Often it is the surprise conversation, rather than the shock headline, that wakes me up to something that has been bouncing around the back of my mind as important but not crucial. Previously it was: take into account, but don't let it affect your world view ... then: wow, this really changes how I see things. Hearing news from someone you trust, in terms you can understand, makes more impact that the weightiest report.
So it was when I met up with my futurist friend David Greenop to talk to some researchers looking into how rail transport might develop over the next 50 years. David and I had first met 10 years ago when David was with BT, and we had since worked on a number of projects including how social trends may affect digital media in our homes. He's great on sketching out different possible future scenarios and how social, technology, political and other trends may impact on our lives.
The researchers had given us an outline guide within which we could discuss trends ... and it was when we worked through David's answers that I got the 'oh wow' feeling. Or rather, oh dear. Here's a some extracts:
In your experience, what do you think the key trends are over the next 20 to 50 years?
Higher energy costs:
- personal freedom to travel curtailed
- End of cheap imported food and products
- Products made to last longer - end of throw away society
Climate change - population shift:
- Southern Europe moves north
- Southern England moves north
- UK climate remains relatively moderate (although warmer and more unpredictable)
End of Western / American style free market economics:
- Collapse of old UK economy as investors withdraw from major utilities because of government tighter regulation
- UK personal debt called in - housing crises
- My pension evaporates overnight
- Major public projects for climate change & energy generation mean a move to a new command economy
Politics:
- A new political model sought to replace old party parliamentary system
- Scottish & Welsh assemblies seen as new model for English assemblies
- The growth of city states as power and economic centres
Health:
- Due to harder life style and new diseases the age span decreases
- Medical care for all, particularly the old, is abandoned
- Radical genetic engineering for those who afford it
Society:
- A relearning of how to live in a new type of energy restricted world
- Less travel creates stronger local communities
- More self sufficiency
- More reliance on advance virtual worlds and environments
- A lot of dissatisfaction with the new way of life - political unrest with new activism
- A trend towards racial ghettos and intolerances
Technology:
- A major trend towards developing new national technology skills to replace those abandoned in previous global economy
- Major technology projects for climate change etc. restricted by lack of funds and the energy to undertake them
- Uneasy tension between view that technology solves major problems and technology has created the problem
- Micro-generation of energy is key technology in homes and public buildings
- Hydrogen fuel economy fails to meet needs of personal transport but is key to public transport
- Nuclear fusion starts to provide 20 % of energy needs (30 years plus)
- Optical fibre grids into homes everywhere
- Artificial intelligence has come of age
Travel:
- Less physical travel more virtual travel
- The Victorian holiday resorts become the Cost De Sol
- Old motorways partly used for new mass transport systems
- Car goes on the rails - new rail network comprises of individual cars 4 to 8 people sizes travelling on low energy super conducting suspension systems.
You can download the full questionnaire David provided here (pdf). As the conversation developed, David explained that he had been researching climate change and the forthcoming energy crisis as oil runs out. He couldn't just couldn't see how we could sustain current lifestyles, or how current institutional arrangements could cope with the changes necessary. There seems to be a massive denial at all levels of society, somebody has to start telling the stories.
David said there wasn't anything new in what he was saying. All he had done was read around the topics extensively, then apply his futurist filters and interpretations. Below are a few books he recommended.
Many of David's predictions are fairly mild compared with those from some environmentalists. I read bloggers like Dave Pollard of How to Save the World who cover these issues extensively and intelligently. I shouldn't be surprised, but there's something about the opinion of informed friends that makes a much bigger impact. I think it is the same sort of thing that marketer Alan Moore is saying in Communities Dominate Brands. In that he is talking about how word spreads through internet communities. We've known for ages that word of mouth is the most influential way of spreading an idea. David points out to me : It’s the way memes work - When you imitate someone else, something is passed on. This "something" can then be passed on again, and again, and so take on a life of its own. We might call this thing an idea, an instruction, a behaviour, a piece of information ... its called "meme". From Susan Blackmore The Meme Machine.
These musing were brought to the front of my mind because I'm currently working with Steve Moore and friends at Policy Unplugged on a web site and event call Bricking it? The event on September 14 is all about the sort of world - and employment prospects - the next generation may expect. The most-quoted book is Tom Friedman's The World is Flat, which spells out how new technologies are dramatically changing where jobs will be located, services provided, and goods produced. He says:
When I was growing up, my parents told me, “Finish your dinner. People in China and India are starving.” I tell my daughters “Finish your homework. People in India and China are starving for your job.”
But the book has nothing of significance on climate change, and only nine pages in 600 on the fuel and energy crisis. If you look at the future through the sort of lens offered by David Greenop, and other futurists, competition for jobs will be only one of our challenges. We'll have to work out how to collaborate better, as well as compete.
I'm really looking forward to the event, because under the excellent facilitation of Johnnie Moore the emphasis will be stimulating conversations, rather than making grand statements.
Late insight: David G emails me after an exchange on blog communities
This is the thought / question that has been puzzling me. Let's say we are hit by an energy & climate change perfect storm which cripples global trade etc. and creates a 1930's style depression at home. To what extent will Internet technologies, in particular knowledge transfer, change the nature of this emergency?
I can think of both positive & negative outcomes.
I think I know what our facilitator would say: "That's an interest point - why don't you start a conversation". If you can't make it to the event, you can register on the Bricking it? site and contribute there. Blog now while energy stocks last.
Books
- Half Gone Jeremy Leggett
- The Long Emergency JH Kunstler
- The Revenge of Gaia James Lovelock
- The last Generation Fred Pearce
Comments