Monday, October 8, 2007

Top 10 Forecasts from ‘The Futurist’ Magazine

I have highlighted the top ten forecasts from The Futurist magazine below. More details, references, and additional information are available from Outlook 2008, an annual collection of “the most thought-provoking ideas and forecasts” appearing in the magazine.

While I generally measure my investment time horizon in days, it always pays to be thinking several years ahead.
  1. The world will have a billion millionaires by 2025. Globalization and technological innovation are driving this increased prosperity. But challenges to prosperity will also become more acute, such as water shortages that will affect two-thirds of world population by 2025.

  2. Fashion will go wired as technologies and tastes converge to revolutionize the textile industry. Researchers in smart fabrics and intelligent textiles (SFIT) are working with the fashion industry to bring us color-changing or perfume-emitting jeans, wristwatches that work as digital wallets, and running shoes like the Nike +iPod that watch where you're going (possibly allowing others to do the same). Powering these gizmos remains a key obstacle. But industry watchers estimate that a $400 million market for SFIT is already in place and predict that smart fabrics could revitalize the U.S. and European textile industry.

  3. The threat of another cold war with China, Russia, or both could replace terrorism as the chief foreign-policy concern of the United States. Scenarios for what a war with China or Russia would look like make the clashes and wars in which the United States is now involved seem insignificant. The power of radical jihadists is trivial compared with Soviet missile capabilities, for instance. The focus of U.S. foreign policy should thus be on preventing an engagement among Great Powers.

  4. Counterfeiting of currency will proliferate, driving the move toward a cashless society. Sophisticated new optical scanning technologies could, in the next five years, be a boon for currency counterfeiters, so societies are increasingly putting aside their privacy fears about going cashless. Meanwhile, cashless technologies are improving, making them far easier and safer to use.

  5. The earth is on the verge of a significant extinction event. The twenty-first century could witness a biodiversity collapse 100 to 1,000 times greater than any previous extinction since the dawn of humanity, according to the World Resources Institute. Protecting biodiversity in a time of increased resource consumption, overpopulation, and environmental degradation will require continued sacrifice on the part of local, often impoverished communities. Experts contend that incorporating local communities' economic interests into conservation plans will be essential to species protection in the next century.

  6. Water will be in the twenty-first century what oil was in the twentieth century. Global fresh water shortages and drought conditions are spreading in both the developed and developing world. In response, the dry state of California is building 13 desalination plants that could provide 10%-20% of the state's water in the next two decades. Desalination will become more mainstream by 2020.

  7. World population by 2050 may grow larger than previously expected, due in part to healthier, longer-living people. Slower than expected declines of fertility in developing countries and increasing longevity in richer countries are contributing to a higher rate of population growth. As a result, the UN has increased its forecast for global population from 9.1 billion people by 2050 to 9.2 billion.

  8. The number of Africans imperiled by floods will grow 70-fold by 2080. The rapid urbanization taking place throughout much of Africa makes flooding particularly dangerous, altering the natural flow of water and cutting off escape routes. If global sea levels rise by the predicted 38 cm by 2080, the number of Africans affected by floods will grow from 1 million to 70 million.

  9. Rising prices for natural resources could lead to a full-scale rush to develop the Arctic. Not just oil and natural gas, but also the Arctic's supplies of nickel, copper, zinc, coal, freshwater, forests, and of course fish are highly coveted by the global economy. Whether the Arctic states tighten control over these commodities or find equitable and sustainable ways to share them will be a major political challenge in the decades ahead.

  10. More decisions will be made by nonhuman entities. Electronically enabled teams in networks, robots with artificial intelligence, and other noncarbon life-forms will make financial, health, educational, and even political decisions for us. Reason: Technologies are increasing the complexity of our lives and human workers' competency is not keeping pace well enough to avoid disasters due to human error.

4 comments:

nodoodahs said...

I am certain that, in 18 years, these predictions will be at least as humorous as the economic predicitons made by the "top bloggers" two years ago, are today.

Bill Luby said...

Speaking of looking back at historical predictions about what the future holds, I can highly recommend the Paleo-Future blog, which tackles this subject in an informative and entertaining manner. Their tagline, "A look into the future that never was," pretty much sums it up.

Mike G said...

Cool article. I especially see the water scarcity problem, living in Las Vegas where Lake Mead behind the Hoover Dam has now dropped to 50% capacity, 100 ft below its level of ten years ago. They are just beginning construction on a 300 mile freshwater pipeline from the rural north of the state to feed this growing desert metropolis. An analysis of profitable freshwater related companies would be interesting, I've heard the name Aqua America (WTR) thrown around but the 52 wk chart is not particularly inspiring. Option strikes are very limited on that one.

Bill Luby said...

Alfamike,

If you're looking for some stock ideas in this sector, a good place to start is with this list

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