing today amongst the Doomsday Preppers, the End-Times Groups and the militant anti-government groups is ultimately a foreshadowing of items 1 through 24, above. As someone once told me, "Just 'cause you's paranoid don't mean that they ain't out to get you." In these extreme cases, these groups are partially prophetic and partially a disparate self-fulfilling prophesy. There will be incidents involving drones killing innocents, planned assassinations, chemical and biological tests gone wrong and some tragedies involving 'dirty nukes'. Rhetorically-justified lawlessness will be the privilege of those who can either choose to be or pay to be exempt from the law.
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I also believe that there will be the promising beginnings of colonization of other planets or their moons by the next wave of Human pioneers, and they will be Humankind's greatest hope for the future. These colonists will have wonderful, powerful technologies to aid them in their re-creation of a society, but (and this is conjecture -- not forecast), hopefully these few will have sociologically, psychologically and spiritually advanced to the point that they do not want to invest in a zero-sum game.
Instead, I hope that these few will be collaborative, and see the very notion of civilization as a goal to be striven for above all else except for the right to be different from others, but yet fully accepting of them.
Thank you, as always for reading me, and for sharing my articles with your colleagues and connections over the interconnectedness of social media.
Douglas E. Castle
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