The World Future Society recently released their Futurist Outlook 2008 report, sketching some major trendlines concerning times ahead, as seen through the eyes of their futurist memberbase. In an article titled “The Good Old-fashioned World Future Society”, Bruce Sterling distilled some of the most significant trends covered in the report (see also here for more info on the freely available top ten):

1. a million billionaires by 2025
2. technologies will revolutionize the textile and fashion industries
3. war with China and/or Russia might become a bigger threat to US foreign policy than terrorism
4. counterfeiting pressure on traditional currency might speed up the move to a cashless society
5. our planet is on the verge of a major extinction event (cf. strong decrease of biodiversity)
6. water will be to the 21st century what oil was for the 20th
7. healthier and longer-living people might lead to larger world population growth than expected (by 2050)
8. Africans threatened by floods likely to increase 70-fold by 2080
9. the Arctic becomes a new focal point in the rush to exploit natural resources, as prices rise and availability decreases
10. more decisions will be made by non-human entities (cf. networks, robots, AI etc.)

Via Wired

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 at 12:17 and is filed under envision, foresight, future, science, society, sustainability, technology, trends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.