Disclaimer: the following piece does not represent the opinion of Tufts University or any other organization and is for entertainment and brainstorming purposes only. It should not be used as any sort of advice for financial or life planning. Furthermore, this piece is not a research article, I have done my best to have accurate facts but I am open to corrections.
Why bother?
The future is an incredibly fickle beast. Even the best visionaries often fall short. Yet, the future is unavoidable, both as an open road we are all forced to march along and a topic of conversation. The future as a topic of conversation is great for brainstorming and building the technologies of the future. However, as much as I believe that I have the ability to change the future, I know that every other person has that same opportunity. I hope that some of you will share a desire to build my hopeful future with me. With that in mind, I thought it would be an interesting exercise to convey my fears and h0pes for the future I will inhabit; the social, political, and economic structures that will either restrict or enable my ambitions.
Why 2040? In 2040, I will enter the 44th year of my life. Based on demographics and predictions, I will be mid-career and over halfway through my life. 2040 is also comfortably in the realm of many long run predictions. Demographic and climate models all make comfortable predictions about conditions through mid-century while many companies and organizations have quarter century strategic plans.
Yet life in 2040 has many more unknowns and circumstances that cannot be predicted. In the intervening 25 years, someone who isn’t even born can become a billionaire and start a family of their own. Unexpected events, the rise of Hitler, the creation of the Atomic Bomb, and the rise of global terrorism have all gone from unimaginable to very real situations in 25 years. At the same time, women’s suffrage, the invention of the transistor, and the eradication of smallpox all seemed unlikely 25 years previously.
My Fear
SECURITY
Low intensity conflict consume many young states still struggling to shake their colonial past and insurgent present. Several times a month these conflicts spill over into the developed world in Mumbai and Paris-style attacks which despite Trillions invested in the wars on terror, better equipped police forces, and state of the art surveillance have failed to prevent soft target attacks without disrupting commerce.
In response, the well off once again move further afield to gated communities that are hardened enough to deter most terrorist attacks. At the same time the up-armoring of luxury Teslas and BMWs has become big business. Private security is a fixture of financial and tech districts worldwide. Meanwhile, those who cannot afford their own security force face longer lines and little extra protection from harm. In some countries, some draconian laws restrict freedoms like assembly and surveillance in futile attempts to combat an enemy that has grown indistinguishable from the average citizen. This blurring of lines has perpetuated racist and prejudiced systems that hurt minorities.
While low intensity conflicts are the primary security concerns, certain regions also see traditional state conflicts become fixtures of the news cycle and diplomatic efforts have failed to arrive at a comprehensive solution.
Nuclear proliferation has continued to resurface as an issue as every five years or so, a developing country will begin a nuclear program that leads to a haphazard international response. Several nations have claimed success with the expansion of their nuclear program and have defied international demands for monitoring and disarmament.
INDUSTRY
The phrase “Unbridled Capitalism” as the previous generations have faded and cutthroat competition, growth oriented targets, and stakeholder values have been the orders of the day in corporate towers worldwide. By many economic measures, growth has continued with most countrys’ GDPs’ continuing at pace for long run growth.
However, other metrics paint a far grimmer picture. Innovation has slowed as competition has been eliminated by the mergers and acquisitions that countries lack the will or power to prevent. These megacorporations have built a thicker armor of entrenching regulations that protect them from challenges. Intellectual Property laws have become even more draconian and the global patent system leads to tens of thousands of inventors to be stuck in litigation and injunctions never bringing products to market.
This climate has led to the venture capitalists to focus on short term growth in investment decisions. Long term technologies are seldom funded. The only opportunity for truly new technologies is government funded research. This research has grown, but so have the barriers to entry and the drive for all applied research.
The scientific community’s role and size has remained unchanged since the early-2000’s but its capabilities have been taxed by the enormous burdens of a sick planet and an even more complex world. In the US, scientific funding has not even kept up with inflation. The Chinese have become the leaders in scientific output. The pressures to publish and compete globally has squashed much of the free though that was once present and although there are an abundance of new discoveries, there is no way to keep pace with what the world needs.
The shrinking of the middle class has also lead to lower percentages of funding to infrastructure and development projects. In older nations spend their whole infrastructure budgets on emergency fixes to deferred maintenance. In newer countries, outside gleaming capital and keystone cities, the rural and suburban poor see little progress in transit. However, airports grow to serve the global upper classes.
In many countries, fossil fuels still reign supreme with little hope for change. With perpetual gridlock at climate conferences developing countries developed coal and natural gas heavy infrastructure. Those that have made progress to renewables are still left to deal with the effects of pollution and a climate on strike.
LIFE
The global poverty rate leveled off and then began a series of swings as environmental and security crises stoked the fires of instability, leaving 10–20% of the global population stuck without basic human needs. Although cases of Malaria have been widely eradicated, a whole new set of diseases have become endemic to the poor and highly mobile populations. Refugees from low intensity conflicts overwhelm the developed world’s immigration system and have lead to clamping down on immigration quotas. Those that are lucky enough to get past the 1% acceptance of the developed world face isolation in communities where they lack the same upward mobility as the rest of the country.
With the slowing of growth in the developing world, new industries have sprung up to cater to the wealthy upper class and upper middle class. The service industry has largely become an industry where the workers (if there are still workers, most having been replaced by robots and automation) cannot shop at the stores they work at.
The average global denizen will see a growth in their material wealth but an overall decline in happiness as millions of the middle class are forced to move in response to structural unemployment, climate change, or political instability.
The decline of America has also not happened evenly. New York, Boston, San Francisco, Atlanta, and Austin have all maintained their status of global cities, but suburban communities have seen their wages not even keep up with inflation as consumer spending peaked in 2030. The US’s lack of comprehensive retraining programs has produced an environment where a college degree is rarely a guarantee of a job.
My (Realistic) Hope
SECURITY
Globally, the trend towards less violence has continued. As increased global cooperation and interconnection have continued, nation-states are even more hesitant to bringing military forces to bear. So-called non-state actors continue to plague areas of economic volatility.
Fortunately, the lessons of the first quarter century have developed strategies to combat extremism and bring opportunity to those wishing to integrate themselves into the international community and providing deterrents to those who wish to do harm. NATO and other military coalitions(Arab and African Union) have become part of a de-facto police force that has the reach and staying power to ensure that power vacuums are filled and transitions to citizen supported governments are accomplished.
Although racial, ethnic, religious, and sectarian conflicts and prejudices exist, international, national, and local efforts have made strides that would have been hard to see a few decades previous. In countries like the US with a checkered history of race, some changes have been hard, but thanks to activists and introspection progress continues. Furthermore, the globalized economy simply leaves little place for someone to discriminate on many characteristics as they will often lose to the businessperson who bases their decisions solely on talent.
With the continued “democratizing” of violence and attacks, surveillance will still be an issue. The perpetual dialogue about what are basic human rights to privacy will continued to be balanced on a global scale by citizen groups, corporations, and governments.
The international community has also been forced to adapt to the effects of global climate change. Every military’s humanitarian capabilities have expanded heavily in response to the increase in extreme weather. These operations dovetail well with the distributed conflicts that occur, in fact many operations must contend with relief operations and ensuring that the disasters do not spawn new networks of violence. Although carbon emissions have been decreasing for the past decade, the climate is predicted to continue to warm well past 2100. In spite of this rather terrifying long term trend, modern forecasts predict an eventual return to 350ppm of CO2 by 2200.
While the nuclear power has been opened more broadly to the world in the fight for 100% sustainability, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty has managed to prevent any new nuclear weapon powers from coming into being. The total number of warheads has declined some 70% since the turn of the century and the largest impact any of the weapons have had is burdening the defense budgets of the countries that still keep the forces modern.
INDUSTRY
The industrialization of South Asia and Africa happens more gently than any other industrialization have. Thanks to automation, manufacturing and extraction has become a safer industry. The sustainability targets agreed to by developing nations have reduced the negative externalities generally associated with the path to a middle class society. During this period UNESCO and academics have helped chronicle the cultures that inevitably will become part of a global culture. However, the occasional industrial accident or investigative report are reminders of the work that remains to be done.
Corporations have transitioned from a single bottom line to a triple bottom line as the business majors started being taught the environmental and social stewardship in their business school classes. Now, instead arbitrating the external impacts of business in the courts, it happens on the board room floor as well. Sure, there are plenty of bad actors, but generally when the smoke and mirrors are taken away, that company can’t expect to have many new customers without a reinvention.
Progress on Ultra-High Voltage grids and and advanced energy storage systems have enabled transoceanic energy sharing and cutting the percentage of the grid powered by fossil fuels to an astounding 20%. Wind, Tidal, and Nuclear power have all evolved to compete directly even with the cheapest of fossil fuels.
With such a high percentage of humans living in cities, transportation has become almost completely electric. Rails and supercapacitor buses transport almost 2 billion every day. Elsewhere, electrification of cars combined with their use algal biofuels has enabled many commuters to emit near zero CO2.
America, the aging Hegemon peacefully cedes some of its leadership roles to countries like China and India. Yet America still remains relevant and a technical powerhouse. Companies like Apple, supported by managers who grew up on iPhones and Macs have entrenched them in global corporate policies. Amazon’s web platforms still runs much of the world wide web. The jets of growing luxury airlines based out of Lagos and Islamabad still operate Boeings with GE engines.
Companies like SpaceX now face a host of companies from other nations that compete for national pride in an ever smoldering space race. Mars colonization has been slow and its viability perpetually debated, but few deny the vision of the only billionaire with an office on another planet, Elon Musk.
Yet there is a whole new set of companies. New hubs of innovation have been created around synthetic biology in Shenzhen, advanced manufacturing in Kinshasa, and networked devices in Bangalore. These new Megalopolises are join Silicon Valley, Dubai, New York, and London on the list of destinations with airport departure spacing measured in seconds.
DAILY LIFE
Daily life in these new global hubs is characterized by sleek new infrastructure; Automated subways are still king, but for those who are wealthy enough to afford it, self driving cars occupy the single (automotive) lane streets. Running next to the cars are bike and e-transport lanes that play host to a variety of skateboards and hoverboards. The grassy medians offer noise reduction and linear parks for the masses that inhabit these super cities of 60+ million.
In spite of incredible climactic changes, cities like Dubai have continued to survive expending their ample solar resources on desalination and green space to reduce heat loads. Vertical farming and a certain amount of terraforming has enabled liveable spaces to exist in otherwise intolerable heat. Desalination techniques vary from the traditional reverse osmosis and thermal systems to new bio-cell powered waste water and brine treatment.
Further on the outskirts, the inefficient suburbias still persist, but the wide avenues have been narrowed for cars and widened for quick access to comprehensive subway infrastructure. Even further afield, the rural areas have eschewed the heavy chemical use to take advantage of fleets of UAVs and robotic tractors that can monitor and treat crops individually. After the open-crop revolution farmers have begun to post genetic code to GitHub where the most nutritious crops are constantly monitored and updated to prevent disease.
In the homes automation keeps life manageable in an increasingly complicated time. Appointments and email is handled mostly automatically, grocery shopping has been mostly replaced with automated delivery networks of robotic cars and subway freight networks. Instead, many day to day concerns are more on the constant pressure of relocation and extreme weather.
There is still incredible competition for the best paying careers in a global job marketplace, but a modernized education system has ensured that careers are not traps. The “hottest” companies have begun heavily investing in technical education centers for reeducation of older parts of the workforce.
In developed countries, Women have reached gender parity in both representation and pay. And in the developing world, there is a consistent pressure to break down traditional gender roles. In fact, with the recognition of gender as a spectrum, organizations have found that recognizing the incredible diversity of the workforce as an asset and taken any changes in stride. Of course some cultures and religions are unfortunately slower to recognize the rights of certain minorities, but once again, progress keeps raising the global bar and revising the standards for culture and religion alike.
This new paradigm also recognizes the incredibly important role of those who create to inform the human condition or entertain the soul. Some opportunities remain in the areas of “sponsored native content” but the increased connectivity has also allowed a new renaissance. The self-publishing revolution started at the end of the last millennium has become grown into complex communities that exist in both physical creative spaces and the virtual spaces. With plenty of opportunities to bridge the gaps with both VR and inexpensive travel, the arts flourish.
As the we approach 100 years after humans first harvested the power of the atom and the middle of a century that began with so much turmoil, there is incredible global pride in how far humanity has come.
Non-Fiction Reading
While this essay is obviously fictional, I drew my inspiration from the arcs of technologies and events. I have included some of my inspiration below. I would highly recommend anyone who found this piece interesting take a look at some of these articles.
