2020 technology dreams
The first decade of the new century has already changed the world. Now get ready for much, much more. Accelerating high tech will drive further and faster.
Broadband will be pervasive, and Moore’s Law will keep crunching the price of computation, communication, transmission and storage to produce more and more cutting-edge commodities to transform everyday living.
Cheap sensors will be in everything, providing machine-to-machine sensing, communications and control. Innovations once considered science fiction will become real for millions.
Because of pervasive communications, countries will not ‘own’ their people as they did in the past. Closed societies will break open and new kinds of transnational political organisations will evolve, to change the way political leaders behave.
National control of language, currency and communications will be undermined by simultaneous translation systems, cross border mobile payments, and easy access exchange systems. Open societies will struggle to adapt to loss of control; closed societies will fail outright.
Portable computing devices will start being integrated into our clothing. Smartphones will do more and more, with voice activation and high resolution displays as eyewear.
Virtual displays will be capable of putting us into a 3D full immersion virtual reality environment. We will watch movies virtually and read virtual books. A lot of our personal and business meetings will take place in 3D virtual worlds. The design of new virtual environments will become an art form. We will even have ways to touch one another virtually.
Over the next decade, the world will wean itself away from dependence on fossil fuels and drastically reduce greenhouse gases.
These things present hard engineering challenges, and some will need big scientific leaps in synthetic or genetically engineered materials. Accelerating technologies will be the game changers.
If this does not take a decade it may take two, but there is very little doubt that technology will make these dreams come true.
Future family
For decades people have been predicting the decline of the family. But, writes Joel Kotkin in a recent Forbes.com article, the family has in fact become much more important in recent years.
This twist can be traced to demographic shifts, immigration, extended life spans, tough economic conditions and attitude changes among increasingly diverse populations.
Families today are more than just married couples with children living at home. Everything from divorce to immigration and gay marriage is reshaping families, which remain as the central force in communities and the economy.
More than 80% of Americans eventually get married, often after a period of living-together. Later marriages are reflected in later child-rearing. Younger women today may be less likely to have kids, but over the past quarter century, the number of women over 35 that have children has more than tripled.
This trend is accelerating.
People continue to value the stability and cohesion that families can provide. Far more children are likely to live with at least one parent now than a generation ago. Studies show that family counts more than money when people make decisions about where to live.
As people live longer and have children later, family ties get stronger. Grandparents are now playing a much larger role in family life, as financial supporters and as sources of reliable child care. Living with or being close to grandparents is particularly important for younger Americans, many of whom are struggling to raise families.
Institutionalised care for the elderly, once seen as inevitable, has dropped in the last few decades, as more families have ageing parents move in with them to avoid nursing homes.
Then there are the ‘millennials’. Americans born since 1982 enjoy better relationships with their parents. Many stay in touch regularly, weekly or even daily. Many 13 to 24-year-olds consider time spent with family a great source of happiness, rating it even higher than time spent with friends.
The current tough economic conditions are strengthening close, long-term ties between children and parents. High university debts, high home prices and a tough job market all extend strong family dependence well into adulthood. For millions, severe economic pressures are making the family the ultimate ‘safety net’.
Many people are finding out there is one institution that really can be counted on: the family.
Jim Pinto is an industry analyst and founder of Action Instruments. You can e-mail him at [email protected] or view his writings at www.JimPinto.com
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