The Future of Almost Everything, page 2
large migrations from poor nations to wealthier ones
better global literacy and more university graduates
fall in costs of production of most mass-produced items
rapid increase in global trade and intense hunger for travel
formation of trading blocs, free trade areas, currency zones
ever-larger global corporations, mergers, consolidations
rapid growth of gene screening to predict future health
growth of biotech therapies including stem cells
ageing of many populations e.g. EU, Japan, South Korea, China
baby booms in emerging nations such as India and Nigeria
feminisation of many societies, with more women at work
better life expectancy with improved diet and health
increased concern about environment/sustainability
destabilisation of nations with mineral or energy wealth
shift from wars between nations to civil conflicts
wider acceptance of democracy (but mistrust of politicians)
wider adoption of civil rights, protecting the vulnerable
higher customer expectations for convenience, comfort, value, service, honesty, reliability, speed – and more complaints when standards fall
more automation of routine tasks, in homes, offices, factories.
I could list hundreds more for your own specific industry or nation. These wider trends have been obvious to most trend analysts like myself for a while, and have been well described over the last 20–30 years. They have evolved much more slowly than booms and busts, or social fads.
And even in other trends where changes were expected to happen very rapidly, the reality has often been much slower than many forecast – for example the death of traditional bank branches, or fall in volumes of cash in circulation.
All trends connect to all other trends
All major trends will interact to shape our future world. While a few will be disrupted by wild card events, as we will see in Chapter 1, most are unlikely to be.
What is more, your own personal future is being shaped by over 7 billion other people’s futures. All personal worlds link together to form what our wider world will be. That is why it is so illogical and dangerous to focus on a single trend without the full picture. But sadly, that is what so many economists, biologists, techno-gurus, military advisors and other specialist ‘experts’ tend to do, each blindly micro-forecasting within their own speciality, in isolation from the true macro-picture. Hardly a surprise, then, that so many have fared so disastrously in their Future-Casting over the past two decades.
I am not saying that I haven’t also got some things wrong. Anticipating future trends is always a risky and potentially humbling process. If you want to judge for yourself, you will find over 600 YouTube videos, hundreds of presentations and articles and the text of 6 entire books posted since 1997 on my website, visited by over 16 million different people.*
Just to be absolutely clear about this, each trend only makes complete sense in the context of every other trend – which means that this book really needs to be read through more than once. As we will see, the moment we talk about, say, digital tech, we are also talking about e-commerce and retail. But as soon as we look at retail, we are touching on demographics, emerging markets, manufacturing and global trade. And as soon as we discuss global trade, we are into a debate about future fuel costs for shipping and trade barriers, and so on.
2030 is closer than we think
We are going to look mainly at the ‘future of almost everything’ over the next 15 years. But before we do so, as a reality check, we need to be really honest with ourselves about the answer to a very important question. You may think this a strange one for a Futurist to ask, someone whose career has been built on making sense of rapid change, but nevertheless the question is:
How much has really changed in the past 15 years?
The truth is, that despite all the hype about the speed of change, it would not take long to update a business leader who recently woke up from a coma that lasted 15 years. Probably less than a couple of hours, to cover the most important global and social changes. Let us call him Tom…
Little would really surprise Tom. What would we tell him about? The dotcom crash and 9/11 attack; wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria linked to Islamic militants; cheaper and more mobile computing; faster web, more e-commerce and rapid growth of social media; cheaper technology; Asia rising fast; more worries about global warming and wind farms everywhere; big market crash following a long boom, triggered by a bank lending crisis; corporate banking scandals; rising retirement age and worries about pensions; Russia flexing muscles again… and some worries about viral epidemics.
Pushed to see radical change?
But walk Tom down the streets of any capital city in Europe and I suggest that he would struggle to see much radical change. Perhaps that seems surprising – but, for example, in fashion, music, day-to-day culture, politics, hopes and dreams of young people I would say things look pretty much the same, apart from more people looking at smartphone screens more of the time, and buying more online.
Indeed, Tom would doubtless point out that many people, like him, were already using smartphones such as the Nokia 9000 in 1996, with full web browser, email, camera, word processing, notepads and prices halving every 12 months. And he might well tell me that his daughter used to run up to 16 chat screens simultaneously back in 1997. Most of the other things above were also signposted in the 1990s in some way. So what would really feel so radically new to Tom today?
Young and old share very similar lives
There is also far less of a ‘generation gap’ today, compared with what we saw in many developed nations back in the 1950s to 1970s. Younger and older people are listening to similar music. They watch the same films, wear similar clothes, travel to similar places, share most of the same values.
People eat out more, and in general standards of living have risen. Technology is cheaper. Kitchens tend to be more open plan but most homes in Europe and America look similar to what they did in 2000 – after all, most are more than 30 years old. Offices are more open plan, and people carry computers or mobile devices rather than sit at work-stations. But most still commute to work. And TV news looks and sounds the same. Familiar Hollywood film plots keep being recycled, albeit with better computer graphics, and major sporting events still attract huge crowds.
Of course, while Tom was in a coma, hundreds of books and web pages were written alleging the opposite, hyping up the revolutionary impact of, say, social media or recent events, but our own experience and common sense tells us something different, unless you happen to be a mobile marketing executive, or live in some parts of the Middle East.
Many things in 2030 will also be remarkably similar
We will see in the chapters of this book how profound many changes will be. However, to place those disruptions in proportion, the truth is that daily life for most people on earth will be very similar in many ways in 2030 to what it is today. A three-year-old child will have a life that is very familiar, when they are 18, to people who are 18 today. They will have recently attended high school, taken exams, and be heading for their first jobs or university. Their hopes, thoughts and dreams will be similar in many ways to yours at the same age.
They too will look in the mirror and wonder about self-image. They too will hope one day to meet the right person and settle into a wonderful long-term relationship. They too will think a lot about ways to have a happy, comfortable life, and also from time to time about ‘making a difference’, or what government they want, or about a more sustainable world. They too will feel worried about the future.
And when that new generation become parents themselves, they will have similar worries to previous generations about the well-being of their own children. So please don’t make the mistake of thinking that their basic human nature will be any different because of next-generation digital, mobile, robotics, virtual life, wearable devices, gene programming, social connectivity or anything else.
The M generation is more concerned about the long-term future
Yet at the same time, as I say, fundamental shifts are taking place, which will transform entire societies, wipe out many multinationals, destroy many governments. And the M generation – those whose entire adult lives are being lived in the third millennium – is far more concerned about long-range issues such as sustainability.
History will record a very different kind of world by 2050, with a totally new balance of power, new global cultures, new industrial giants, new forms of government and new social habits. The generation born in 2030 will all be adults in 2050, and most of those who are born to middle-class families will expect to be alive in 2130.
Most debates are about short-term timing
I have found that most short-term debates about the future in boardrooms are NOT about what is going to happen, which is often fairly obvious, but about when. Timing is often the most important issue for companies.
For example:
When will most e-commerce transactions take place on a mobile device, globally?
When will the amount of cash in circulation in Europe stop growing?
When will China become the world’s largest economy?
When will our current website feel completely out of date?
When will we have a vaccine against AIDS?
Six Faces of the Future
So let’s move onto the futuring method that I have used over much of the last two decades. The Six Faces of the Future mesh together as a forecasting tool, to stretch our world view and challenge the way we normally think. Each face is important and is a chapter of this book, but the relative strength of each face will depend on who you are and where you live.
It is impossible to keep all six faces in view at once: some are related, others are opposites. Together they form the faces of a cube, which we need to constantly keep turning. Emotion is the force that makes the cube spin. The faces spell the word ‘FUTURE’.
Fast – speed of change, Wild Cards, future of digital technology
Urban – future urbanisation, demography, health, fashions, fads
Tribal – future nations, cultures, social networks, brands, teams
Universal – future globalisation, retail, trade, manufacturing
Radical – death of politics, rise of radical activism, sustainability
Ethical – values, motivation, leadership, aspiration, spirituality
You will see that Fast and Urban are closely related and sit together on one side, while Radical and Ethical are also together on the other. On top is Universal, and beneath, pulling in the opposite direction, is Tribal.
Here is a really important thing: most executives spend their lives looking at the cube from above, at a world that is Fast, Urban and Universal, and are almost blind to another dimension. However, one twist through 180 degrees presents us with a very different view: a world that is Tribal, Radical and Ethical.
Understanding the tension between these two dominant views is really important. As we will see, a tiny minority who are strongly Radical, Ethical and Tribal can affect the rest of us profoundly. Think of Islamic State or climate change activists or about consumers who campaign to stop child labour. Radical in thinking, driven by a strong sense of shared Ethics (you may not agree with these ethics but that is irrelevant), and very Tribal (tight, together, well organised).
For every trend, look for a counter-trend
As we will discover, every trend tends to have its counterpart, which is why media pundits are able at once to describe, for example, trends to greater liberalism and greater conservatism, in parts of the same city or nation.
Drug use soars, with growing calls for decriminalisation, at the same time as a neo-prohibitionist movement seeks to make it all but impossible to smoke a cigarette in a public place. Hyper-sexualisation of children is promoted every day in Western media, at the same time as outrage grows over child abuse.
Expect to see powerful culture clashes between opposing trends, a world increasingly of extremes over the next 100 years, with tendencies to intolerance as groups fight to dominate the future – as we are seeing not only in culture clashes between Islam and liberal ‘Western’ culture, but also within Islam itself. The greatest forces will be unleashed by clashes of conscience rather than culture, influenced by religious conviction, or lack of it.
The big question is this: if trend and counter-trend coexist, which will be dominant? The truth is that in a pluralistic, multi-track society there are a number of pendulums operating in every city and nation, which is why trend-watching is so fascinating.
All leaders must be Futurists
People often ask me what a Futurist is. But in a sense, all thinking people are Futurists. It is part of the human condition to think about tomorrow and plan ahead. Futurists are just professional future-thinkers, with a span that reaches across many industries and nations.
All leaders have to be Futurists. People only follow leaders when they believe in their vision of a better future. So where does your own vision come from? It has to be based on a deep understanding of what tomorrow could be. The stronger your vision, the greater your leadership will be.
Vision has to be founded on stark reality, based on what we know today – where we are likely to end up if no action is taken. And built on practical hope – what we could achieve if we all work together.
Look back from the future of 2500
A useful Futuring tool is to imagine that you are in some future time, looking back. For example, a great exercise is to sit down and write last year’s Annual Report of the company you work for, as if you were the chairman, living in the year 2020 or even 2025. It really sharpens your thinking about what could happen. Now let us jump further forward, in the same spirit, to the year 2500.
If we look back in the year 2500, reflecting on over 25,000 years of history, we will note the exponential rise from 1750 to 2050 in population and cities, scientific discovery, health, trade, innovation, wealth, consumption and capacity for global war – all traced back to the industrial revolution that began with the invention of steam power in the UK, and discovery of electricity.
Perhaps we will also remind ourselves how population growth collapsed in the 21st century, despite giant leaps in life expectancy in every nation. We will probably reflect that the greatest challenges to survival of humankind over the last 500 years (apart from global wars) have been solved by inventions and technologies that were totally unknown in the year 2000.
We will also acknowledge how much the quality of personal life improved, for almost all of humankind – education, health, wealth, contentment and sense of well-being.
And I am sure we will also be struck by the fact that the biggest questions in our year of 2500 are still related to ‘very old’ issues like sustainability and ethics. How many people can we provide for in centuries to come? How much consumption? What kind of world do we want to live in? How can we all live at peace on a small planet? What is the right action for us to take?
We will probably agree that the most complex problems that humankind has seen over the previous 500 years were caused by the darker sides of human nature: emotional reactions to history, resistance to change, struggles for power, tribalism that led to conflict, greed, envy and a constant desire for more.
Why I am optimistic and not apocalyptic
I am often asked at the end of keynotes on the future if I am an optimist or a pessimist? As you can see from the above, I am probably an optimist, despite the many genuine future threats and challenges we face, and despite being very realistic about the horrors that small numbers of human beings are capable of.
Over the years, many so-called Futurists and trend-spotters have given dire, apocalyptic and spectacular warnings about our world running out of food, or water, or space, or about all of humankind being wiped out by major events, or being taken over by robots. For reasons I will explain, the vast majority of such forecasts are alarmist nonsense, although of course they do make eye-catching headlines.
The truth, as we will see, is that our world is far more resilient than many fear. Humankind has an astonishing and accelerating capacity for genius and innovation, and this will solve many of the world’s greatest challenges in ways that are very hard to imagine today. In addition, there are many natural balancing forces within global systems, including the oceans and the global economy.
So then, let us turn to the first Face of the Future, which is all about the speed of change, and what that may mean for you.
Footnote
* http://www.globalchange.com
Chapter 1
FAST
HISTORY IS CHANGING FASTER than you can calculate a risk or exploit an opportunity, whether you look at the economy, global events, industry, social factors or politics. The interval between early signs and a full-blown new trend is shorter than ever, and long-range forecasting is becoming more complex.
The developed world is cash-rich, time-poor and feels intensely impatient. Chapters of personal lives are measured in minutes, major events in seconds. Five billion people are communicating digitally, usually many times an hour on mobiles, unless asleep. There is a widespread obsession with instant information, answers, new products and new friends.
Digital pressure or addiction will become one of the commonest causes of anxiety, depression and mental breakdown, particularly among young people. A recent study in the UK found 13% of smartphone users were psychologically addicted to their devices, with the average user spending around 4 hours on their device a day, often to the neglect of their jobs, family and other aspects of life.
Expect huge growth in ways to instantly de-stress, wind down, regenerate.
Some say that daily life for most people has never changed so fast, and we must be close to the limits of human endurance, but this is untrue. Large populations have coped surprisingly well with far more dramatic, rapid and convulsive changes at times of natural disaster or regional wars.
