Sneak Peeks Into the Future

Being new to trendspotting, I felt a little out of place at this year’s WorldFuture 2010 conference, put on by the World Future Society—as if I was the only person not developing some type of artificially intelligent machine in my basement. But I soon realized that there is a lot to learn and understand now that could help us gain a better grasp on what will happen in the years to come.

Climate Change
Two seminars were particularly interesting to me. The first, “Where Is It All Going?” led by Dennis Bushnell of NASA, addressed climate change and its implications. It used to be predicted that the icecaps would melt by 2040, but humans have sped up the process so much that now the targeted date is a frighteningly soon 2013. Because the ocean could rise about 250 feet, this would affect more than 8 billion people living in coastal locations.

This is but one of the reasons to take a good, hard look at the way we treat our environment. Bushnell said we can still change the outcome if we start altering our behavior now. New technologies are also being developed to help slow this process; saltwater technologies, for instance, are being developed in the Sahara Desert so that we can save our freshwater supply, since it’s already so scarce. This technology harbors the power to grow food and even materials to help make plastics without using crude oil. And creating agriculture in the desert opens the possibility that there will one day be rainfall in this almost lifeless land.

Virtual Reality
But if all else fails and we do end up living in a wasteland, five-sense-simulation machines that are being developed with holographic technology will help humans virtually transport themselves anywhere in the world. The human brain won’t be able to tell if the experience is real or fake. This will even give humans the capability of going anywhere and being anyone, meaning no more worries about that looming beach vacation—you can just simulate a version of yourself that is 10 pounds lighter! Hooray?

This technology has obvious repercussions. Since the development of the Internet, we have all been spending a staggering amount of time in the virtual world, and this technology will only add to that dramatically.

Bushnell’s seminar pointed out what needs to be tweaked and gave us tools to fix some of the climate problems. But instead of vying for instant gratification, like the five-sense simulations, I believe we should go for the route that will yield true results and give us a comfortable and beautiful planet!

Cultural Youth Shifts
In the second seminar I found interesting, I listened to Erica Orange and Jared Weiner of Weiner, Edrich, Brown, a consultancy that studies trends appearing in our global culture (follow them on @webfuturetrends on Twitter). Weiner gave the top five trends he thought extremely relevant and important to understanding what to expect in 10 to 15 years from the millennial generation; at that point, they’ll make up 70 percent of the work force:

1. Shifting global fertility paradigm. Or, as a society’s economic situation improves, the number of children born to that society declines. Some good news: Economic prosperity isn’t permanently linked to decline of fertility, and in Africa, fewer children will be born and more children will survive past infancy.
2. Interrelationship between education and jobs. Tuition costs are up 430 percent since 1980, and more universities worldwide are attracting Americans to their schools than visa versa. As the education systems don’t evolve to teach children who learn differently—including the fact that many schools are geared toward auditory learners (more of whom are girls) than visual ones (more of whom are boys)—more people will drop out to become entrepreneurs because they need to make a living. Plus, more people will move to Asia (or their countries of origin) for work, and a more mobile talent market in general will be a profound shift.
3. Virtual faith. Younger generations are increasingly getting information from collective-wisdom sites such as Wikipedia, accepting info that might not be traditionally trustworthy. They’ll become increasingly skeptical of advertising and marketing (and challenging the expertise of doctors and other authority figures) but wholly trusting of collective wisdom or online self-diagnosis.
4. Feedback in business. For youth used to instant gratification, quicker feedback will become the norm in academia and the workplace. Soon there will be countless social-media-related business opportunities to do with feedback.
5. Quirky leading edge. Marginalized youth are early adopters of virtual-world experiences, then everyone else become directly affected by it. One example: the subcultures of men and women who indulge in romantic relationships with inanimate objects (part of the otaku culture).

There is still a lot to be understood about the world we live in; this is just the tip of the iceberg. I’m thankful that there are people like those at the World Future Society who dedicate their lives to uncovering trends and developing future technologies that will surely benefit us in many ways. They show that life is about pushing boundaries and defying the impossible.