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The 100 most dramatic events 2010 – 2050

@ 06.09.2010 13:40 CEST
  1. Volatility
  2. Between 2010 and 2050 there will be 12-18 financial bubbles and crashes
  3. …and 12-18 scares
  4. …plus 1-3 global major property meltdowns, each followed by banking crises
  5. …3-5 capital spending collapses
  6. …,and 8-10 inventory cycles
  7. ...and 3-4 new major lifestyle booms (such as hippie, yuppie, green, etc)
  1. Demographics
  2. Global population growth is decelerating, but it will still grow by approx. 2 billion until reaching approx. 9 million around year 2050
  3. A major reason for the growth deceleration is improved education. The numbers of people with tertiary education will double every 15 years
  4. Female emancipation is another important reason. Women will on average become better educated than men
  5. The global urban population will grow by 3 billion
  6. Rural population, on the other hand, will often decline, many villages will get deserted, and we will see increased forest re-growth
  7. The number of people aged 60 or above will grow from 680 million to 2 billion. Approx. 90% of this growth will be in emerging markets
  8. Global life expectancy will grow by approx. 2.5 years per decade, meaning by 10 years from 2010 to 2050. However, towards the end of the period, it will start growing much faster, as age prevention becomes an information technology through use of advanced biotech and genomics
  9. Population and workforce will decline rapidly in Russia, Japan and some parts of East and Southern Europe
  1. Macro economics
  2. Global GDP will grow approx. 400% in real terms from 2010 to 2050. This may be slightly less percentage-wise than it did in the previous 40 years, but in volume terms it is massively more.
  3. Average real income in developed countries rise 2-300% during that period
  4. Average real income in most emerging markets rise 4-600%. The economic expansion in emerging markets will exceed the current size of the six largest mature economies already by 2030.
  5. The global middle class will increase by 70-90 million people a year. This is similar to the population of Germany.
  6. However, there is a “lost billion” in approx. 55 countries where average incomes may hardly rise at all, and in some cases will decline.
  7. Global wealth will grow approx. 400% from 2010 to 2050, adding approx. 800 trillion dollars in variable-price assets
  8. China will become the world’s biggest economy, followed by the US and India.
  9. Several Western economies plus Japan may go through acute debt crises
  1. Conflict and power
  2. There will be approx. 35 new wars; almost all of them civil wars, and almost all originating or happening in the approx. 55 “lost” countries
  3. The same nations will originate approx. 5,000 acts of terror, kidnappings and piracy until year 2050
  4. Robotic warfare will become common
  5. War between any two uniformed sovereign armies will virtually disappear
  6. We will get an international legal environment for terror, as already exists for human rights abuses, crime and war.
  7. USA will remain the world's dominant military power - with a considerable margin
  8. Large powers will sponsor dictators in return for access to resources
  9. The great empires by 2050 will not be defined clearly by national borderlines, because they will be virtual, and they will grow organically; not through military confrontation.
  10. By 2050 there will be two such virtual empires: One will be predominantly Chinese, and the other Latin/Germanic/Anglo-Saxon/Indian. Many people will feel attachment to both.
    1. Basic technology
    2. Human knowledge will double every 8-9 years and thus grow approx. 4.500 % from 2010 to 2050. This means that what we know today is about 2.5% of what they will know by year 2050
    3. Genetically engineered crop yields will grow 3-400%
    4. Cars, trucks, cargo airplanes and all sorts of military machines will become self-driving
    5. Commercial, residential and military robots will become widespread
    6. Computer intelligence will surpass human intelligence around year 2020
    7. Computers will begin to rival the best scientists and artists in creativity
    8. We will learn to simulate entire cells and organisms on computers
    9. We will start to recreate extinct species and create a global Noah’s Ark of gene information
    10. We will begin to change our own genomes for reduced risk of disease, longer lifespan and higher intelligence, etc.
    11. Computers will help doctors and other experts do their jobs by listening in and correcting errors and oversights
    12. Software will get extremely good at writing software
    13. We will get a “semantic” Internet that enable computers to make sense of what they read on the Internet, so that they can answer complex questions as a “mirror on the wall”
    14. Software will also become able to automatically generate scientific meta-studies
    15. A permanent base on the moon will be established around year 2025-2030
    16. Fusion energy will begin to work at the experimental stage around year 2040 (or earlier) and will get rolled out commercially between 2050 and 2100 (or earlier)
    17. We will identify dark matter and discover the smallest particles in the universe and will reach a “unified theory of everything”
    18. We will use metabolic engineering on select plants and microorganisms for orders of magnitude faster growth
    1. Resources and environment
    2. Pollution of air, food and water will generally continue to decline as more and more nations follow the rich countries through environmental transformations (pollution starting to decline around when GDP per capita reach 10-15.000)
    3. However, since the CO² effect contributing to global warming at least in the medium term is irreversible, this may most likely contribute a rise in average temperatures of 0.5 – 2 degrees before burning of fossil fuels gets replaced by other technologies
    4. Furthermore, since species extinction is also irreversible in the medium term (although known extinction might be recreated through reverse engineering, see below), we will lose further species – probably approx. 0.4 % of birds and mammables and 0.1% of other species.
    5. We will not run out of any resources, but due to explosive economic growth, some will experience temporary shortages and thus price spikes
    6. However, there will be a continued “sourcing transformation”, whereby we create resources rather than collecting them from nature. We will, for instance, deploy massive farms with algae and bacteria that turn CO2 into fuel instead of drilling for oil, and we will farm fish instead of catching them in the open, etc.
    7. Crop yields per land units will begin to grow faster than demand for farm products, leading to an eventual contraction in the amount of farmland needed. This will relieve the intensity of extinctions
    8. Economic growth will mainly happen in areas with low taxes, English or Chinese language mastery, tolerant/creative cultures, sea access, authentic and rich culture, and temperate or subtropical temperature
    9. Countries with socialist and tyrannical regimes will fall behind
    1. Business sectors
    2. Finance, which is primarily an information business, will benefits from economic growth and development of a credit and trading culture in emerging markets
    3. Furthermore, the finance sector will participate in the funding of a massive construction boom plus financing of countless high tech start-ups in genomics, IT and alternative energy
    4. The real estate sector will construct new housing for 100 million people per year between 2010 and 2050, as well as construct the industrial/commercial infrastructure enabling a quadrupling of global income
    5. As global wealth also quadruples, while land supply is static, some land prices will rise dramatically
    6. The resources industry, and in particular industrial metals, will struggle to keep up with demand, which will lead to occasional, large price spikes
    7. Fossil energy will shift towards shale gas and -oil, as well as tar oil and gas-to-liquid
    8. Alternative energy will become an exciting and innovative growth industry driven by explosive growth in energy demand, desires to achieve energy independency and fear of global warming. However, alternatives depending on government subsidies will suffer from lack of government funding ability in many countries
    9. Photovoltaic solar power, 3rd generation nuclear fission, 3dr plus 4th generation biofuels and nuclear fusion will be among the most exciting new energy technologies.
    10. Genomics and biotech will evolve exponentially and will create huge advantages in healthcare (which is sorely needed due to global aging), in farming (where output needs to double while using less landmass, and in biofuels
    11. General health check-ups will make huge advances and become fast, cheap and largely possible to do at home
    12. There will be controversial developments in genomics, such as the start of enhancing the human race plus recreation of extinct species
    13. We will effectively simulate the human neocortex (analytical and intuitive intelligence, but not emotion) and computers will rival or surpass humans in many areas of creativity
    14. Robots will become widespread and amazingly clever
    15. The demand for luxury will grow 5-600%, and as people will seek products from the established leading brands, these will be able to control prices and supply, and thus maintain very high pricing and profits.
    16. Attractive limited supply collectibles will on average gain at least 400% in real price, but possibly far more
    1. Consumer products
    2. We will get private media servers that can contain all good movies, books and music ever made
    3. Virtually all products will be equipped with RFIDs, which will massively simplify flow control, the purchasing experience and which will enable users to call up stories and data relating to the products
    4. Back seat and passenger seats in most cars will get online entertainment
    5. Our most valued possessions will call the police, if they are stolen, and the police can then track their location and/or disable them
    6. Buildings will get smart perimeter control, intrusion detection and access control
    7. Computers with human intelligence will work as teachers and private tutors
    8. Entire roofs and walls will be made of photovoltaic cells – which will look cool
    9. We will get media walls in homes, offices and public buildings
    10. We will get soft, bendable e-Readers that can download and display any media
    11. Gardens and bedrooms, and cars, etc. will get anti-noise technology
    12. Many diseases, including most cancers, will become easily treatable
    13. Massively multiplayer games will get high resolution and surround sound and will become extremely popular
    14. We will get vaccines against asthma, multiple sclerosis, leukaemia, arthritis, malaria, high blood pressure, rheumatoid arthritis, salmonella infection, and substance addiction, etc.
    15. DNA vaccines using plasmids (small circular strands of DNA) will equip people with permanent abilities to fight diseases or counteract genetic weaknesses
    16. We will be offered diets tailored to your personal genetic makeup
    17. We will get transparent, see-through mobile phones with web-based annotation of the real world
    18. It will become normal to easily project content from any intelligent device to any screen
    19. Many niche TV programs will morph into e "TV-conferences"
    20. Old media will get reverse engineered so that it looks or sounds new
    21. Food will get divided into fast, luxury, ecological and functional sectors
    1. Life
    2. Average human IQ will increase approx. 12%
    3. People of open cultures will continue to blend and unite
    4. Most new jobs will be in creative, service or story-telling sectors
    5. In terms of lifestyles, there will be a trend towards creativity, individuality, and authentic charm.
    6. The market for luxury, experiences and storytelling will grow faster than the market for basic products.
    7. People will increasing feel free to define themselves, their spirituality and their way of life.
    8. People will remain materialistic, but will gradually shift their consumption mix towards experiences rather than products, and to quality rather than quantity
    9. Consumers will want to tell stories through electronic media and will seek products and companies with great stories
    10. Leading companies will hire media professionals to create their stories. This will be particularly popular in sports, finance, luxury and food/health
    11. There will be numerous lifestyle-tribes and numerous original characters, and both will be accepted and valued by the communities.
    12. People will on average get happier.

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