Bits, Bursts & Bongos

Forecasting the future is always a fun and entertaining activity, tainted with millions of hidden threats of failure. It’s like a game of strategy, taking everything from technology, human behavior and current institutions to emerging bleeding-edge technologies into account. It’s easy - like forecasting the financial markets - to be biased towards what you would like to happen as to what actually has the highest probability of happening.

Here are a few of my thoughts - a mix of wishes and possible outcomes - on the world in 2020 :

• Media: Old media is dead and we’ll consume all forms of media via the web, mostly the mobile web. The last residential phone-line has just been disconnected. All the worlds music, movies and books will live in the cloud, accessible to anyone from anywhere. CDs and DVDs will be historical artifacts, collecting dust in the addict. Books will survive through new business models and creative design - old world publishers will be redundant as authors now understands how to use the web to learn about people’s reading preferences and build their own communities of interest. The most popular (TV) shows will be created by small, independent teams. The need for broadcasting and desktop computers are dead. Social networks will replace much of lazy TV watching.
• Traveling: Cheaper and more comfortable alternatives to flying will emerge, like Mag-Lev trains. Certain business travel will be replaced by virtual conferences as people are getting more comfortable with using technology to collaborate. Cutting expenses will also drive this development. We’ll all travel without any luggage as anything will be accessible from anywhere. Gas will be $20 per gallon and force people to leave suburbia or downsize their gas-guzzlers and choose public transportation or start biking / walking. Biking, micro-cars and energy-efficient scooters will dominate the streets.
• Business: Organizations will morph into high performance global networks (anti-hierarchies) driven by individual and team collaboration. The creative and conceptual knowledge worker will rule the workplace. But they workplace will be virtual, driven by the need to cut costs, lower energy consumption and to find a healthy balance between work and family. Many of the bigger 20th century corporation will have dwindled, not being able to shift from the old to the new business models - free being critical. All business will be web-based.
• Living: We’ll live with much lesser stuff but having access to more services. Our home is no longer a suburban storage house with kitchen, living room and three bedrooms. It’s an open space environment with sleeping capsules. We might rent or co-own these in several different locations as we are free to work from anywhere (telecommuting will be an anecdotal term). Our homes will no longer be our castles.
• Work: Knowledge workers have abandoned the 9-5 work lifestyle, suits and titles. Any successful project is being created by smart networks of people, dispersed across the world with regular meet-ups. Work and presentations will be replaced by artist expressions, like creation and gigs. The most successful professionals will be like artists. Work will no longer be measured in hours (i.e. input) but in value (output). Micro-brands and minipreneurs will be the drivers behind innovation.
• Food: Segments of the population will buy their food within a 10-mile proximity and cook their own meals, avoiding corn syrup and processed food. The high gas prices will tilt the power in favor of local, sustainable alternatives. We’ll live healthier and longer.
• Knowledge: New universities will emerge - Singularity, Hyper Island et cetera - that will train kids and adults in critical thinking, languages, technology, art and science. As all knowledge is available on the web the need to find, analyze and create will be more important than the ability to store and remember. Knowledge as in patterns, concepts and new ideas will rule. Education will be lifelong, not just 4-years at an Ivy League school.
• Business models: Free and accessibility will rule. Models will become more integrated where attention will be replaced by time and money. Creating relationships with the right audience will be much more important than building your brand at Super-bowl. Social influencers will get paid to share interesting new products and services with their networks. Marketing as we know it is dead.
• Religion: People have grown tired of organized religion as the guiding light due to all wars, Ponzi schemes and false promises. Spirituality and individual, non-organized faith is on the rise. A few nations are still fighting for religious supremacy.

I realize that many of these ideas are inspired by my aggressive reading program - 101 books in 2010. They are more directional than anything else and many ideas will obviously be completely wrong. But the point is that doing this kind of exercise is very liberating. It enables outside-the-box thinking and the realization that most crap that happens in the world - sans earthquake et cetera - are man-made. What we have screwed up we should also be able to fix, don’t you think.