A Profile of Predictions

I've been delighted to have received numerous, fascinating predictions.

As of December 26, 1996, the respondents' average age is 32. The youngest person is an 11-year-old girl from Malaysia. The oldest person is a 55-year-old-man from Canada.

The ratio of male to female respondents is about 70-30.

Most respondents are from the U.S. -- with the UK and Canada strongly represented. (I suspect that the demographics will change through time.)

Ark for the 22nd Century

We'll ask them to line up two by two,
Our contradictions, opposites, contrary
Categories--all that we've fought
Over for the centuries--
What else to do but bequeath
Our own polarities?

Either shyly takes or's hand,
Hard-headed finds soft-hearted,
Right lines up with wrong,
East with West, North with South,
Rich takes poor, for better or for worse,
Decimation asks for progress.

We'll close the hatch and lock it,
Set them adrift in an acid rain
Long enough to hope
For children of hybrid vigor
From those contentious
Unions--polyglot both, all,
When the dove returns
With the olive branch
And the doors open
On our one precarious world.

--Robin S. Chapman
205 N. Blackhawk Ave.
Madison, WI 53705

Sampling of Predictions I've Received for The Future Project

From Alan M., a 26-year-old unemployed male from Montreal:

Within the next hundred years I think the changes we can expect will result from two developments. First, there will be an appearance of a machine whose intelligence exceeds that of man. And second, the capitalist system will grow in a self perpetuating fashion toppling anything which stands in it's way including socialist systems and even governments.
While I'd like to believe that the advances in technology will solve more problems than they create, I'm not so certain this will be the case. While it may be possible to navigate through the future without disaster I think that we're going to face the most difficult problems in human history. One misplaced footstep in the coming century could easily spell disaster for mankind.
This sounds rather bleak, but I believe it is the case. In the past, advances and societal change could usually be planned for and dealt with (despite the occasional revolution when change appeared too slowly for someone's liking). However, today the process of technological change far outpaces the ability of human beings to adapt to it. Our antiquated notions of government, law, and economy are being changed around us. This process is not going to slow and can only continue to accelerate. We are no longer guiding the course of human progress but are adapting to it as it happens.
Up till now I've talked about the future in very general abstract terms. Here are some of the things which I expect will happen.
Government: Government over territories will become obsolete as global economic trade, freedom to change citizenship, remote work, and virtual worlds all mean that people are less dependent on their physical location. It is not unlikely that virtual governments begin to spring up.
Technology: sometime within the next 100 years a machine intelligence will be created which exceeds that of the average human being. This machine will possess all the things we think distinguish us as human, including emotions, feelings, and intelligence. Perhaps this machine will be of a neural-net type architecture or maybe something else. This will be a great crossroads for mankind. While machines gradually replace labor, knowledge will be the sole protection against having a job become redundant. Ironically, some labor and service positions may be the last to be made redundant because of the "human" touch these services provide and because many abstract labor-intensive tasks will be quite resilient to replacement by machinery. When eventually all of human labor can be replaced by intelligent machinery, the value of human labor will decline in parallel to the cost of the replacing machinery. Ownership of capital will become very important in this new environment if people are to make ends meet. When, at some stage, machines begin competing amongst themselves for resources such as land, the human element will have much less of a stake in how allocations will take place. At the end of 100 years, human intelligence will appear infantile in comparison to our machine counterparts. Wonderful technologies and tools will make their appearance in a golden age of knowledge . Human labor will not likely have anything valuable to contribute economically to the machinery we have created. However, we will also have access to the products of our machines which, although they have no economic value to the machines, will be of tremendous value to us. More or less like taking a discarded bicycle and bringing it back to Roman times. Humanity will survive on the "crumbs" which are not worth worrying about by the self-perpetuating machinery we have created. We must simply be sure to keep out of the way.
Economy: The global economy will have truly arrived. Money, capital, and labor will flow easily across any physical barrier. This will have obvious impacts on government. While it will bring more power to the people, it will put wealth into the hands of those who are good at accumulating it and cause ever-increasing hardship for those who are unable to. While social systems are permitted in closed economies, truly global economies will form pressures which all but eliminate systems of wealth distribution which take from the rich and give to the poor. Anonymous currencies will become part of this process. Taking care of the less fortunate will be forced out of the powers of government and into the powers of individuals. We can only hope that individuals take up the gap in this environment. Eventually, corporate, capital, and machinery (computing) will be the mainstays of the economy. Individuals will be forced to react to the flow of capital, and power will be put out of the hands of the very same governments and institutions which are presently trying to keep these forces at bay.
Society: If the present century has brought this far we can expect explosive changes in the future. Virtual worlds will captivate many. Entertainment will become a driving force in many people's lives. Physical discomfort will be exchanged for "windows into cyberspace". While this may seem farfetched, this is already happening as many people choose to live in cramped quarters yet spring for a 24- inch television set with stereo sound and a hi-fi VCR. As virtual worlds become more appealing than the physical, many will be drawn to live, work, and entertain themselves from within the attractive confines of cyberspace. While today's city inhabitants hardly know their immediate neighbors (unthinkable years ago), tomorrow's city inhabitants will hardly know the people they share the same house or apartment with. Those who can afford it will have access to more worldly experience through the eyes of cyberspace than anyone today can imagine. Tomorrow's non-conformists will be those people who embrace the physical world and choose to live within it... a prospect which will become increasingly risky as the power for physical violence increases in the hands of individuals. The hand weapons of tomorrow will give any individual with access to them enormous destructive capability. The no-win games of violence which exist in the physical world will make force--not reason--the order of the day, making a retreat to a non-physical existence in cyberspace far more attractive to the majority.
I generally get pretty depressed when I think about the future of mankind. It's unfortunate, but I believe that society will increasingly become unable to control its ultimate destination. Our best weapon of the moment is to become aware of the processes taking place so that we are equipped to deal with these occurrences as they manifest themselves. While there are many changes which will occur, the danger will not come so much from the changes themselves as from the instability that being unprepared for these changes will cause. This is what I believe will be the greatest difficulty which we will face in our journey through the future. I'm quite glad to hear of your project for this reason. The more that people are prepared for what may come, the better they will be equipped to deal with it in an orderly and reasonable fashion. In the end resistance to certain change is going to create much more problems it will solve. A willingness to adapt to changes and make use of them as they arrive will produce a much healthier future in the end.

From S. Lim, a 26-year old male data analyst from Singapore:

I would like to venture some opinions about businesses in he future. And it is simply this:
The theories of many economists of the past would prove to be correct by the dawn of the 22nd century.
The explosion of the communications industry (Internet, Convergence of Telecommunications, Broadcasting and IT towards the era of Data Communications) will have already moved the world to the age of perfect communication.
It is thus the age of perfect information and perfect competition. The business model will be one where power is in the hands of the consumer. Consumers never have to buy anything the producers put in front of them. This will be the age of Mass Customization. Everybody buys exactly what he or she needs - the product will fit to the T. The concept where a person owns anything that has features or functions that is not needed would be a totally alien concept.
Also because of perfect competition, companies and work-force alike would not need to put up with less than anything perfect for their needs. Simply put, companies no longer need to stay put with an employee who is not perfectly suited for their needs. And similarly employees never have to put up with staying with an employer they are not comfortable with.
In fact, by 2099 the concept of "companies" may be non-existent. Every individual works with a team of people who are all experts in their own field, coming together for projects of profit and disbanding when the projects are complete. Like the craftsman of the medieval era. The 22nd century will be one giant global village where everyone is an expert (read: craftsman) in his/her own right. People can only make money selling their expertise.
The globalisation of identity will result in the fusion of cultures. This will cause individuals, towns, states, countries to exert their own identity even more intensely. Huge nations with multiple cultures like China, India and even the USA will break up (albeit very likely to be bloody) into smaller entities. For all you know there will no longer be the concept of "country", "nation" etc. Individuals may exert their own identities to that extent.
Already this world has a large number of people born of multiple parentage. Many people can longer be labeled as "I am Chinese" or "I am French". A person can be of "German-Irish-Chinese-Russian-etc-etc" parentage.
Science and technology will bring developments to levels currently imperceivable. For example, RAM chips on PCs are now a standard of some 32 MB. This is a growth from some 240 KB of only less than 10 years ago. At this rate by 2005 we are talking about RAM in TB - i.e. Terabits or trillion bits. By 2099.....whew!
Medical science via genetic engineering and such developments will have long found a cure for ailments like cancer, AIDs, and the common cold, but will bring medical ailments like we don't believe as well. For example the Bubonic Plague of the 13th Century would never occur with today's medical technology, but AIDs made the Bubonic Plague look like candy floss. Similarly diseases like AIDs, ebola, and cancer would look like marshmallows compared with the diseases of the future. But the average life-span of a person would probably rise by some 20 to 30 years. Because of this the world population may (1) explode causing social problems to grow to scales way beyond controllable levels like today or (2) global wealth will cause individual families to consider smaller household sizes resulting in a world where the mean age is much higher than today.
This is an optimistic scenario. Pessimistically, If you compound the social ills of today we may be talking about self-induced genocide as a result of the collapse of society with advancement slowing down. But I think that is unlikely.

From Ken R., a 42-year-old retail store manager from Oregon:

The more things seem to change, the more they will stay the same. If we ever go so crazy as to have another world war, the resulting world will have finally learned from its mistakes and be much more progressive and humane.

From Bob M., a 39-year-old systems manager for a financial institution in England:

The biggest change that took place during the 21st century was the death of the cities. Developments in communications enabled people to telecommute and work where they wanted. Coupled with this, advances in transport, including the development of 'walking machines', much like those featured in the Star Wars movies, reduced the need for roads, highways, and so on.
The countryside reverted to a greener model, with small villages, hamlets and isolated homesteads connected electronically, and serviced by large, mostly automated depots which deliver goods ordered 'on line'. As the infrastructure of cities is no longer required, so the overall work load decreases, enabling people to spend more time developing their own skills, as artists, or artisans, or by growing their own produce. A new economy based upon barter developed.

From Alexander K., a 55-year-old Canadian stockbroker and self-described anarchist:

Within five years Quebec will try to separate from Canada. This will cause a severe upheaval in eastern Canada as the Indians and the English-speaking will say "no way". The Canadian dollar will drop precipitously, causing severe economic dislocation in the rest of Canada. The Canadian army will move in an attempt to restore order. The US army will go on alert in case the conflict spills over the border but the US will have no intention of getting involved in Canada's affairs. Eventually two of the economically strongest western provinces, British Columbia (Pacific rim, mining, forestry, tourism, agriculture, fishing) and Alberta, (oil wheat, agriculture) will form some type of association with the three western states (Washington, Oregon and California). This region will be called Cascadia.

From Alan L., a 25-year-old senior computing officer from London:

I have three things to say: Integration, Standardization, Portability.
Integration is becoming increasingly likely in the fields of both hardware design and information presentation. The development of better display technology and forthcoming network computing, coupled with ever-improving data communication into both the home and work place, will lead to the more-or-less inevitable integration of phone, voice-mail, e-mail, Internet, WWW, TV, video, hi-fi etc. This development will provide the necessary platform for true multi-media information systems.
This mass integration of hardware into one consumer-friendly box will lead to the establishment, I hope, of concise standards for the required range of deliverable features. This will help to ease the burden on the coming generation of multi-media engineers, because the standardization will enable them to concentrate on working with the information and not get caught up in the issues of binding the types of information onto the various types of proprietary dedicated hardware.
This final abstraction of the information from the physical display and processing hardware will aid true portability of the information constructs and services that are created.

From a 31-year-old male chemical engineer in Berlin:

Although I would consider myself being generally optimistic and would like to see things becoming better, I am also a realist to state that the future conditions for nature and mankind will become narrower.
Ecology and nature as we know it: Obviously diversity, an indicator for the stability of ecological systems, is decreasing worldwide. This is mainly due to human activities. I think the human population on earth will not decrease at least till the year 2030, when the annual energy consumption will also reach its top.
These two indicators (energy use and population) seem to be the main factors in the destruction of the existing ecological systems and will have destroyed vast landscapes. In Africa there will remain only small forested areas as internationally protected zones. In the Amazonas region there will still be larger forests which are also protected by international support but are in area only half of what they are in1996. The blue whale has died out, only some rhinoceroses are preserved in international zoos. Ocean fishing has become uneconomic.
The water level has risen by 50 cm. Twelve billion people will live on earth in 2030.
Accessible Energy: There will still be fossil fuel in 2030, there will still be cars and planes but less of them. Travel is more a luxury then before; poor people in colder countries will not be able to afford heating anymore. The international trade of large bulk goods is restricted to only that necessary because of the high transportation cost. This causes less traffic, but not less international communication. Although electricity will become more expensive by the factor six related to an average salary, network communication and virtual travels will replace the human desire for global contacts.
Because energy becomes very much more expensive, all goods with a large energy share will be dear, and the living standard in industrialized countries will therefore decrease. The situation will be incredibly bad in countries that haven't achieved widespread welfare by the year 2000. These countries will not develop an infrastructure which makes effective transportation or production possible. The little money these governments have they will be spent to protect their dictatorships or to feed the most urgent hunger.
Hunger and thirst will be the normal condition for half of mankind in 2030. This will also be the limiting factor for the twelve billion. War, murder epidemics, and cannibalism may describe the situations which goes beyond my imagination.
Economy: As long as there is oil to carry them, there will also be reasons for an exchange of goods. The sellers want something in return. But what about those who have nothing to sell? Till 2030 there will not be any large breakthrough in science which can cause an economic wonder like the vast utilization of fossil fuel has brought the 20th century. Also rationalizing the production (by semiconductor technology) was already achieved to a very extent measure in the outgoing 20th century, so that not a really big push can be expected till 2030. If you look at science today, where is the field which could bring such a new move into a down-sizing global economy? Cold fusion? Not seriously believed in. Martian settlements? Haha- -science fiction from the seventies. Internet? Not really productive. Gene technology? Maybe, ... , consequently going further into the dilemma.
Human soul: Different religious sects will become very attractive. There will be a large diversity of communities, individualistic beliefs, Christian sects... and others I cannot think of yet. Anyway, the 21st century there will be a comeback of spirituality.
I am still hoping idealism will bring further insight and understanding for the future and lead to better things than appears today.

From Waldemar O., a 19-year-old male astronomy student from Ontario:

I think computers will be huge in the future. Space travel will become common, and people will be working on transporters (Star Trek). Physics will be taken to new levels of understanding, and we will see how strange but simple the universe is. Nature will get better with better technology. And maybe these things will happen if we don't nuke ourselves.

From Zahira S., an 11-year-old girl from Malaysia:

I predict...
I predict that I will be famous, I predict....
I predict that there will be no wars, I predict....
I predict that the whole globe has Internet, I predict....
I predict that kids like me will be presidents, I predict....
I predict that my best friend will like me more, I predict....
I predict that I will continue predicting, For as long as I live, Never stopping.
I predict....

From Nicole S., a 33-year-old female programmer from Brazil:

One thing I have been considering about our future is the partition of ethnic "tribes" as has been occurring all over. The idea of a global unity seems to be vanishing along with the wealth distribution; rich getting richer, and poor getting poorer. Technology is not the panacea some people reputed some years ago; the greatest problem today is the lack of inner sight, and one of the symptoms is the witch hunting on smokers and other groups that, even doing something bad for their health, are not responsible for the spreading of selfishness and intolerance. After so many millions of years in evolution, we today are still unable to accept the fact that some behavioral patterns remain, blaming groups or pointing individuals as the central point of endemic facts, as in the Middle Ages. It is not easy to be optimistic about the future when I remember that people who eat three times a day can be considered from the elite and some men treat children as sexual partners, against all rules of Nature. Maybe the greatest goal in the future will be to achieve real self-respect, as humans, as mammals, and as part of the world.

From Alice K., a 36-year-old female Internet junkie from Ohio:

The environment will be a mess. Everyone will have to wear hats and sunscreen in order to go outside because of damage to the ozone layer. Littering will be a felony, recycling mandatory. (We will finally have figured out the consequences of soiling our own nest). The government will be pretty much the same as it is today. I don't think anything would happen in 100 years to change that. The economy will still be a disaster. Unless there is some threat to the planet that would unite the human race, I think there would still be fighting amongst groups of people. Basically I can't see anything short of alien invasion, the often-predicted end of the world, or nuclear war ending the strife that seems to be the hallmark of our race. It goes without saying that technology will be more advanced than can be imagined. I think there will be a whole subset of people who live in a virtual world...it will be a much more complete and total escape from reality than it is now. It will contribute to the isolation of individuals.

From Anand S., a 22-year-old male software engineer from India:

This place looks nice. I don't have to take out my car, drive, and give myself a heart-attack. Little roboticized vehicles drive me through the air. Roads? There are none. My aerial path is filled with advertisements of the 3-D kind--stuff that I feel and smell as I pass through it. I like this perfume so much I'd like my girlfriend to look at it. I call her (not too loudly, though). She pops up. Not physically, of course --just an image. But I can't tell the difference. She smells it and approves of it. I nod at the ad, and the perfume pops into her hand. That reminds me: I've got to credit some goodwill into the bank. Maybe I'll give away my next dream free.
I compose dreams. You might call me a director, but dreams aren't movies. You can't feel a movie within yourself. You CAN change the course of a dream. Many of my dreams are about feelings.
I live in a 4'x4' cubicle. That's OK, because I'm actually in virtual space. I design my house as large as I want and as posh as I wish--and move about perfectly normally. It takes a lot of power to do something extravagant, but I can afford it.
I usually spend time looking through other people's virtual space--especially children. It gives me a lot of ideas. My neighbor's kid is fighting with a Samurai now. His elder brother's space is hidden, but I can guess what he's doing. Their dad's materializing varieties of nuts and tasting each one--probably planning dessert.
I like this place. But is it fundamentally different from the past? I think so. People try to love each other. There are still clashes, but we improve. But somehow, I'd rather be in 1997, trying to do my little bit to get us to 2100.

From Ben J., a 19-year-old male from Australia:

I don't think the planet will survive that much longer. Since the beginning of time, human nature has been one of destruction, and I can't see that changing all too quickly. Besides making faster computers, I hope they will start to experiment with brainwave-computer interactions--if not controlling them, then recording them and playing them back. In the immediate future the Internet will go through the roof (even more than it has already). It will probably replace TV, phones, the post, banking etc., most of life really. Links carrying hundreds of megabytes per second will be running into every household in the civilized(?) world, thus giving us no reason to leave the house anymore. I can't really see a good future ahead of us--then again, I am not an optimist.

From Trudy S., a 45-year-old female writer and master chef from Arizona:

I can see the horrible consequences of the so-called "War on Drugs" beginning to be realized in the next few years. As the governments of various smaller metropolitan areas see too many of their police officers being killed and their social services stretched beyond their limits, they will begin to balk at accepting more federal dollars to enforce prohibition. Women will begin to have more power in corporations as well as governments, because they can physically handle the stress of modern life better than males.

From Anthony D., a 55-year-old male psychology professor from Wisconsin:

There will be a widespread realization that power comes from thought, and schools will be training children in thought technology (psychotechnology). Much of casual conversation between friends will be about fine tuning the internal environment such that personal outcomes in one's life are more desirable.

From Brad M., a 50-year-old male webmaster from New York:

The social order has got to change. The compound acceleration of the pace and complexity of work in increasingly arcane and difficult technical areas, combined with unemployment or employment in menial service work for an increasing majority, is not a sustainable trend, not to mention the increasing global population and its consumption of resources, production of waste / pollution, etc.
The outcome may be massive collapse due to a lack of social management which strives to provide meaningful work and community for all and reduces the pressure on those in socially critical jobs. Alternatively, the damage we have done to the environment may cause our species to be destroyed through pestilence, famine, plague, lack of oxygen, etc., no matter how well we try to plan.
If the environment remains livable (even if not pleasant to live in), then the answer may be Fascism, hopefully of a benign kind (a super-Roosevelt New Deal, as opposed to something like the Nazis...).
The dependence on ultra-complex technologies will need to be reduced, so that the breakdown of a computer system nobody can understand does not result in inability to provide basic necessities of life (e.g., food) to large numbers of people.
The most likely scenario is probably (to use a post-modernist word:) bricolage: most things falling apart in a haphazard way and some things being recombined in a jerry-built way which keep falling apart and patched back together, with most people living in insecurity and probably at lower standards of living than the last 40 years.
Maybe Europe and other parts of the world will do better than the United States, which may increasingly become an unpleasant place to live.
I am not optimistic for the 21st Century, although resources (e.g., Habermas, Gregory Bateson, Husserlean Phenomenology, Gadamerean hermeneutics, Jacques Ellul, and many others) are available if those with the power to do something have any interest beyond capitalizing on junk bonds and cutting costs by cutting payrolls (and overworking those who aren't eliminated)....
My opinion: Damn what a tragedy!

From Nancy P., a 29-year-old female photographer and teacher from London:

I'm not sure I have any predictions, but I do have a few cautionary notes: History is not an objective subject and we only manage to figure out the present once it's become the past...in the English language, we don't even have a verb form for the future tense, we modify the present tense to indicate the time of action......the information highway/net scares me...if only one percent of the world has access (as is the current case), what about the five billion or so others...if Rupert Murdoch and Bill Gates own the channels by which we communicate, what good does it do to be prime minister or president? In England, one thing Margaret Thatcher said really haunts--England could survive on tourism and service industries.... If the country does indeed go that way, then it will find itself 3rd world... How many other 1st worlds will find themselves 3rd? We have to feed, clothe and shelter ourselves... How will we be able to sustain this in a world polarized by the wired class and the vast unwired underclass? Will the wired class be able to consume enough to sustain exploitation of the unwired? Will the unwired fall back into the dark ages? A period not unlike the fall of the roman empire or the middle ages, both times set off by economic collapse.... In the western world, the separation of place of work from place of residence has fueled the dependency on gadgetry.... But in order for technology to work in society, it must be both necessary and socially acceptable.... The danger of the Internet is that it's growing so quickly and it remains in the hands of those with economic power that society hasn't been able to test drive it to see if it works....
How can I deign to predict the future when, as I type this, the radio advertises a back- in-history party--back to the music of 1992?
Scared, that's what the thought of the future does to me...
Scared of technology that doesn't give the social space an opportunity to evaluate and mediate....

This is just a sample of the many predictions I've received. Thank you all for the thoughtful responses. Tell your friends. Someday I can make these all available for the world to see, and don't worry, your anonymity will be preserved.

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