21st Century Forecasts by Minnesota Futurists:
Note: Statements, facts and opinions in these forcasts are solely those of their respective authors who take full responsibility for them. Statements, facts and opinions in these forcasts do not represent any statements, opinions or positions of Minnesota Futurists, or of the World Future Society.
Brian Toren's Forecasts for the next 25 to 50 years:
§ Distance Services such as learning, working, shopping will be commonplace within the next 25 years as the people of this new generation learn to remote manage.
§ The growth of transportation industries (cars, fuel and roads) will slow and reverse as the need to use the automobile to travel to work or school on a day-to-day basis is drastically reduced. Delivery Services however will increase to provide the goods that were normally picked up by the consumer.
§ The manufacturing of hard goods will be completely automated; control of these factories will be from a network of factory operators who live in remote locations and communicate with each other and the factories via the Internet.
§ Education over the Internet, with expert learning guides interacting with students on line all over the world, will be the norm. Virtual learning tools utilizing holograms as examples and for interaction will be used for beginning and lifelong learning. This will extend into the first year of life as virtual environments (ala the Holodeck in Stark Trek) are used to surround babies (the virtual playpen) with unprecedented opportunities to interact with others will provide examples of how to interact successfully with life's little surprises.
§ In the medical field, gene transplants will be the norm for both heredity diseases and genetic diseases created later in life due to environmental sources. The healthy genes used to treat these diseases will be transported by viruses designed for that purpose.
§ There will be a limit to the implementation of computers resulting in stagnation and chaos in economic growth that has come to depend upon Moore's laws of capacity doubling every 18 months.
(This is a forecast of a member the x generation, many of them have a less than optimistic view of the future).
§ Those who believe in multiculturalization and celebrate diversity will celebrate as their efforts of sowing SEEDs (Seeking Education, Equality and Diversity) on a worldwide basis results in the evolution of the human mind unprecedented in history.
Henry Lederer's forecasts for science and technology breakthroughs:
§ First 'wearable' computer with voice recognition and access to Internet via built-in cell phone modem available for under $3000.
§ Major advances in quantum computing.
Allen Jaisle's forecasts:
I have struck on an organizing theme for much of the future - the Internet, especially the WWW, will be the "primary catalyst". Actually I believe that many fundamental future changes are approaching take-off, Internet or no-Internet, but the Internet will speed-up and facilitate change. The key thing about the Internet is that it will "catalyze change", because the Internet undermines the existing dominant order and nourishes new possibilities of the future, by leveraging and accelerating small marginal groups and ideas.
The change has a good change of being mostly "good", since the web is about relationships and mutuality, as well as decentralization of power through distributed knowledge in the living minds, hearts and imaginations of humans, not in the
dead financial and physical assets of industry which can be centrally-controlled.
Change growing out of the margins of society will no longer be easily suffocated and directed by the forces now dominant in the violent, exploiting, irresponsible and egocentric society (scientific materialism in the service of greed, as false spirituality).
Internet-Catalyzed Future by 2020:
§ Virtual Internet-based universities will irreversibly and completely transform higher education.
§ Internet catalyzes the Death of Distance and the Death of Authority.
§ Big Story of the 21st century will be explosively rapid social-cultural change.
§ New Ecological Spirituality of compassion and relatedness surpasses both Christianity and Science as the primary civic religion in the West.
§ Most critical struggle is over the SELF - demise of the individual ego-self, replaced by the integrated enlarged-self of self-and-other integration or the fractured plural-self of confused disorientation.
§ Modern Age "machine" worldview will be replaced by an Ecological Age "web-of-life" worldview.
§ Blossoming of new forms of socially-conscious Internet-based political, non-profit and business organizations.
§ E-commerce transforms every business - large old companies disappear overnight.
§ No world power center should be allowed to operate in the future without a network of citizen organizations that hold it accountable, and now we have the technology to maintain such networks.
§ Everything taught in MBA programs today, from financial accounting to business strategy, will be taught in a single course on the history of business ideas.
§ The Internet will be the "straw that broke the camel's back" of Modern Age culture, society, politics, economy, science and technology. The eye-opening analogy to the 21st century Internet is the 15th century printing press, which "catalyzed"
the Protestant Reformation, Nation-State, European 'Enlightenment', Modern Science, Industrial Revolution, Terminal Nuclear Threat and Ecological Destruction.
William Johnson's forecasts:
§ I see a great increase in connectivity, with enormous social and political consequences to match the economic ones.
So much is made of how easily people can exchange information and ideas with one another.
§ But we will also see much more organization for joint action on a global scale. The thousands of protesters who showed up in Seattle for the WTO meeting represented millions more around the world who are concerned for one aspect or another of the global economy and interact by web pages and e-mail.
§ We must see this connectivity as a powerful resource that can be used for both beneficial and destructive causes.
Amnesty International can use it in the cause of freedom but militia and terrorist groups can inflict much harm by it, too.
§ We must take care, as educators, media people, and all users of the Internet, to build its value for constructive political and social influence.
Joanne Norris' Forecast
§ Climate controlled clothing
Ed Rogers forecast:
§ Computer key boards become obsolete
Jim Zetek's forecasts:
§ China becomes a free-market democracy
§ Cellular phone becomes most popular Internet device
§ Linux will move up to the mainframe and not down to the PC