Thoughts on the future

It wasn’t manufacturing that the world abdicated to China. It wasn’t international security that the world abdicated to America. And it wasn’t thinking that the world abdicated to Artificial Intelligence. What was abdicated was futurology. 

For some people, especially thinkers from an older generation the future which once looked full of hope now looks bleak. Two people I know — both world shapers in their day — now sometimes talk about longing for death to embrace them. 

So what does the future hold? Years ago I remember predicting the bursting of the dot com bubble and the change to what we now call Internet 2.0. There are things in the future that feel like being on the tip of my tongue but difficult to express. Nevertheless, I will try…

War

Though the dealmaker longs to be known as the peacemaker and win a Nobel prize, I think the near future holds war. I expect to see at least one tactical nuclear weapon used within the next five years, possibly within 6 months. There will be conflicts in Central America and Europe is likely to see conflict on its borders if not within.  America will find it has been sleeping and is totally unprepared for a 21st-century conflict with both the wrong weapons and the wrong training. It can and will inflict damage but will have to look elsewhere at all the lightweight, profuse myriad systems that could overwhelm it. 

The Gaza-Israel conflict will not be resolved and will grow in complexity with some neighbours like Turkey and Qatar causing stress and being difficult to deal with. Å

The EU has already warned its citizens to retain food supplies and physical currency on the basis of logistics and internet banking inaccessibility. Conflict — both formal and informal — within the next five years will make those recommendations important. Logistics failure will happen because too much of the control and processing needed for logistics has been centralised away from the logistics companies themselves into a very few American companies. The Internet as it was created had high resilience. Though the international undersea links have low resilience what we call ‘the internet’ has become vulnerable not because of those international links but because of centralisation at the application and content delivery layers. There’s a very high probability of significant failures within the next 5 years. 

Going up, going down…

My perception is that rather than position, direction of travel is more important when evaluating countries. So, going up I see China going up significantly and the EU and Canada going up moderately. South America will be on the rise, with one or two exceptions, as will Asian countries, again with exceptions. Going down will be the USA significantly with the potential of a complete crash. The same could be true for Russia. The UK is already losing influence in the world and being tied to the Anglo world will go down further. Both the UK and USA could see internal conflict within the next five years. Over the next 10 years the world will be plagued with totalitarian leaders.

Medical

There will be significant medical breakthroughs within the next 5 years, possibly the elimination of malaria and potentially breakthroughs in tackling cancer. Dentistry could change beyond recognition. So-called AI diagnostics will enhance first-line medicine, which some people will hate in the way they hate self-checkout at food stores.

Global

Although the global population won’t plateau within the next five years, it will plateau within the next 50 years. However, the curve is flattening and this will cause confusion with simultaneously a lack of jobs for some and a lack of people to fulfil jobs. This is because the world is in a transition phase where the existing capitalist/expansionist model no longer holds. We will see significant cracks in that model within the next 5 years but world leaders will not tackle it properly but try to resolve it for their own nation-state. This will cause stress between nation-states, even within supranational entities like the European Union. However, it will be worse outside the union and the EU will demonstrate a model that could work on a global scale. There will be tensions between the EU Parliament, the EU Council and the EU Commission over this, with the EU Parliament taking a major role in this.  

Hope

Many people will lose hope. There will be a rise in inter-cultural conflict with so-called 'conservatives' battling with so-called 'liberals'. Increasingly, neither label will be accurate yet each group will cling to their group identity. This will be caused by people losing hope and struggling to create comfort zones for themselves based upon unrealistic perceptions of what will help. The church and other religious groups won't help with this as they themselves are divided. Some people will hold onto hope for the future and they will be the survivors.