From: Ziana Astralos (ziana@extrotech.net)
Date: Sat Dec 30 2000 - 11:26:38 MST
---------- begin forwarded message ----------
To: "isml" <isml@egroups.com>
Subject: [isml] Warning: future appears turbulent
From: "DS" <ds2000@mediaone.net>
Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2000 12:16:21 -0500
>From The Cincinnati Post,
http://www.cincypost.com/opinion/mcfeat122900.html
-
Warning: future appears turbulent
Column by Dale McFeatters
The top seers and swamis at the World Future Society
have squinted over the horizon and come up with a
forecast of what's in store for us in the coming
decade, century and millennium. It is not a pretty
sight.
For a start, it's good-bye to Socks and Buddy. And
maybe good-bye to us. Intelligent robot pets will be
common by 2005 and outnumber "organic pets" by 2020.
Their owners might not be real, either. "Virtual
assistants" will start replacing executive secretaries
in 2007, and by 2020 we'll be sharing the planet with
synthetic intelligent life forms that will have legal
rights, meaning that as lawsuits become ever more
creative and pervasive you might be sued by your
virtual cat.
But there's new hope for medieval French lit majors. A
liberal arts degree will be more valuable than a
specialized education because technology will
change so fast than no sooner is a technical skill
mastered than it's obsolete.
While the college degree is nice, it will probably be
from Rec Room U. Home schooling will lead to a home-
college movement and 50 percent of private colleges
and 10 percent of public colleges will close because
so many students are staying home to study online.
But the new jobs will be fun, fun, fun. Thanks to
improved productivity and longer lifespans, people
will have more free time - where have we heard that
one before - and thus leisure-oriented businesses -
think 21st-century amusement parks - will dominate the
world economy and account for half of U.S. GDP by 2015.
President Clinton was wrong when he said most workers
will change jobs six or seven times in a career. The
futurists say most workers will stay with a single
company throughout their working lives. Companies will
not so much hire workers as adopt them.
Most baby boomers will keep working after they retire-
they'll have to because of inadequate pensions and
Social Security.
But help is on the way. The "echo boomers", the 80
million Americans born from 1977 to 1997, will be a
far more money-savvy generation, flush with cash and
economic clout. That's good because if the futurists
are right, they'll be supporting their parents.
The generation that follows may be a faint echo
indeed. More people will elect to remain single and
postpone having children who will be mostly girls
when they do have them.
But there's no rush because medical advances will
allow women to delay menopause until 70. That means
people in their 80s will be raising teenage
daughters, which goes a long way toward explaining the
next prediction.
Mental illness will reach epidemic proportions as the
population ages.
But no less a person than Sir Arthur Clarke says that
electronic monitoring will eliminate professional
criminals from society by 2010.
That would still leave us at the mercy of random
pyschos and disgruntled day traders and software
testers.
Specially bred bacteria will extract oil reserves that
cannot now be tapped through conventional methods, but
in 50 years we won't need the oil anyway because
thermonuclear fusion will provide us with unlimited,
cheap energy in the form of hydrogen.
Nobody has said what happens when the bugs run out of
oil and start heading our way. Perhaps nothing because
we might not even be here.
Humans will land on Mars in 2022, opening the way for
colonization, and on Halley's Comet in 2061, where we
will discover both active and dormant life forms.
That's important because by the year 3000 most
economic activity will be in outer space and it would
be good to have a ready-made customer base already
there.
There's the future for you. Don't say you weren't
warned.
It may not be too late to turn back.
Dale McFeatters is a columnist for Scripps Howard News
Service.
Publication date: 12-29-00
--
Dan S
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