How will the world look like in five years from now?
We interviewed Martin Cedergren (go read it) who had the following question for us. Look into your crystal balls and answer the question: What do you think will happen in the near future? How will the world look like in, say, five years?
I guess its a matter of politics, technoligies, economy, human behaviors, environmental changes, global warming, global wars and much more.
Five years is not a long time in a macro perspective, But with all the pardigm shifts in economy, technology and human behaviours it is harder then ever to predict the future. The Beta testing period of all these shifts will be over in five years and it is going to be time to harvest, or to blame what went wrong.
In a longer prospective one thing is for sure, The future is going to be more digital. We are going to grow old with the web and the web is going to grow old with us. A lot of information about us is going to be out there. I wote for for security in privacy policy.
5 years from now... isn't that about the time, where we discover that we're living in a virtual world and our bodies are stored in containers and used as energy cells. 00010010111010110001001000111100001110001001111110010010001000001001 111010101000100010010000100100001000100000100010010101000100001000
That was a very ambitious question. OK, let's play Nostradamus... I think our world will be a pretty different place in 5 years, because we are now at the turning point on a lot of major issues. Here is my list, in total disorder:
- The economical crisis is not just a question of old systems and mechanisms trying to find a new balance. It's deeper than that, and will have deeper effects than we expect today. Regions of the world as well as large organizations will handle it differently, with different grades of creativity. Some will succeed, some will fail miserably. But i don't think anyone will continue to do business just as before. Our consumer ethics and habits might take a radical turn.
- The winning companies will be the ones that replace profit through exploitation by sustainability. Strategy will go much beyond trying to increase market shares. We will want to make a difference by providing something usefull and meaningfull. Cynics will be out of date. Growth will be the result of adaptation and interaction. Intrusive marketing will die.
- EU will go through major setbacks. Unity is not the trend anymore, the word will loose its attraction and eurosceptics will thrive on political divisions and cultural irritations between EU members. Not even Sarkozy will be able to change that.
- Economic competition will be global and merciless. Newcomers from what used to be the 3rd world won't feel sorry for us westerners. Our only way of clearing this competition will be through creativity, not productivity. We will need to capitalize on our brains. In fact, the whole competition thing will become so ineffective that we will eventually try to complete eachother instead of competing.
- USA's political influence will continue to shrink, while its cultural domination will continue. Hollywood's imperialism will prosper as it keeps on appropriating local cultures to format them to its standards and distribute them around the world, impoverishing them as well as making them available to masses. For example Frenchmen might soon know Napoleon only through its parody in the Simpsons, or pronounce Jules Verne "Djoolz Vörn".
- The technical divide between fluent and reluctant users of digital devices and services will increase dramatically (like for example social life, awareness of economical or job-related opportunities, means of payment, etc.). This will have serious effects on individuals' possibilities (and even rights) in our society. It will lead to aggressive debates, with the tech-reluctant side totally loosing the grip on whole aspects of our society. The multi-tasking fluent users will go through out-of-body experience, schizophrenia, ubiquity and megalomania.
- The media landscape will be of course very different. TV channels will just be content producers and distributors, nothing more. The concept of author's right will be seriously revised, new standards for creation will emerge, while a few people will still challenge that change. Information will be everywhere, based on networks (relations to brands or/and peer-to-peer), everything will go smoothly and on user's terms or will be bound to disappear.
- Since people are naturally lazy and want to look as good and sound as smart as possible, we will rely heavily on information flows coming to us from brands, services or friends (call it social media), as well as we will avidly (with the help of custom-made services) look for new smart ways to look and sound good.
- We'll be online and connected to our networks 24/24, unless we choose not to be. So, while being alone was the normal state for humans since the beginning of times, we will now have to actively choose to disconnect if we want to be alone, or just sleep.
Talking about disconnecting and going to sleep... time to end this rant :-)
I think it's really dependant of what the current recession brings... If things get really bad, we might see some really big changes towards the better. I'll get back with more specific predictions soon.
Add New Comment
Viewing 7 Comments
Thanks. Your comment is awaiting approval by a moderator.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Add New Comment
Trackbacks
(Trackback URL)
February 18, 2009 at 3:49 pm
[...] [ What do you think will happen in the near future? How will the world look like in, say, five ...