Preview of the decade
While it’s tempting to review the decade that’s gone, Kev Kennedy instead takes a look forward at what might happen now the ‘noughties’ are over.
According to the films we grew up with we are five years away from hoverboards and flying cars (Back to the Future Part II) and only nine years away artificial humans running amok on the streets of Los Angeles (Blade Runner). But what’s really going to happen, based on what’s happened in the previous 10 years? Here are five things that could happen.
1) Work changes from office to café culture
We’ve already started to see this happen, with hot-desking, the explosion in ‘working from home’, and the growth of virtual conferencing. But futurists are now predicting that the ‘offices’ of the future will be more like ‘hubs’ – places where people gather to discuss and collaborate on projects, before going off and making things happen.
Obviously, this won’t happen everywhere, but smaller companies may move towards this model. Also, what we’ll probably see is greater flexibility in work, as we become masters of our own careers. There may be fewer permanent contracts and an expectation that once a project is complete the team will break up and go off and work on other things, a bit like how the world of films and TV works.
2) Technology gets smarter and even smaller
In 2020, the notion of holding your phone to your ear might be considered so ‘old-school’, we’ll wonder why we ever did it. It’s not going to be too long before we have phone-studs in our ears that may even be thought-activated. At least that’s what the geeks are telling us.
You may think it’s unlikely, but the rate that phones are dropping in size, and the ability we all have to lose stuff means some people will welcome the chance to have their phone implanted or attached like an ear-ring. And once it becomes fashionable we’ll all start doing it.
In other technological news, by 2020 we could well be using solar-powered cars driven by robots. Reality TV may lead to 'reality channels' where people just film their lives 24 hours a day. And mobile devices will be like mini super-computers, able to contain everything we need to survive, including our memories – all backed up on virtually limitless storage facilities. Can’t remember what the wife said to pick up from the supermarket? Just Google it and find the recorded video conversation you had before you left the house. (That’s if we still go to the supermarket! That may be decidedly retro by 2020.)
3) The big events will get bigger
Beijing 2008 set a new standard in over-the-top celebration of sports that most people didn’t know existed before the Olympics. (How many different kinds of cycling are there, really?) And with the credit crunch denting the budgets for London 2012, we might not see glittering new stadiums and fabulous light shows and so on.
But that’s not really how you measure the ‘bigness’ of something. As TV gets ever more intrusive, expect non-stop saturation coverage of sporting events, starting with this year’s world cup. Every channel, every website, every paper, all the time.
The reasons for this? Well, firstly, despite the recession we are collectively ludicrously wealthier than any preceding generation and we can commit time and resources to something as essentially meaningless as a sporting competition. And secondly, the way the organisers of these events justify them is to hype them up into something more epic than they really are. Expect hype. Lots of hype.
4) Home ownership will be more social, less individual
I’m starting to see this already with some of my friends opting to buy houses together and effectively live in micro-communes. With house prices increasing generally, despite occasional downward blips, and salaries staying roughly the same after inflation, more and more single people will opt to buy with friends. And banks are getting used to it too.
We may even reach the point where two families with young children choose to buy a large house, sharing child-care and paying the bills with four incomes. Of course, if people choose to go their own separate ways, or a change of job requires a move, selling may be difficult. But I’m fairly sure solutions will be found. They always have been in the past as society changes.
5) Every year will bring a different apocalypse
I’m one of those people who take a jaundiced view of media scare stories. Remember the previous decade began with the panic about the millennium bug. Now we’re so used to different diseases being heralded as a huge threat to humanity, we’ve almost grown immune to the hype, which means each new flu strain has to be described in increasingly lurid terms to get over how serious it is!
Of course we can never predict the truly world-changing events – 9/11 remains the defining event of the noughties, and we never saw it coming. And there are several things to worry about. By 2020 climate change will have either been sorted, or the coastline will look very different. Nuclear proliferation is an under-rated threat. If we run out of oil, we could be in some tricky situations. And we’re going to need to find a way to feed 9 billion humans.
But it’s still likely most of us will be still be here in 2020, and hopefully we’ll be taking good care of ourselves. After all, we’ll all have a life expectancy of over 100, and we won’t be allowed to retire until we’re 90! The good news is the supplements we take will keep us looking 35 forever, and they’ll only cost us a few euros a week.
See you in 2020!
What do you think will happen in the next ten years? Why not share it in the forum?
Written by Kev Kennedy. Posted on 27th January.
Digg it
Reddit
Delicious
Stumble It!
Furl it
