[p2p-research] 20 predictions for the next 25 years

[Michel Bauwens]

thanks Athina!!

On Mon, Jan 3, 2011 at 8:20 PM, Athina Karatzogianni <athina.k at gmail.com>wrote:

>
> Hi MIchel Happy 2011!
> I saw this and thought it might be ignite discussion on the p2p list
> cheers
> Athina
>
>
>
>
> To see this story with its related links on the guardian.co.uk site, go to
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jan/02/25-predictions-25-years
>
> 20 predictions for the next 25 years
>
> From the web to wildlife, the economy to nanotechnology, politics to sport,
> the Observer's team of experts prophesy how the world will change ? for good
> or bad ? in the next quarter of a century
>
> Sunday January 2 2011
> The Observer
>
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jan/02/25-predictions-25-years
>
>
> 1 Geopolitics: 'Rivals will take greater risks against the US'
>
> No balance of power lasts forever. Just a century ago, London was the
> centre of the world. Britain bestrode the world like a colossus and only
> those with strong nerves (or weak judgment) dared challenge the Pax
> Britannica.
>
> That, of course, is all history, but the Pax Americana that has taken shape
> since 1989 is just as vulnerable to historical change. In the 1910s, the
> rising power and wealth of Germany and America splintered the Pax
> Britannica; in the 2010s, east Asia will do the same to the Pax Americana.
>
> The 21st century will see technological change on an astonishing scale. It
> may even transform what it means to be human. But in the short term ? the
> next 20 years ? the world will still be dominated by the doings of
> nation-states and the central issue will be the rise of the east.
>
> By 2030, the world will be more complicated, divided between a broad
> American sphere of influence in Europe, the Middle East and south Asia, and
> a Chinese sphere in east Asia and Africa. Even within its own sphere, the US
> will face new challenges from former peripheries. The large, educated
> populations of Poland, Turkey, Brazil and their neighbours will come into
> their own and Russia will continue its revival.
>
> Nevertheless, America will probably remain the world's major power. The
> critics who wrote off the US during the depression of the 1930s and the
> stagflation of the 1970s lived to see it bounce back to defeat the Nazis in
> the 1940s and the Soviets in the 1980s. America's financial problems will
> surely deepen through the 2010s, but the 2020s could bring another Roosevelt
> or Reagan.
>
> A hundred years ago, as Britain's dominance eroded, rivals, particularly
> Germany, were emboldened to take ever-greater risks. The same will happen as
> American power erodes in the 2010s-20s. In 1999, for instance, Russia would
> never have dared attack a neighbour such as Georgia but in 2009 it took just
> such a chance.
>
> The danger of such an adventure sparking a great power war in the 2010s is
> probably low; in the 2020s, it will be much greater.
>
> The most serious threats will arise in the vortex of instability that
> stretches from Africa to central Asia. Most of the world's poorest people
> live here; climate change is wreaking its worst damage here; nuclear weapons
> are proliferating fastest here; and even in 2030, the great powers will
> still seek much of their energy here.
>
> Here, the risk of Sino-American conflict will be greatest and here the
> balance of power will be decided.
>
> Ian Morris, professor of history at Stanford University and the author of
> Why the West Rules ? For Now (Profile Books)
>
>
> 2 The UK economy: 'The popular revolt against bankers will become
> impossible to resist'
>
> It will be a second financial crisis in the 2010s ? probably sooner than
> later ? that will prove to be the remaking of Britain. Confronted by a
> second trillion-pound bank bailout in less than 10 years, it will be
> impossible for the City and wider banking system to resist reform. The
> popular revolt against bankers, their current business model in which
> neglect of the real economy is embedded and the scale of their bonuses ? all
> to be underwritten by bailouts from taxpayers ? will become irresistible.
> The consequent rebalancing of the British economy, already underway, will
> intensify. Britain, in thrall to finance since 1945, will break free ?
> spearheading a second Industrial Revolution.
>
> In 2035, there is thus a good prospect that Britain will be the most
> populous (our birth rate will be one the highest in Europe), dynamic and
> richest European country, the key state in a reconfigured EU. Our leading
> universities will become powerhouses of innovation, world centres in
> exploiting the approaching avalanche of scientific and technological
> breakthroughs. A reformed financial system will allow British entrepreneurs
> to get the committed financial backing they need, becoming the capitalist
> leaders in Europe. And, after a century of trying, Britain will at last
> build itself a system for developing apprentices and technicians that is no
> longer the Cinderella of the education system.
>
> It will not be plain sailing. Massive political turbulence in China and its
> conflict with the US will define part of the next 25 years ? and there will
> be a period when the world trading and financial system retreats from
> openness.
>
> How far beggar-my-neighbour competitive devaluations and protection will
> develop is hard to predict, but protectionist trends are there for all to
> see. Commodity prices will go much higher and there will be shortages of key
> minerals, energy, water and some basic foodstuffs.
>
> The paradox is that this will be good news for Britain. It will force the
> state to re-engage with the economy and to build a matrix of institutions
> that will support innovation and investment, rather as it did between 1931
> and 1950. New Labour began this process tremulously in its last year in
> office; the coalition government is following through. These will be lean
> years for the traditional Conservative right, but whether it will be a
> liberal One Nation Tory party, ongoing coalition governments or the Labour
> party that will be the political beneficiary is not yet sure.
>
> The key point is that those 20 years in the middle of the 20th century
> witnessed great industrial creativity and an unsung economic renaissance
> until the country fell progressively under the stultifying grip of the City
> of London. My guess is that the same, against a similarly turbulent global
> background, is about to happen again. My caveat is if the City remains
> strong, in which case economic decline and social division will escalate.
>
> Will Hutton, executive vice-chair of the Work Foundation and an Observer
> columnist
>
>
> 3 Global development: 'A vaccine will rid the world of Aids'
>
> Within 25 years, the world will achieve many major successes in tackling
> the diseases of the poor.
>
> Certainly, we will be polio-free and probably will have been for more than
> a decade. The fight to eradicate polio represents one of the greatest
> achievements in global health to date. It has mobilised millions of
> volunteers, staged mass immunisation campaigns and helped to strengthen the
> health systems of low-income countries. Today, we have eliminated 99% of the
> polio in the world and eradication is well within reach.
>
> Vaccines that prevent diseases such as measles and rotavirus, currently
> available in rich countries, will also become affordable and readily
> available in developing countries. Since it was founded 10 years ago, the
> Gavi Alliance, a global partnership that funds expanded immunisation in poor
> countries, has helped prevent more than 5 million deaths. It is easy to
> imagine that in 25 years this work will have been expanded to save millions
> more lives by making life-saving vaccines available all over the world.
>
> I also expect to see major strides in new areas. A rapid point-of-care
> diagnostic test ? coupled with a faster-acting treatment regimen ? will so
> fundamentally change the way we treat tuberculosis that we can begin
> planning an elimination campaign.
>
> We will eradicate malaria, I believe, to the point where there are no human
> cases reported globally in 2035. We will also have effective means for
> preventing Aids infection, including a vaccine. With the encouraging results
> of the RV144 Aids vaccine trial in Thailand, we now know that an Aids
> vaccine is possible. We must build on these and promising results on other
> means of preventing HIV infection to help rid the world of the threat of
> Aids.
>
> Tachi Yamada, president of the global health programme at the Bill &
> Melinda Gates Foundation
>
>
> 4 Energy: 'Returning to a world that relies on muscle power is not an
> option'
>
> Providing sufficient food, water and energy to allow everyone to lead
> decent lives is an enormous challenge. Energy is a means, not an end, but a
> necessary means. With 6.7 billion people on the planet, more than 50% living
> in large conurbations, and these numbers expected to rise to more than 9
> billion and 80% later in the century, returning to a world that relies on
> human and animal muscle power is not an option.
>
> The challenge is to provide sufficient energy while reducing reliance on
> fossil fuels, which today supply 80% of our energy (in decreasing order of
> importance, the rest comes from burning biomass and waste, hydro, nuclear
> and, finally, other renewables, which together contribute less than 1%).
> Reducing use of fossil fuels is necessary both to avoid serious climate
> change and in anticipation of a time when scarcity makes them prohibitively
> expensive.
>
> It will be extremely difficult. An International Energy Agency scenario
> that assumes the implementation of all agreed national policies and
> announced commitments to save energy and reduce the use of fossil fuels
> projects a 35% increase in energy consumption in the next 25 years, with
> fossil fuels up 24%. This is almost entirely due to consumption in
> developing countries where living standards are, happily, rising and the
> population is increasing rapidly.
>
> This scenario, which assumes major increases in nuclear, hydro and wind
> power, evidently does not go far enough and will break down if, as many
> expect, oil production (which is assumed to increase 15%) peaks in much less
> than 25 years. We need to go much further in reducing demand, through better
> design and changes in lifestyles, increasing efficiency and improving and
> deploying all viable alternative energy sources. It won't be cheap. And in
> the post-fossil-fuel era it won't be sufficient without major contributions
> from solar energy (necessitating cost reductions and improved energy storage
> and transmission) and/or nuclear fission (meaning fast breeder and/or
> thorium reactors when uranium eventually becomes scarce) and/or fusion
> (which is enormously attractive in principle but won't become a reliable
> source of energy until at least the middle of the century).
>
> Disappointingly, with the present rate of investment in developing and
> deploying new energy sources, the world will still be powered mainly by
> fossil fuels in 25 years and will not be prepared to do without them.
>
> Chris Llewellyn Smith is a former director general of Cern and chair of
> Iter, the world fusion project, he works on energy issues at Oxford
> University
>
>
> 5 Advertising: 'All sorts of things will just be sold in plain packages'
>
> If I'd been writing this five years ago, it would have been all about
> technology: the internet, the fragmentation of media, mobile phones, social
> tools allowing consumers to regain power at the expense of corporations, all
> that sort of stuff. And all these things are important and will change how
> advertising works.
>
> But it's becoming clear that what'll really change advertising will be how
> we relate to it and what we're prepared to let it do. After all, when you
> look at advertising from the past the basic techniques haven't changed; what
> seems startlingly alien are the attitudes it was acceptable to portray and
> the products you were allowed to advertise.
>
> In 25 years, I bet there'll be many products we'll be allowed to buy but
> not see advertised ? the things the government will decide we shouldn't be
> consuming because of their impact on healthcare costs or the environment but
> that they can't muster the political will to ban outright. So, we'll end up
> with all sorts of products in plain packaging with the product name in a
> generic typeface ? as the government is currently discussing for cigarettes.
>
> But it won't stop there. We'll also be nudged into renegotiating the
> relationship between society and advertising, because over the next few
> years we're going to be interrupted by advertising like never before. Video
> screens are getting so cheap and disposable that they'll be plastered
> everywhere we go. And they'll have enough intelligence and connectivity that
> they'll see our faces, do a quick search on Facebook to find out who we are
> and direct a message at us based on our purchasing history.
>
> At least, that'll be the idea. It probably won't work very well and when it
> does work it'll probably drive us mad. Marketing geniuses are working on
> this stuff right now, but not all of them recognise that being allowed to do
> this kind of thing depends on societal consent ? push the intrusion too far
> and people will push back.
>
> Society once did a deal accepting advertising because it seemed
> occasionally useful and interesting and because it paid for lots of
> journalism and entertainment. It's not necessarily going to pay for those
> things for much longer so we might start questioning whether we want to live
> in a Blade Runner world brought to us by Cillit Bang.
>
> Russell Davies, head of planning at the advertising agency Ogilvy and
> Mather and a columnist for the magazines Campaign and Wired
>
>
> 6 Neuroscience: 'We'll be able to plug information streams directly into
> the cortex'
>
>
> By 2030, we are likely to have developed no-frills brain-machine
> interfaces, allowing the paralysed to dance in their thought-controlled
> exoskeleton suits. I sincerely hope we will not still be interfacing with
> computers via keyboards, one forlorn letter at a time.
>
> I'd like to imagine we'll have robots to do our bidding. But I predicted
> that 20 years ago, when I was a sanguine boy leaving Star Wars, and the
> smartest robot we have now is the Roomba vacuum cleaner. So I won't be
> surprised if I'm wrong in another 25 years. Artificial intelligence has
> proved itself an unexpectedly difficult problem.
>
> Maybe we will understand what's happening when we immerse our heads into
> the colourful night blender of dreams. We will have cracked the secret of
> human memory by realising that it was never about storing things, but about
> the relationships between things.
>
> Will we have reached the singularity ? the point at which computers surpass
> human intelligence and perhaps give us our comeuppance? We'll probably be
> able to plug information streams directly into the cortex for those who want
> it badly enough to risk the surgery. There will be smart drugs to enhance
> learning and memory and a flourishing black market among ambitious
> students to obtain them.
>
> Having lain to rest the nature-nurture dichotomy at that point, we will
> have a molecular understanding of the way in which cultural narratives work
> their way into brain tissue and of individual susceptibility to those
> stories.
>
> Then there's the mystery of consciousness. Will we finally have a framework
> that allows us to translate the mechanical pieces and parts into private,
> subjective experience? As it stands now, we don't even know what such a
> framework could look like ("carry the two here and that equals the
> experience of tasting cinnamon").
>
> That line of research will lead us to confront the question of whether we
> can reproduce consciousness by replicating the exact structure of the brain
> ? say, with zeros and ones, or beer cans and tennis balls. If this theory of
> materialism turns out to be correct, then we will be well on our way to
> downloading our brains into computers, allowing us to live forever in The
> Matrix.
>
> But if materialism is incorrect, that would be equally interesting: perhaps
> brains are more like radios that receive an as-yet-undiscovered force. The
> one thing we can be sure of is this: no matter how wacky the predictions we
> make today, they will look tame in the strange light of the future.
>
> David Eagleman, neuroscientist and writer
>
>
> 7 Physics: 'Within a decade, we'll know what dark matter is'
>
> The next 25 years will see fundamental advances in our understanding of the
> underlying structure of matter and of the universe. At the moment, we have
> successful descriptions of both, but we have open questions. For example,
> why do particles of matter have mass and what is the dark matter that
> provides most of the matter in the universe?
>
> I am optimistic that the answer to the mass question will be found within a
> few years, whether or not it is the mythical Higgs boson, and believe that
> the answer to the dark matter question will be found within a decade.
>
> Key roles in answering these questions will be made by experiments at
> Cern's Large Hadron Collider, which started operations in earnest last year
> and is expected to run for most of the next 20 years; others will be played
> by astrophysical searches for dark matter and cosmological observations such
> as those from the European Space Agency's Planck satellite.
>
> Many theoretical proposals for answering these questions invoke new
> principles in physics, such as the existence of additional dimensions of
> space or a "supersymmetry" between the constituents of matter and the forces
> between them, and we will discover whether these ideas are useful for
> physics. Both these ideas play roles in string theory, the best guess we
> have for a complete theory of all the fundamental forces including gravity.
>
> Will string theory be pinned down within 20 years? My crystal ball is
> cloudy on this point, but I am sure that we physicists will have an exciting
> time trying to find out.
>
> John Ellis, theoretical physicist at Cern and King's College London
>
>
> 8 Food: 'Russia will become a global food superpower'
>
> When experts talk about the coming food security crisis, the date they
> fixate upon is 2030. By then, our numbers will be nudging 9 billion and we
> will need to be producing 50% more food than we are now.
>
> By the middle of that decade, therefore, we will either all be starving,
> and fighting wars over resources, or our global food supply will have
> changed radically. The bitter reality is that it will probably be a mixture
> of both.
>
> Developed countries such as the UK are likely, for the most part, to have
> attempted to pull up the drawbridge, increasing national production and
> reducing our reliance on imports.
>
> In response to increasing prices, some of us may well have reduced our
> consumption of meat, the raising of which is a notoriously inefficient use
> of grain. This will probably create a food underclass, surviving on a carb-
> and fat-heavy diet, while those with money scarf the protein.
>
> The developing world, meanwhile, will work to bridge the food gap by
> embracing the promise of biotechnology which the middle classes in the
> developed world will have assumed that they had the luxury to reject.
>
> In truth, any of the imported grain that we do consume will come from
> genetically modified crops. As climate change lays waste to the productive
> fields of southern Europe and north Africa, more water-efficient strains of
> corn, wheat and barley will be pressed into service; likewise, to the north,
> Russia will become a global food superpower as the same climate change opens
> up the once frozen and massive Siberian prairie to food production.
>
> The consensus now is that the planet does have the wherewithal to feed that
> huge number of people. It's just that some people in the west may find the
> methods used to do so unappetising.
>
> Jay Rayner, TV presenter and the Observer's food critic
>
>
> 9 Nanotechnology: 'Privacy will be a quaint obsession'
>
>
> Twenty years ago, Don Eigler, a scientist working for IBM in California,
> wrote out the logo of his employer in letters made of individual atoms. This
> feat was a graphic symbol of the potential of the new field of
> nanotechnology, which promises to rebuild matter atom by atom, molecule by
> molecule, and to give us unprecedented power over the material world.
>
> Some, like the futurist Ray Kurzweil, predict that nanotechnology will lead
> to a revolution, allowing us to make any kind of product for virtually
> nothing; to have computers so powerful that they will surpass human
> intelligence; and to lead to a new kind of medicine on a sub-cellular level
> that will allow us to abolish ageing and death.
>
> I don't think that Kurzweil's "technological singularity" ? a dream of
> scientific transcendence that echoes older visions of religious apocalypse ?
> will happen. Some stubborn physics stands between us and "the rapture of the
> nerds". But nanotechnology will lead to some genuinely transformative
> applications.
>
> New ways of making solar cells very cheaply on a very large scale offer us
> the best hope we have for providing low-carbon energy on a big enough scale
> to satisfy the needs of a growing world population aspiring to the
> prosperity we're used to in the developed world.
>
> We'll learn more about intervening in our biology at the sub-cellular level
> and this nano-medicine will give us new hope of overcoming really difficult
> and intractable diseases, such as Alzheimer's, that will increasingly
> afflict our population as it ages.
>
> The information technology that drives your mobile phone or laptop is
> already operating at the nanoscale. Another 25 years of development will
> lead us to a new world of cheap and ubiquitous computing, in which privacy
> will be a quaint obsession of our grandparents.
>
> Nanotechnology is a different type of science, respecting none of the
> conventional boundaries between disciplines and unashamedly focused on
> applications rather than fundamental understanding.
>
> Given the huge resources being directed towards nanotechnology in China and
> its neighbours, this may also be the first major technology of the modern
> era that is predominantly developed outside the US and Europe.
>
> Richard Jones, pro-vice-chancellor for research and innovation at the
> University of Sheffield
>
>
> 10 Gaming: 'We'll play games to solve problems'
>
>
> In the last decade, in the US and Europe but particularly in south-east
> Asia, we have witnessed a flight into virtual worlds, with people playing
> games such as Second Life. But over the course of the next 25 years, that
> flight will be successfully reversed, not because we're going to spend less
> time playing games, but because games and virtual worlds are going to become
> more closely connected to reality.
>
> There will be games where the action is influenced by what happens in
> reality; and there will be games that use sensors so that we can play them
> out in the real world ? a game in which your avatar is your dog, which wears
> a game collar that measures how fast it's running and whether or not it's
> wagging its tail, for example, where you play with your dog to advance the
> narrative, as opposed to playing with a virtual character. I can imagine
> more physical activity games, too, and these might be used to harness energy
> ? peripherals like a dance pad that actually captures energy from your
> dancing on top of it.
>
> Then there will be problem-solving games: there are already a lot of games
> in which scientists try to teach gamers real science ? how to build proteins
> to cure cancer, for example. One surprising trend in gaming is that gamers
> today prefer, on average, three to one to play co-operative games rather
> than competitive games. Now, this is really interesting; if you think about
> the history of games, there really weren't co-operative games until this
> latest generation of video games. In every game you can think of ? card
> games, chess, sport ? everybody plays to win. But now we'll see increasing
> collaboration, people playing games together to solve problems while they're
> enjoying themselves.
>
> There are also studies on how games work on our minds and our cognitive
> capabilities, and a lot of science suggests you can use games to treat
> depression, anxiety and attention-deficit disorder. Making games that are
> both fun and serve a social purpose isn't easy ? a lot of innovation will be
> required ? but gaming will become increasingly integrated into society.
>
> Jane McGonigal, director of games research & development at the
> Institute for the Future in California and author of Reality Is Broken: Why
> Games Make Us Happy and How They Can Help Us Change the World (Penguin)
>
>
> 11 Web/internet: 'Quantum computing is the future'
>
>
> The open web created by idealist geeks, hippies and academics, who believed
> in the free and generative flow of knowledge, is being overrun by a web that
> is safer, more controlled and commercial, created by problem-solving
> pragmatists.
>
> Henry Ford worked out how to make money by making products people wanted to
> own and buy for themselves. Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs are working out
> how to make money from allowing people to share, on their terms.
>
> Facebook and Apple are spawning cloud capitalism, in which consumers allow
> companies to manage information, media, ideas, money, software, tools and
> preferences on their behalf, holding everything in vast, floating clouds of
> shared data. We will be invited to trade invasions into our privacy ?
> companies knowing ever more about our lives ? for a more personalised
> service. We will be able to share, but on their terms.
>
> Julian Assange and the movement that has been ignited by WikiLeaks is the
> most radical version of the alternative: a free, egalitarian, open and
> public web. The fate of this movement will be a sign of things to come. If
> it can command broad support, then the open web has a chance to remain a
> mainstream force. If, however, it becomes little more than a guerrilla
> campaign, then the open web could be pushed to the margins, along with
> national public radio.
>
> By 2035, the web, as a single space largely made up of webpages accessed on
> computers, will be long gone.
>
> As the web goes mobile, those who pay more will get faster access. We will
> be sharing videos, simulations, experiences and environments, on a
> multiplicity of devices to which we'll pay as much attention as a light
> switch.
>
> Yet, many of the big changes of the next 25 years will come from unknowns
> working in their bedrooms and garages. And by 2035 we will be talking about
> the coming of quantum computing, which will take us beyond the world of
> binary, digital computing, on and off, black and white, 0s and 1s.
>
> The small town of Waterloo, Ontario, which is home to the Perimeter
> Institute, funded by the founder of BlackBerry, currently houses the largest
> collection of theoretical physicists in the world.
>
> The bedrooms of Waterloo are where the next web may well be made.
>
> Charles Leadbeater, author and social entrepreneur
>
>
> 12 Fashion: 'Technology creates smarter clothes'
>
> Fashion is such an important part of the way in which we communicate our
> identity to others, and for a very long time it's meant dress: the textile
> garments on our body. But in the coming decades, I think there'll be much
> more emphasis on other manifestations of fashion and different ways of
> communicating with each other, different ways of creating a sense of
> belonging and of making us feel great about ourselves.
>
> We're already designing our identities online ? manipulating imagery to
> tell a story about ourselves. Instead of meeting in the street or in a bar
> and having a conversation and looking at what each other is wearing, we're
> communicating in some depth through these new channels. With clothing, I
> think it's possible that we'll see a polarisation between items that are
> very practical and those that are very much about display ? and maybe these
> are not things that you own but that you borrow or share.
>
> Technology is already being used to create clothing that fits better and is
> smarter; it is able to transmit a degree of information back to you. This is
> partly driven by customer demand and the desire to know where clothing comes
> from ? so we'll see tags on garments that tell you where every part of it
> was made, and some of this, I suspect, will be legislation-driven, too, for
> similar reasons, particularly as resources become scarcer and it becomes
> increasingly important to recognise water and carbon footprints.
>
> However, it's not simply an issue of functionality. Fashion's gone through
> a big cycle in the last 25 years ? from being something that was treasured
> and cherished to being something that felt disposable, because of a drop in
> prices. In fact, we've completely changed our relationship towards clothes
> and there's a real feeling among designers who I work with that they're
> trying to work back into their designs an element of emotional content.
>
> I think there's definitely a place for technology in creating a dialogue
> with you through your clothes.
>
> Dilys Williams, designer and the director for sustainable fashion at the
> London College of Fashion
>
>
> 13 Nature: 'We'll redefine the wild'
>
> We all want to live in a world where species such as tigers, the great
> whales, orchids and coral reefs can persist and thrive and I am sure that
> the commitment that people have to maintaining the spectacle and diversity
> of life will continue. Over the past 50 years or so, there has been growing
> support for nature conservation. When we understand the causes of species
> losses, good conservation actions can and do reverse the trends.
>
> But it is going to become much harder. The human population has roughly
> doubled since the 1960s and will increase by another third by 2030. Demands
> for food, water and energy will increase, inevitably in competition with
> other species. People already use up to 40% of the world's primary
> production (energy) and this must increase, with important consequences for
> nature.
>
> In the UK, some familiar species will become scarcer as our rare habitats
> (mires, bogs and moorlands) are lost. We will be seeing the effects from
> gradual warming that will allow more continental species to live here, and
> in our towns and cities we'll probably have more species that have become
> adapted to living alongside people.
>
> We can conserve species when we really try, so I'm confident that the
> charismatic mega fauna and flora will mostly still persist in 2035, but they
> will be increasingly restricted to highly managed and protected areas. The
> survivors will be those that cope well with people and those we care about
> enough to save. Increasingly, we won't be living as a part of nature but
> alongside it, and we'll have redefined what we mean by the wild and
> wilderness.
>
> Crucially, we are still rapidly losing overall biodiversity, including soil
> micro-organisms, plankton in the oceans, pollinators and the remaining
> tropical and temperate forests. These underpin productive soils, clean
> water, climate regulation and disease-resistance. We take these vital
> services from biodiversity and ecosystems for granted, treat them recklessly
> and don't include them in any kind of national accounting.
>
> Georgina Mace, professor of conservation science and director of the
> Natural Environment Research Council's Centre for Population Biology,
> Imperial College London
>
>
> 14 Architecture: What constitutes a 'city' will change
>
> In 2035, most of humanity will live in favelas. This will not be entirely
> wonderful, as many people will live in very poor housing, but it will have
> its good side. It will mean that cities will consist of series of small
> units organised, at best, by the people who know what is best for themselves
> and, at worst, by local crime bosses.
>
> Cities will be too big and complex for any single power to understand and
> manage them. They already are, in fact. The word "city" will lose some of
> its meaning: it will make less and less sense to describe agglomerations of
> tens of millions of people as if they were one place, with one identity. If
> current dreams of urban agriculture come true, the distinction between town
> and country will blur. Attempts at control won't be abandoned, however,
> meaning that strange bubbles of luxury will appear, like shopping malls and
> office parks. To be optimistic, the human genius for inventing social
> structures will mean that new forms of settlement we can't quite imagine
> will begin to emerge.
>
> All this assumes that environmental catastrophe doesn't drive us into
> caves. Nor does it describe what will happen in Britain, with a roughly
> stable population and a planning policy dedicated to preserving the status
> quo as much as possible. Britain in 25 years' time may look much as it does
> now, which is not hugely different from 25 years ago.  Rowan Moore, Observer
> architecture correspondent
>
>
> 15 Sport: 'Broadcasts will use holograms'
>
> Globalisation in sport will continue: it's a trend we've seen by the choice
> of Rio for the 2016 Olympics and Qatar for the 2022 World Cup. This will
> mean changes to traditional sporting calendars in recognition of the demands
> of climate and time zones across the planet.
>
> Sport will have to respond to new technologies, the speed at which we
> process information and apparent reductions in attention span. Shorter
> formats, such as Twenty20 cricket and rugby sevens, could aid the
> development of traditional sports in new territories.
>
> The demands of TV will grow, as will technology's role in umpiring and
> consuming sport. Electronics companies are already planning broadcasts using
> live holograms. I don't think we'll see an acceptance of
> performance-enhancing drugs: the trend has been towards zero tolerance and
> long may it remain so.
>
> Mike Lee, chairman of Vero Communications and ex-director of communications
> for London's 2012 Olympic bid
>
>
> 16 Transport: 'There will be more automated cars'
>
> It's not difficult to predict how our transport infrastructure will look in
> 25 years' time ? it can take decades to construct a high-speed rail line or
> a motorway, so we know now what's in store. But there will be radical
> changes in how we think about transport. The technology of information and
> communication networks is changing rapidly and internet and mobile
> developments are helping make our journeys more seamless. Queues at St
> Pancras station or Heathrow airport when the infrastructure can't cope for
> whatever reason should become a thing of the past, but these challenges,
> while they might appear trivial, are significant because it's not easy to
> organise large-scale information systems.
>
> The instinct to travel is innate within us, but we will have to do it in a
> more carbon-efficient way. It's hard to be precise, but I think we'll be
> cycling and walking more; in crowded urban areas we may see travelators ?
> which we see in airports already ? and more scooters. There will be more
> automated cars, like the ones Google has recently been testing. These
> driverless cars will be safer, but when accidents do happen, they may be on
> the scale of airline disasters. Personal jetpacks will, I think, remain a
> niche choice.
>
> Frank Kelly, professor of the mathematics of systems at Cambridge
> University, and former chief scientific adviser to the DfT
>
>
> 17 Health: 'We'll feel less healthy'
>
> Health systems are generally quite conservative. That's why the more
> radical forecasts of the recent past haven't quite materialised. Contrary to
> past predictions, we don't carry smart cards packed with health data; most
> treatments aren't genetically tailored; and health tourism to Bangalore
> remains low. But for all that, health is set to undergo a slow but steady
> revolution. Life expectancy is rising about three months each year, but
> we'll feel less healthy, partly because we'll be more aware of the many
> things that are, or could be, going wrong, and partly because more of us
> will be living with a long-term condition.
>
> We'll spend more on health but also want stronger action to influence
> health. The US Congressional Budget Office forecasts that US health spending
> will rise from 17% of the economy today to 25% in 2025 and 49% in 2082.
> Their forecasts may be designed to shock but they contain an important grain
> of truth. Spending on health and jobs in health is bound to grow.
>
> Some of that spending will go on the problems of prosperity ? obesity,
> alcohol consumption and injuries from extreme sports. Currently fashionable
> ideas of "nudge" will have turned out to be far too weak to change
> behaviours. Instead, we'll be more in the realms of "shove" and "push", with
> cities trying to reshape whole environments to encourage people to walk and
> cycle.
>
> By 2030, mental health may at last be treated on a par with physical
> health. Medicine may have found smart drugs for some conditions but the
> biggest impact may be achieved from lower-tech actions, such as meditation
> in schools or brain gyms for pensioners.
>
> Healthcare will look more like education. Your GP will prescribe you a
> short course on managing your diabetes or heart condition, and when you get
> home there'll be an e-tutor to help you and a vast array of information
> about your condition.
>
> Almost every serious observer of health systems believes that the great
> general hospitals are already anachronistic, but because hospitals are where
> so much of the power lies, and so much of the public attachment, it would be
> a brave forecaster who suggested their imminent demise.
>
> Geoff Mulgan, chief executive of the Young Foundation
>
>
> 18 Religion: 'Secularists will flatter to deceive'
>
>
> Over the next two and a half decades, it is quite possible that those Brits
> who follow a religion will continue both to fall in number and also become
> more orthodox or fundamentalist. Similarly, organised religions will
> increasingly work together to counter what they see as greater threats to
> their interests ? creeping agnosticism and secularity.
>
> Another 10 years of failure by the Anglican church to face down the
> African-led traditionalists over women bishops and gay clerics could open
> the question of disestablishment of the Church of England. The country's
> politicians, including an increasingly gay-friendly Tory party, may find it
> difficult to see how state institutions can continue to be associated with
> an image of sexism and homophobia.
>
> I predict an increase in debate around the tension between a secular agenda
> which says it is merely seeking to remove religious privilege, end
> discrimination and separate church and state, and organised orthodox
> religion which counterclaims that this would amount to driving religious
> voices from the public square.
>
> Despite two of the three party leaders being professed atheists, the
> secular tendency in this country still flatters to deceive. There is, at
> present, no organised, non-religious, rationalist movement. In contrast, the
> forces of organised religion are better resourced, more organised and more
> politically influential than ever before.
>
> Dr Evan Harris, author of a secularist manifesto
>
>
> 19 Theatre: 'Cuts could force a new political fringe'
>
>
> The theatre will weather the recent cuts. Some companies will close and the
> repertoire of others will be safe and cautious; the art form will emerge
> robust in a decade or so. The cuts may force more young people outside the
> existing structures back to an unsubsidised fringe and this may breed
> different types of work that will challenge the subsidised sector.
>
> Student marches will become more frequent and this mobilisation may breed a
> more politicised generation of theatre artists. We will see old forms from
> the 1960s re-emerge (like agit prop) and new forms will be generated to
> communicate ideology and politics.
>
> More women will emerge as directors, writers and producers. This change is
> already visible at the flagship subsidised house, the National Theatre,
> where the repertoire for bigger theatres like the Lyttelton already includes
> directors like Marianne Elliott and Josie Rourke, and soon the Cottesloe
> will start to embrace the younger generation ? Polly Findlay and Lyndsey
> Turner.
>
> Katie Mitchell, theatre director
>
>
> 20 Storytelling: 'Eventually there'll be a Twitter classic'
>
>
> Are you reading fewer books? I am and reading books is sort of my job. It's
> just that with the multifarious delights of the internet, spending 20 hours
> in the company of one writer and one story needs motivation. It's worth
> doing, of course; like exercise, its benefits are many and its pleasures
> great. And yet everyone I know is doing it less. And I can't see that that
> trend will reverse.
>
> That's the bad news. Twenty-five years from now, we'll be reading fewer
> books for pleasure. But authors shouldn't fret too much; e-readers will make
> it easier to impulse-buy books at 4am even if we never read past the first
> 100 pages.
>
> And stories aren't becoming less popular ? they're everywhere, from adverts
> to webcomics to fictional tweets ? we're only beginning to explore the
> exciting possibilities of web-native literature, stories that really exploit
> the fractal, hypertextual way we use the internet.
>
> My guess is that, in 2035, stories will be ubiquitous. There'll be a
> tube-based soap opera to tune your iPod to during your commute, a tale
> (incorporating on-sale brands) to enjoy via augmented reality in the
> supermarket. Your employer will bribe you with stories to focus on your job.
>
> Most won't be great, but then most of everything isn't great ? and
> eventually there'll be a Twitter-based classic.
>
> Naomi Alderman, novelist and games writer
>
>
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>
> --
> Dr Athina Karatzogianni
> Lecturer in Media, Culture and Society
> The Dean's Representative (Chinese Partnerships)
> Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
> The University of Hull
> United Kingdom
> HU6 7RX
> T: ++44 (0) 1482 46 5790
> F: ++44 (0) 1482 466107
>
> http://www2.hull.ac.uk/FASS/humanities/media,_culture_and_society/staff/karatzogianni,_dr_athina.aspx
>
> Check out Athina's work
> http://www.routledge.com/books/search/keywords/karatzogianni/
>
> Russian hackers
> http://www.digitalicons.org/issue04/athina-karatzogianni/
>
>


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