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Here are the top ten forecasts from Outlook 2011:
Here are the top ten forecasts from Outlook 2011:
1. Physicists could become the leading economic forecasters of tomorrow.
Unlike mainstream economists, who rely on averages, econophysicists
study complex systems, feedback loops, cascading effects, irrational
decision making, and other destabilizing influences, which may help them
to foresee economic upheavals.
2. Environmentalists may embrace genetically modified crops as a carbon-reduction technology.
Like nuclear power, genetically modified crops have long been the bane
of environmentalists, but Stewart Brand, author of Whole Earth
Discipline, argues that there are myriad benefits to them as C02 sinks.
3. Search engines will soon include spoken results, not just text.
Television broadcasts and other recordings could be compiled and
converted using programs developed by the Fraunhofer Institute for
Intelligent Analysis.
4. Will there be garbage wars in the future? Trash
producers in the developed world will ship much more of their debris to
repositories in developing countries. This will inspire protests in the
receiving lands. Beyond 2025 or so, the developing countries will close
their repositories to foreign waste, forcing producers to develop more
waste-to-energy and recycling technologies.
5. The notion of class time as separate from non-class time will vanish.
The Net generation uses technologies both for socializing and for
working and learning, so their approach to tasks is less about competing
and more about working as teams. In this way, social networking is
already facilitating collaborative forms of learning outside of
classrooms and beyond formal class schedules.
6. The future is crowded with PhDs. The
number of doctorate degrees awarded in the United States has risen for
six straight years, reaching record 48,802 in 2008, according to the
National Science Foundation's Survey of Earned Doctorates. One-third of
these degrees (33.1%) went to temporary visa holders, up from 23.3% in
1998.
7. Cities in developed countries could learn sustainability from so-called slums in the developing world. Dwellers
of "slums," favelas, and ghettos have learned to use and reuse
resources and commodities more efficiently than their wealthier
counterparts. The neighborhoods are high-density and walkable, mixing
commercial and residential areas rather than segregating these
functions. In many of these informal cities, participants play a role in
communal commercial endeavors such as growing food or raising
livestock.
8. Cooperatively owned smart cars and roads will replace dumb, individual gas guzzlers.
With 800 million cars on the planet to serve 7.8 billion people,
personal transportation is a dominant force in our lives. But the
emergence of car-sharing and bike-sharing schemes in urban areas in both
the United States and Europe have established alternative models and
markets for fractional or on-demand mobility, says MIT's Ryan C.C. Chin.
He and his fellow engineers with the MIT Media Lab have designed a car
system that could serve as a model for future cities.
9. Fighting the global threat of climate change could unite countries— or inflame rivalries. Nations
with more sophisticated environmental monitoring systems could use data
to their advantage, perhaps weakening an enemy by failing to warn it of
an oncoming storm or other catastrophe. They could also fudge their
own, or their rivals', carbon output numbers to manipulate International
legislation says forecaster Roger Howard.
10. We may not be able to move mountains with our minds, but robots will await our mental commands. Brain-based
control of conventional keyboards, allowing individuals to type without
physically touching the keys, has been demonstrated at the universities
of Wisconsin and Michigan. In the near future, brain e-mailing and
tweeting will become far more common, say experts. A group of
undergraduates at Northeastern University demonstrated in June that they
could steer a robot via thought.
All
of these forecasts plus dozens more were included in the report that
scanned the best writing and research from THE FUTURIST magazine over
the course of the previous year. The 2011 Outlook report was released as
part of the November-December 2010 issue of THE FUTURIST magazine,
available on October 1, 2010. If you would like to learn more about how
you can join the World Future Society to receive your complimentary copy of Outlook 2011, click here.
The
Society hopes this report, covering developments in business and
economics, demography, energy, the environment, health and medicine,
resources, society and values, and technology, will assist its readers
in preparing for the challenges and opportunities in the coming decade.
These are just a few of the big issues and uncommon solutions that THE FUTURIST magazine is tracking for you.
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order to continue our coverage of the challenges and opportunities of
the twenty-first century, we need your help in 2010 and 2011. We
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