For many companies—and many industries— the COVID-19 pandemic set off a period of head-spinning change. They realized they were capable of moving faster than they ever thought possible. They went digital in a matter of days, not years. They offered new services almost overnight. If companies sustain this newfound speed and agility, it’s conceivable that more innovation will happen in the next ten years than in any previous decade in modern history. Life in the 2030s could be vastly different from today.
In 2019, we launched a multimedia series in which business leaders and McKinsey experts describe what the 2030s might look like. We called the series The Next Normal , to refer to things that experts say could become commonplace in a few years but today are cutting-edge or even nonexistent: things like lab-grown meat , or digital wardrobes , or robot surgeons .
When COVID-19 took over the world, our use of the term evolved: the “next normal” became synonymous with postpandemic realities. But we’ve continued to ask leaders to look beyond the near-term future and envision their respective industry’s next decade. Scroll down to read some of their more evocative—and provocative—predictions.
Could our experts’ prognostications be wrong? Of course. But chances are, in 2035 or thereabouts, much of what’s described below will indeed just be … normal.
Explore The Next Normal
The future of video entertainment: immersive, gamified, and diverse, the future of shopping: technology everywhere, the future of space: it’s getting crowded out there, the future of the high-rise: creating people-centric spaces, the future of air mobility: electric aircraft and flying taxis, the future of capability building, the future of wellness: connected and customized, the future of business: reimagining 2020 and beyond, the future of car buying: omnichannel, personalized, and fun, the future of fashion: sustainable brands and ‘circular’ business models, the future of hospital care: a better patient experience, the future of parcel delivery, the future of insurance: faster, easier claims, the future of food: meatless, the future of packaging: smart bottles, edible boxes.
This interactive experience was a collaborative effort by McKinsey Global Publishing’s Imaya Jeffries, Kareem Parrott, Katie Shearer, Shirley Shum, Amanda Soto, and Monica Toriello.
A business journal from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
What Will the World Look Like in 2030?
September 8, 2020 • 8 min read.
Big economic, technological and demographic changes are coming, and the pandemic is accelerating many of them, Wharton’s Mauro Guillen says in his new book.
- Public Policy
Wharton’s Mauro Guillen talks with Wharton Business Daily on SiriusXM about his new book on the trends that are shaping our future.
Big demographic, economic and technological changes are coming — from an aging population in the U.S. and the rise of sub-Saharan Africa as a compelling middle-class market to automation causing “technological unemployment,” according to Wharton management professor Mauro Guillen.
In his new book, “ 2030: How Today’s Biggest Trends Will Collide and Reshape the Future of Everything, ” Guillen discusses how these changes will affect us in the years to come. During a recent interview on the Wharton Business Daily show on SiriusXM , Guillen noted that while these trends have been gathering pace for years, the pandemic is accelerating many of them. (Listen to the podcast above.) Rising inequality across income, race and gender will demand urgent attention, and government policy making will need to become more innovative to address such challenges. Individual responsibility will play a role, too, in areas such as climate change, he says.
An edited transcript of the conversation follows.
Wharton Business Daily: Why did you write this book?
Mauro Guillen: Everyone sees change everywhere, and I think it’s important to figure out where are we going to be five to 10 years from now. How are consumer markets going to look? It’s extremely important for businesses and also for individuals – as investors, as savers and more generally as citizens – to figure out what the future’s going to look like.
Wharton Business Daily: What role has the pandemic played in that change?
Guillen: The pandemic essentially has two different effects, depending on the trend. One is to accelerate and to intensify some things. For example, consider population aging. Inevitably in a recession, we have fewer babies. The mere postponement of having babies accelerates population aging, so problems related to Social Security and pensions will arrive earlier. Other types of trends get delayed, or even reversed, by something like this. One of them will be the growth of cities, especially in Europe and in the U.S.
“We’re going to have to think very carefully in political terms and in social terms about the implications of further automation, especially in the service sector.”
Wharton Business Daily: North America, Europe and Asia have been vital in the last several decades, but you talk about other areas of the world picking up and having a larger impact in the years ahead.
Guillen: I am very bullish on sub-Saharan Africa because of their demographic dynamism, and because the biggest cities in Africa are growing and creating an expanding middle class. Now, only maybe 15% of the sub-Saharan African population is middle class. But that proportion is growing. That will change the world, because Africa will soon become the second most populous region in the world.
Coming Shifts in Technology
Wharton Business Daily: What significant changes do you see in terms of technology?
Guillen: As a result of the pandemic, technology adoption has been progressing much faster, out of necessity. We’ve been confined to the home, students cannot attend school and so on and so forth. But we also need to watch carefully the new incentives for automation, especially in the service sector, that this public health crisis creates.
We’re going to see more automation. We’re going to see, unfortunately, more technological unemployment. Many other jobs have been lost in the American economy. I don’t think they’re coming back. We’re going to have to think very carefully in political terms and in social terms about the implications of further automation, especially in the service sector.
Wharton Business Daily: Would the increased emphasis on automation also influence policymaking and education?
Guillen: Yes. In terms of policy making, we have to figure out how to retrain people and how to help those people find other jobs. We may have to consider very seriously ideas such as a universal basic income , which you have discussed on your show on several occasions. This used to be a fringe idea, but it’s quickly becoming more mainstream.
Wharton Business Daily: We’ve seen a little bit of that here in the U.S. with the $1,200 stimulus checks that were part of a $2.2 trillion package of coronavirus relief measures. But what you’re talking about concerns how governments look out for their citizenry, correct?
Guillen: Exactly. It’s not just about being nice to people, which I think we should be. But universal basic income also has a business case. Remember, two-thirds of the American economy is [made up of household] consumption . If people don’t have jobs or don’t have well-paying jobs, then we need to compensate for that.
Wharton Business Daily: You also focus on how currencies may change. To a degree, we’ve already seen that with bitcoin.
Guillen: Yes, we need to seriously consider how entrepreneurs can come up with new ideas as to what cryptocurrencies, or to be more precise, crypto tokens, will be used for.
“I hope that the two presidential candidates start debating exactly how they’re going to deal with increasing inequality.”
If cryptocurrencies are just a substitute for the money that governments issue, then I don’t think we’re going to get too far because our regulators are always against cryptocurrencies as a competitor for legal tender.
But if we add other functions or other uses to those digital tokens — like if they will help us vote, keep politicians in check or provide incentives for people to save the environment — then there is a bright future ahead for digital tokens. So instead of digital currency, I would say digital tokens, which would include a currency component to them.
Inequality: The Next Frontier
Wharton Business Daily: How do we address the wealth gap?
Guillen: That’s a huge development of the last 20 years, and the pandemic only exacerbates inequality. Not everyone can work from the home, and therefore they have to expose themselves to the virus while taking public transportation to go to work. Consider students. It is estimated that up to 20% of K-12 students in the U.S. don’t have the hardware or the connectivity that they need at home in order to continue school work. This is the most unfortunate part of this pandemic, and it exacerbates inequality based on income and race.
That is true even by gender. Unemployment is growing faster among women than men. So, this is something that we need to pay attention to. I hope that the two presidential candidates start debating exactly how they’re going to deal with this increasing inequality.
Wharton Business Daily: Are we ready to tackle these issues?
Guillen: There is increasing awareness, but I guess we will have to wait until after the presidential election. But whoever happens to be in the White House and whoever controls the Senate come January, I don’t think they will be able to ignore the issue of inequality. We’re seeing social tensions and all sorts of frictions proliferate. The sooner we start tackling it, the better.
Wharton Business Daily: People are worried about various individual issues. But should the emphasis be on changing the overall mindset about how we want our world to look in 2030?
“We’re seeing social tensions and all sorts of frictions proliferate. The sooner we start tackling it, the better.”
Guillen: I do believe so. For example, many parents are now concerned about whether their children will be able to have the kind of life that they have been able to have. The way things are going, maybe only a small fraction of them will do better than their parents.
Here in the U.S., one of the single most important values that we have is that we want every generation to do better than the previous one. And this is becoming increasingly difficult. Millennials right now are suffering from — for a second time during their adult lifetimes — a very difficult labor market.
There’s more consciousness and awareness of this, and the culture will need to adjust in terms of revisiting some of our values.
Wharton Business Daily: How will the mindset of governments and policymakers need to change?
Guillen: The time has come to be a little bit more innovative, to explore things in terms of government policy making that 10, 20 years ago we thought were completely out of bounds. The problems have become so large. By the way, we haven’t even talked about climate change. We really need to start thinking outside of the box.
Wharton Business Daily: What should we be doing?
Guillen: We need to focus on two things. One is international collaboration among governments when it comes to climate change, but also in other areas like trade, where it is completely absent right now. The second one, which is the one that I push in my book, is we as individuals need to take ownership of this. We need to be less wasteful. We need to economize our resources. We need to be more pro-environment in our own behavior as consumers.
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Life in 2030
- Hacker News
This is a written version of a presentation I gave live at the a16z Summit in November 2019. You can watch a video version on YouTube .
My day job is to think about the future, so I’ve been thinking a lot about what life will look like in the 2030s. What do we need to build? What social acceptance do we need? What business models do we need?
My daughter, Katie, is a high school junior, which means that when we hit the year 2030, she’ll be in her late-20s, heading into her mid-30s. In this presentation, I’ve imagined what a day in her life might be in the year 2030.
Like most of us, Katie has a morning routine to get ready for the day. It typically starts with a piece of technology—the toilet. Now, it may not look like it’s changed much, but in 2030—like most other things in our house—it will have become a smart toilet. That means it measures 10 properties of your urine, including glucose, and it looks for health problems before they present themselves. After Katie is done, she’s training for the marathon, so she’s ready for her run. Sorry, even in the 2030s there is no train-for-a-marathon pill that you can buy, so she has to log her miles. She slips on her exercise gear, including a shirt is made out of spider silk, engineered by DNA. It’s got sensors sewn into it that pick up health stats like temperature, EKG, and heart rate. It also has actuators, so it can bump her on the wrists to give her directional cues: turn left, turn right, slow down.
As more and more of us in the world crowd into cities, we need to be smarter about the space that we use. And so while Katie is out running, her room is reconfiguring itself from “sleep mode” to “eat mode.” It’s also got “work mode” and “party mode.”
When Katie is back from her run, she’s ready for breakfast. This meal is personalized specifically for her. It understands her genetic makeup, as well as the makeup of her microbiome, so it knows exactly how much lactose her body can break down. It’s also tailored specifically for her training regimen. When you’re training for a marathon, you need more protein. The amount of carbs that you need depends on how many miles you’re running that day. And you need a baseline amount of iron to make sure you’re carrying enough oxygen in your blood. So we take her workout plan and her health stats and we send them to the roboticized kitchen, which is going to build a meal specifically for her. It will deliver the food to her autonomously, via a delivery robot.
Now, one intriguing place where she could get protein is with something called cultured meat—meat that we’re going to grow in a bioreactor. After breakfast, Katie is ready to pick out her clothes for the day, which she does in conjunction with her smart mirror. Actually, the smart mirror is helps her to pick two looks: a physical-world look—that’s her hair, makeup, and clothes—as well as a virtual-world look. As Katie spends more and more time in virtual meetings, the way her avatar looks has become as important as her physical-world look. The mirror can preview both the avatar look and the physical-world look, and she can swipe through a couple options and select the look that she wants.
The last piece of her wardrobe is augmented reality contact lenses. In 2030, we’ll have tiny projectors and cameras built into contact lenses that will sync with nearby computers to basically give us a heads-up display on the real world. As people come into Katie’s field of view, she’ll get reminders about their names and the last time she had contact with them.
So now Katie is fueled up and ready to go to work. First, she consults her smart coach. Today, if you are a CEO, or a five-star general, or maybe director of the CIA, you probably have a chief of staff follows you around to all your meetings and helps you be the best you. In 2030, Katie’s chief of staff is software. It listens to every meeting she has and gives her real-time feedback. For instance, her smart coach might say, “Hey, you might have wanted to ask a question in that situation, instead of stating opinion.” The smart coach is also listening to every call, so it can automatically extract action items and block calendar slots for them.
Those calendar slots get booked depending on what kind of action it is, when it’s due, and how important it is. The smart coach knows Katie is a morning person. If you’re a morning person, it’s best to do your focused, analytical work in the morning and your creative work in the afternoon. But if you’re a night-owl, it’s actually reversed. The smart coach knows all of this and can block out all the right time slots on your calendar.
Katie has a big day today. She works in sales, and they’ve been preparing for a big call, which she’ll do in virtual reality. (Yes, there are still sales people in the 2030s.) Katie works at a company called Influencers, Inc., which builds products for influencers to sell to their fans. Think of it as an entire supply chain that can get behind somebody who’s becoming popular on social media.
The team has been preparing by doing a bunch of customer research and product development. If you wanted to build custom clothes to sell to an influencer today, that task would probably be a lot of summer interns, Excel spreadsheets, focus groups, and conversations spanning over the course of months. In the 2030s, this is all going to be automated with software in a matter of hours. We can ingest the influencer’s social media feeds to get a sense for her style, then we can adjust the social media feeds of her fans to figure out what’s popular in certain neighborhoods. We can then automatically generate candidate clothes to build and put those options in front of a human designer who can pick the best one and then put his or her own finishing touches on it. As a result, Katie’s team has three outfits that they’re ready to pitch the influencer when they have an audience with her.
Katie wants her team to practice for the sales pitch, so they head into a VR conference room. Katie’s team is global: she lives in Portland, her clothing designer is in Paris, the clothing manufacturer is in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and the data analyst is in Lagos, Nigeria. But the VR room will do real-time translation, so the team members all hear each other in their native languages. But the system doesn’t automatically translate cultural nuance, so the team gathers in the VR room to build their cultural understanding.
The influencer herself lives in Tokyo, but none of the team has spent enough time in Japan to understand the nuances of the culture. So the VR room can simulate the influencer talking with various tones of voice and body language so the team can figure out her state of mind. Is she into it? Is she not into it? Are we in the right price range? Does she like these designs? When she says yes, does she mean “I love it and I want it,” or does she mean, “yes, I understand you, but I disagree”? Katie’s team practices all these things in VR simulation, so that when they meet the real influencer they have a much higher sense of cultural understanding.
When it’s time for the actual call, they do that in VR, as well. That way they can view the clothes in 3D, preview how the supply chain would work, and assess how would they actually manufacture these clothes. While this is happening, Katie’s AR contact lenses can superimpose an engagement meter over everybody in the room. When somebody’s engagement level falls too low, Katie knows to prompt them to lean in and speak up.
So the influencer seems pretty excited about the clothes, but she has some ideas of her own. Instead of just incorporating that feedback, the team offers to run an instant poll. If we were trying to set up an A/B test with a global audience today, this might take weeks. But in the 2030s, software automates this process so it can be completed the same afternoon. The data scientist finds people who have purchased clothes before and their lookalikes—that is, people who are likely to buy the clothes as well. Influencer’s, Inc. software creates and delivers an A/B test within a social media app and gives her fans the opportunity to provide feedback. In this way, the influencer can reach hundreds of her fans instantaneously. In turn, the fans can get paid instantly for giving this feedback. They can choose to get paid in a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin or Libra, or they can choose to get paid in Influencer Coin. If fans are convinced this influencer is only going to get more popular over time and her Influencer Coin appreciates over time, this gives the fans a way to participate in the upside of an influencer’s rising popularity. It’s similar to the way startup employees get to participate in the upside of their startups through equity.
Because we’re doing this with cryptocurrencies powered by the blockchain, we can do this globally and instantaneously. As soon as the fan gives feedback, they get rewarded. Once the feedback is returned, software automatically updates all of the documents associated with getting the supply chain to build the clothing, starting with the sales contract. The sales contract goes to the influencer, she sees the results of the instant poll, and she’s excited to see that a lot of her fans agree with her own taste. She digitally signs the sales contract.
That digital signature unlocks a chain reaction of smart contracts that are built and distributed throughout the supply chain. Everybody’s who’s going to have a hand in creating these clothes, from the fabric supplier to the button supplier to the dye supplier, will get a smart contract that stipulates the terms of their participation. All of these smart contracts are essentially pieces of software that tie the supply chain together, replacing the hand written or typed or word-processed documents that we’ve been using for centuries. Once the orders start coming in, the supply chain will get paid as soon as they deliver according to the terms of the smart contract (rather than waiting for weeks or months to submit invoices, get human approvals, wait for the foreign currency exchange to take place, and then wait for the local currency payment to arrive), and they too can choose to get paid in Bitcoin or influencer coin. In this way, the supply chain can also participate in the rising popularity of the influencer and experience the upside of her growing popularity.
Back at Influencers, Inc., Katie’s excited to have closed a new influencer contract. She’s going to celebrate with her favorite activity, which is drone racing. She heads to the mall, where a drone racing stadium has replaced the former big box retailers.
In this new style of entertainment, audience participation is woven into the game itself. As fans cheer for their favorite pilots, the volume and coordination of their cheers determines whether the drone pilots get a double or triple point bonus as they fly their craft through obstacle rings. Crowd participation influences the way the game unfolds. Katie’s pilot, Wonder Woman, comes in second. Because she’s such a high finisher, when Katie logs into the drone racing game on her phone, her drone has new capabilities.
After the drone race, Katie stops by a store called the Bionic Suit Store. Katie’s helping a friend move over the weekend, so she needs to get fitted for an exoskeleton that will help her move bigger and bulkier items. She stops by the store to get calibrated and comfortable with the controls. When she’s ready, she schedules the suit to be delivered to her friend’s house when it’s time to move on Saturday morning.
Then Katie’s ready to go home, so she summons an auto-pod. Her city, Portland, has recently replaced their light rail system with an autonomously summoned mass transit system. She can summon a ride just like a Lyft. The auto-pod is a private, one- or two-person pod that’s half the width of a normal car. It turns out that if you do the math, packetizing mass transit in this fashion is an excellent idea, just like packetizing data for the internet was. You can actually move more people from point A to point B in these private pods, even during rush hour, compared to trains.
Now Katie is back home and ready for some sleep. Before bedtime, she’s got one shopping errand and two important connections to make. Katie offered to host the after-move party at her place, and so she needs to rent some furniture. In particular, she needs to have a cocktail bar delivered for the weekend. She fires up her AR shopping app to see what’s available. The AR contact lenses render exactly what the furniture will look like in her space, so she knows if it’ll fit and if she likes the look and feel. She scrolls through some of the options and picks one to be delivered for the party.
Then she has two important connections to make. The first is with her pet kitty. Sadly, kitty’s been having tummy troubles. As soon as Katie’s AR contact lenses see the cat, they remind Katie that kitty is on day 5 of a 10-day course of antibiotics. The AR lenses remind Katie to mix the antibiotics in with the cat’s food. This is a CRISPR-engineered pet, so the cat also glows in the dark. This is awesome because the non-glow-in-the-dark kitty was very good at hiding. Now, jellyfish genes that produce a protein called the green fluorescent protein (GFP) are integrated with the cat. No more hiding.
One more important connection. Her grandfather lives in San Francisco; he loves living independently. But lately, as he ages, he’s been having trouble doing things like getting out of the couch or bending over to pick up a box. So he’s recently gotten himself a robotic tail, inspired by a seahorse, that knows what he’s trying to do and automatically counterbalances to make it easier for him to get up and down stairs, pick up boxes, and leave the sofa. The robotic tail needs to be calibrated every few weeks, which involves changing the counterweights in each of the vertebrae. Katie offers to do it for him.
Today, a lot of us help our parents digitally by logging onto their laptops and helping them with Gmail problems via remote desktop. But in 2030, Katie does that with remote robotic arms. The kitchen robot that’s in her grandfather’s kitchen has a remote control mode, so Katie can “dial in” and control the arms.
There’s one last thing to do before Katie goes to sleep. She’s been having these incredibly vivid dreams in which people are wearing awesome outfits. She wants to remember the details of those dreams, so she can share them with her coworkers. Just before she falls asleep, she slips on a headband will record her dreams in a way that she can share with her friends.
So what have we seen? We’ve seen better health through personalized food, richer data sets, and shorter feedback loops. We’ve seen a flipped supply chain that allows people with big fan bases to actually make their own lifestyle brands. We’ve seen easier ad hoc global collaboration that spreads the benefits of ownership much farther than today. We’ve seen tech that gives us superpowers, as well as a deeper empathy for cultures that we haven’t experienced before. And we’ve seen a set of new experiences, such as going to a mall to watch drone racing or having a glow-in-the-dark pet.
I know that predicting the future is a bit of an uncertain enterprise. I may have gotten some of the details of the specific products I’ve mentioned wrong, but I’m pretty confident in the direction of these products. That’s because I’ve seen a lot of work today, either in a startup form or corporate innovation form, that points in this direction.
So: how will we get to this 2030 vision? How do we build it? What technology do we need to build? What business models do we need to build? What privacy frameworks do we need to create? Let’s go back to the beginning of Katie’s imagined day.
For starters, a smart toilet is part of a broad trend towards longitudinal health data. That’s a fancy way of saying: let’s use cheap sensors to get your health data over time and use that data to predict health outcomes, such as kidney stones or diabetes. So what data do we have? We have the data that tracks your urine. We have smart speakers that listen to changes in your voice over time. We’ve got what you look like, in the form of selfies. So we have lots of data. We also have algorithms that can take this data and predict health outcomes. We can use selfies to predict skin cancer, we can use changes in your voice to predict depression or early-onset Alzheimer’s.
What’s missing is a business model, a privacy model, and an ethical framework to tie these two pieces together. Imagine you’re using Instagram or your smart mirror and an alert pops up that says, “Hey, do you want me to send all these pictures to your doctor?” I’m not sure I want to do that. Would it be any better if it offers to send it to an insurance company? It’s not clear what the business model is that ties these two things together.
Let me give you an edge case that shows how tricky this will be to design. Katie takes selfies with her BFF all the time—imagine that Katie’s insurance will pay for the skin cancer detection service, based on her selfies. Now imagine that her BFF’s insurance doesn’t cover that. What happens when the algorithms spot potential melanoma in her BFF? How do we design the right business models, privacy framework, and ethical framework to get the best health outcomes to everybody? It’s going to be tricky.
Next, how do we get to spider silk shirts? This is an amazing biological material. Ounce for ounce, this is lighter than cotton, tougher than Kevlar, not derived from petroleum, and biodegrades naturally. So why aren’t we all wearing spider silk shirts today? The short answer is it’s way too expensive. Spiders themselves don’t generate that much usable silk. You can’t farm it, because if you put enough spiders close together they start eating each other. So: bioengineering to the rescue. Using techniques we’ve recently discovered, like CRISPR, we can copy and paste DNA that codes for spider silk proteins and stick them inside E. coli. Then we can turn E. coli into a factory to build the materials that we want.
Until very recently, a problem with this approach was the DNA sequences that code for spider silk protein are very long and repetitive. So if you just do a copy and paste of that long, repetitive sequence, and then stick it inside E. coli, E. coli will break the sequences down and you won’t get the proteins you want. Recently, a team at the Washington University in St. Louis figured out a way to recode the DNA into shorter sequences and in a way that E. coli won’t reject it. They now have E. coli producing spider silk proteins that, when combined with other ingredients, make spider silk fabric. This is a perfect illustration of where we are with bioengineering today. We’ve discovered the basic techniques like copy and paste DNA. And now we’re working on the higher level engineering design principles that allow us to do things that nature can’t more cost-effectively.
How do we get to robotic furniture? No technology breakthrough needed—you could actually buy this today if you wanted from a company called Ori Living. But this does illustrate a challenge, which is that our homes are turning into data centers. I’m guessing most of us do not want a second full-time job as a data center engineer, managing this fleet of software and equipment that we have in our house. We’re going to need a breakthrough in usability design that makes the experience of upgrading software for all of the devices in our house—every light bulb, every plug, every shirt—simpler. We’re definitely not there today; you probably have 10 devices that are all prompting you for updates. That’s not going to work when we have hundreds of devices in our houses.
How do we build customized foods? In particular, how do we get to the protein in these meals? One intriguing possibility is what’s called lab-grown, or engineered, or slaughter-free meat. Here’s the basic idea: We take a tissue sample from a pig or a cow, harvest its stem cells and put those stem cells in a bioreactor, a nutrient bath. When cells are in a healthy environment, they’ll multiply. If we can do that, we have the possibility to grow the meat that we want without raising and slaughtering animals. Growing meat in this way, in a bioreactor instead of on the field, would have several advantages. One, it’s definitely better for the environment. (Little known fact about global warming: 17 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions are caused by cows burping and farting.)
Obviously, it’s better for the animal. And though the jury’s still out, we suspect that it would be better for us. It’s likely easier to keep this supply chain cleaner than managing the cold chain from a slaughterhouse to your refrigerator.
If we could do this, what should we do with it? We should probably start with the species that are under the most pressure today, like the overfished Pacific bluefin tuna. There’s potential to grow it, instead of fishing it. But we don’t have to stop there. We aren’t constrained by animals that we’ve encountered. From basic biology design principles, we could engineer meats that are nutritious and delicious from animals that have never existed before. That’s the potential of bioengineering.
Next: the smart contact. It turns out that the VR supply chain has already done a great job of shrinking projectors and cameras into very, very small form factors. So the questions are: Can we shrink it even smaller? Can we shrink it into a form that we could embed into a transparent flexible material, like what contact lenses are made of? And can we get them at a high resolution so that even though they’re tiny and embedded in a contact lens, we can see full-color text and images? If we can do all that, how do we add power and data to it? Believe it or not, there are already tons of companies working on each one of these problems.
There’s a Silicon Valley startup called Mojo Vision that demonstrated one piece of this puzzle, the high-resolution tiny projector. It’s made out of micro LEDs and is half a millimeter across. It has a pixel density of 14,000 pixels per inch. The latest iPhone clocks in at just under 500. So this thing has 30 to 40 times the pixel density of the iPhone and is half a millimeter wide. That’s like a 10th of the size of one of the black dots on a ladybug. But now that we’ve gotten it small enough and pixel-dense enough, there are still other problems. Can we put it into a contact lens? Can we get it power and data? There’s incredible engineering going into packaging all of these components in contact lens form.
How do we build a smart coach? If you think about what we want out of a smart coach that we’re not getting from Alexa today, it’s the ability to understand us much better and answer higher-level questions. There is already an analog device that weighs about 3 pounds and draws about 20 watts of power that can answer those questions already. And it can answer those questions despite the fact that it has enormous handicaps compared to modern computers. Its components are a million times slower, and it has a terrible memory subsystem. That device is our brain.
It’s possible that we can build things that are more explicitly brain-like to achieve a smart coach. And it’s certainly possible that we can get there on our current trajectory, which is more data fed to better machine learning algorithms. But there’s a potential shortcut on the hardware side, called a neuromorphic chip. It explicitly models the brain—how neurons are connecting to other neurons and adjusting their weights over time based on stimulus. Instead of using logic gates and zeros and ones, neuromorphic chips have connections with neurons that have different strengths over time. From a hardware point of view, we might be able to build a more brain-like computer.
On the software side, we also have a lot to learn from brains—even teeny brains that are young and relatively underdeveloped. For example, there’s a cognitive psychology experiment that has been conducted with toddlers. An experimenter is hanging up clothes in front of the toddler and drops a clothespin.
The baby reaches over and hands the clothespin back to the experimenter. No prior training, the toddler has never been in an experience like this, and yet, he’s figured out that the experimenter is going to need the clothespin to solve his problem. Not only that, the baby decides he’s going to help, even though there’s no promise of reward. Humanity for the win.
There’s so much going on in the base software of this toddler that we would love to reverse engineer and put into our smart coach. The ability to form what psychologists call a theory of mind, in other words, a prediction of other people’s desires, and goals, and emotions. The ability to break a task down into sub-tasks, without seeing thousands of similar examples. And third, and maybe most importantly, the built-in desire to help when it’s actually helpful. There’s a fascinating variant of this experiment in which the experimenter just throws the clothespin on the floor and doesn’t look at it. You know what most babies do in that situation? They don’t do anything. They don’t pick up the clothespin, because they’ve somehow figured out the difference between “needs help” and “doesn’t need help.”
If you’ve ever been in a room where the smart speaker suddenly interrupts your conversation because it couldn’t figure out the difference between “needs help” and “doesn’t need help,” you understand how valuable this is.
The next 2030 tech is the auto-pod. Most of this technology already exists because it’s a subset of what we need to build for self-driving cars. Because the auto-pods have their own right of way, they don’t have to deal with crazy pedestrians and bad drivers. They have a dedicated right-of-way just like the light rail does today. What we will need, though, is a lot of people to say yes. We need regulators, mayors, regional transit planning authorities, state and federal regulators to all say yes to this technology.
We’re still doing a lot of shopping in the 2030s, mostly online, of course. One thing we need is something called post-quantum cryptography. You might have read Google’s recent announcement that they have a quantum computer that has achieved quantum supremacy. In other words, this quantum computer can do things that a normal computer might take 10,000 years to do. One of the things that people have been itching for quantum computers to do is brute force attack the encryption keys that protect all of our messages and credit card numbers today. So, we’re on the hunt for new algorithms that will withstand brute force attacks against crypto algorithms.
The good news is that a worldwide community of cryptographers has been working hard on this problem. And NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technologies, has actually organized a Survivor-like process to identify all the candidate algorithms and successively vote them off the island, until we get to the standard named post-quantum crypto. They’ve been running this process since 2015 and we’re already in the second round of votes. We’ve gone from 59 candidates to 26, and the hope is that we’ll standardize sometime in the mid-2020s.
The last technology I want to talk about is admittedly the most speculative and potentially farthest out of all the products I’ve talked about: the dream recorder. But I want to share two amazing research projects that demonstrate we’re on our way, we have a path forward. If you’re going to record dreams, you need to interpret brain signals, the brain’s electrical activities and turn that into audio and video. Let’s take each of them in turn.
Researchers at Columbia University led by Nima Mesgarani have literally turned brainwaves into speech. They found epilepsy patients that were already getting brain surgery. They inserted probes into the brain to capture brain activity and had people listen to people talking. Then they used the resulting brainwaves to train a voice synthesizer—exactly the same thing that’s in Alexa today. It’s an audio stream from your brainwaves.
Now, could we do the same thing with video? Researchers in Japan published a paper this April doing exactly that. Instead of epilepsy patients with probes inserted into their brains, they took brain scans of people inside fMRIs and showed them lots and lots of images. It might be pictures, it might be a plus sign, it maybe letters of the alphabet. They recorded the brain activity, then used a popular technique today in machine learning called a deep generated network to build an image generator. It’s kind of the same technology that’s behind deepfakes today. The resulting images look kind of impressionist. Still, it’s amazing that we’ve gotten this far. It suggests that one day we might be able to interpret the brain in a way that we could literally record your dreams.
From this vantage point—when we haven’t built those technologies yet, but are on our way there—the future is amazing. I’m ready for personalized food. I’m ready for a healthier me. I’m ready for a healthier planet. I’m ready for smart coach. I’m ready for AR contact lenses. I’m ready to ride the auto-pod. And I’m ready for superpowers at work. I hope this presentation has made you more and more excited about the future that is coming.
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Frank Chen heads our Early Stage Venture (ESV) Programs team and is responsible for developing company-building enablement products.
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What Will the World Look Like in 2030?
By The Editors Dec. 26, 2019
- Share full article
Lab meat. Cyberterror. Influencer I.P.O.s. The Times asked 13 public figures for their predictions on the best and worst to come.
Opinion | --> A Decade of Distrust
The reviews are in for the 2010s and they are at best mixed. For good reason: You can stroll down the street talking to your far-flung grandmother on FaceTime while corporations and governments use facial recognition technology to surveil you. There’s been a multicultural renaissance in arts and culture and a sluggish, unequal recovery from the Great Recession. Donald Trump was elected president and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez emerged as a potential new face of the Democratic Party. Depending on who you are, some trends of this decade have delighted you, others filled you with dread.
The 2020s will surely be characterized by the same subjective mix of terror and excitement. But over what?
The New York Times Opinion section asked politicians, writers, technologists, thinkers and others what most excites or terrifies them about what will come between now and 2030.
Edward Snowden
Former n.s.a. contractor and author of “permanent record”.
The drowned cities of tomorrow will be founded on the conveniences of today. Electricity usage by data centers is enormous and expanding, threatening to top 10 percent of global electricity consumption within the next decade and to produce roughly five times the CO2 emissions of all current global air travel. As more power is required to cool these data centers, the warmer the planet will become; and as consumer electronics get cheaper and more disposable, the more they will leach their minerals into our groundwater, poisoning the future.
To achieve sustainability we will need to treat technological change and environmental change as symbiotic. If more efforts aren’t directed toward converting data centers to renewable energy, and innovating ecologically-responsible, recyclable machines and batteries, then the internet, too, will become a weapon of the rich, even more than it already is — a tool used to seize and control ever more scarce natural resources.
Andrew Yang
Democratic presidential candidate.
The greatest challenge of our time is automation, and by 2030 we’ll be experiencing its full effects on our economy and society. Technology can improve lives. It can also take away jobs. This is in large part how we have already ended up in a world where 78 percent of people are living paycheck-to-paycheck, most new jobs are contract or gig work and recent college graduates are drowning in debt while also being underemployed. Children are experiencing depression and loneliness at record rates because of smartphones and social media. Without understanding and getting ahead of much of this, we’ll end up at the mercy of the big tech companies. We need to re-evaluate the way we view work, put people over profits and create an economy that works for us instead of the other way around. I fear what will happen if we do nothing, but I’m excited by what could happen if we pick our heads up from our different screens and come together.
Editor at large, Vox.com
Every year, we kill more than 70 billion animals for food. The vast majority of them live lives of suffering, jammed into the grooves of our industrial agriculture system. But human beings aren’t exempt from its costs. Our meat habit is responsible for almost a fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions, a third of arable land use and more than 10 percent of the worldwide freshwater footprint.
Without the 20th-century advances in breeding, antibiotics, ventilation, transport and more, processing enough animals to feed the world would have been impossible. But the conditions were inhumane — and what that technology wrought, other technology may end.
The rise of plant and cell-based meat is the emerging trend that fills me with the most hope. The spread of Impossible Burgers and the soaring performance of the Beyond Meat I.P.O. have proven that there’s a multibillion-dollar market for clean meats, only now in its infancy. It’s entirely possible that by 2030 we’ll be on our way to growing healthier, tastier, kinder, cheaper and more environmentally sustainable meat — at a mass scale, without all the killing. If so, we’ll live through one of the greatest reductions in sentient suffering in history.
Stacey Abrams
Democrat from georgia.
In 2030, America will be only a decade or so from a becoming a majority-minority nation — a complicated transition fraught with challenges of identity and fraternity. In the meantime, the international community will also have to move toward net zero carbon emissions. Our only path to a thoughtful, responsive transition is a truly participatory democracy: Citizens will have to decide that we are something greater than a collection of individuals or political factions. Though we have been reminded in recent years that democracy is fragile, Americans are preparing for the challenge by participating in the 2020 census, registering marginalized communities and fighting voter suppression. By 2030, we’ll see whether our nation has stood true to its pluralistic roots and used the climate crisis as an opportunity to restore alliances here and around the world.
Alexandra Scaggs
Financial journalist.
Unless central banks decide to keep borrowing rates low indefinitely, by 2030 a roughly $12 trillion corporate debt bubble will burst and break the economy as we know it.
That’s when things could get weird: Americans will have to legally declare themselves to be businesses in order to find work — either contract work for a few surviving conglomerates or selling directly to customers online. Top influencers will fare better, raising millions of dollars in personal brand I.P.O.s. But most workers will live at the whim of sprawling, tech-led corporations — even line cooks and dishwashers, whose apps schedule them for shifts with little notice. Bloggers and writers will try to survive by selling à la carte subscriptions through Facebook-owned platforms. A drive to organize incorporated bartenders will fail once the Supreme Court rules they violate antitrust law by colluding to raise prices — a precedent that will effectively kill private-sector unions. Only shareholder prudence and worker solidarity will be able to keep full-time work a norm. But who, after the 2010s, can count on that?
Mike Gallagher
Republican congressman from wisconsin.
Here’s a dystopian future of which we should all be afraid and do everything we can to avoid: The internet as we know it is largely American, but by 2030 the Chinese Communist Party will have built an entirely new internet where Beijing attempts to monopolize key supply chains, stifle free speech and hoard personal data. The menace is already real. The C.C.P. is increasingly exporting its model abroad. Huawei and ZTE seek to build the world’s networks; WeChat and TikTok play a growing role in online discourse; Chinese cryptocurrencies could one day threaten the dollar. It’s not too late to stop — but we need a sense of urgency.
Caity Weaver
Writer at large, the new york times magazine.
By the end of the decade, ads will be the highlight of my days. I might, by then, have a child, who might occasionally behave in captivating ways — but it will be no match for my personalized ads. Mass customization is already, if not improving our lives, certainly making them more particular. Social media home pages auto populate with photos and videos (short videos, thank God) irresistibly similar to those we have previously clicked. And nothing is better attuned to our true selves than the tracking data that trail us like ducklings. Did you once consider buying a blanket online? You sound like someone addicted to blankets. Perhaps you’d enjoy seeing other blankets you could buy, in between images of friends?
I experience a Darwinian thrill observing my ads’ coevolution with me in real time. They memorize my soul and in exchange teach me that, yes, I would like to learn about an Australian shoe brand I’ve never heard of. In 2030, the only ads I encounter will be for products I would kill to buy, with no filler of irrelevant medications or home décor that fails to complement my aesthetic. They’ll be our new little loved ones.
Professor of international political economy, Brown University
Only one thing matters between now and 2030: climate change. Strange, then, that we will do nothing about it — for reasons of politics. The Republicans are denialists whose main constituencies are in states whose business model is carbon heavy. The Democrats are Green New Deal-ers at the grass-roots level, but the money people inside the party fear and distrust their base.
With that kind of split among the Democrats, it’s easy to imagine the plausible: Trump wins re-election, leaving the Denialist in Chief to continue at the top of the world’s most powerful government. With the Senate more or less structurally locked in their favor, Republicans will probably get one more clean shot at the White House in 2024. But thereafter, climate change will be “Too Big to Ignore,” and boomers will no longer be a decisive electoral bloc. At that point, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is either a kingmaker or obtains the nomination herself, and perhaps even wins. But this will be 12 years after we were told we had 12 years to fix the problem. Oops.
Jami Attenberg
Novelist, author of “all this could be yours”.
A decade ago, everyone was worried the internet would kill the independent bookstore. But nearly 1,000 new stores have opened in the United States since 2009. And the owners — in partnership with authors and readers themselves — are harnessing the dynamic nature of the internet like some wild and wicked young horse to promote their decidedly more fixed product.
“Bookstagram” and “book twitter” complement the bookstore, boosting retail sales and audiences for readings. For a recent book launch, I wrote postcards to readers who preordered my book through Books Are Magic then watched as the recipients posted images on social media, responding to what I sent. There is no playbook for any of this. We’re operating on instinct and genuine symbiosis. And community-oriented bookstores are thriving. That will remain the case over the next 10 years. We’re not letting go of these stores, or each other, anytime soon.
Dambisa Moyo
Economist, author of “edge of chaos”.
Forecasts suggest the world’s population could reach a staggering 9 billion people by 2030 — triple the population of the early 1960s. Much of this increase will come from the poorest regions of India, South America and Africa. Africa alone is expected to represent nearly half of the world’s population by the middle of this century; by some estimates, India is adding 1 million people to its working age population a month. If we don’t place international cooperation over national self-interest, the world will be unprepared for this population explosion, which could become a catalyst for greater global conflict with dire implications for the global economy, migrants and the environment.
Garry Kasparov
Chairman of the renew democracy initiative and former world chess champion.
I’ve made my share of dire forecasts — and as quite a few of them have come to pass, I’m often called a pessimist. In reality, I’m an optimist, issuing warnings in the hope of being proven wrong. Despite my professional focus on A.I. and the human-machine relationship that will define our future, the emerging trend I’m most concerned about is purely human. The free world is lurching toward a polarized, post-truth reality that reminds me of my life in the Soviet Union, where the truth was whatever the regime said it was that day. If the battle for a shared, fact-based reality is not fought and won, 2030 will make the outrages and demagogy of 2019 look like a golden age of comity.
Min Jin Lee
Novelist, author of “pachinko”.
When I was in college in the late ’80s, I went to chapel on Sundays. There were four or five undergraduates at the services; I didn’t hang out with them. I’d sit alone in an empty pew, mumble the hymns, then right after the benediction, I’d dash to the dining hall. I wouldn’t mention where I had been. As a Gen X liberal, I avoided talking to anyone about Jesus, God or the Bible. Going to church was awkward, isolating, uncool.
Campuses today seem to be blooming with faith groups. Jewish students can happily go to Chabad or Hillel House, and churchgoing Christians find support through a number of denominations without shame. Muslim and Hindu students are finding faith communities alongside students who identify publicly as Baha’i, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, Mormon, Jain, Shinto, Tao and Unitarian. And respect for indigenous spiritual traditions is a norm on campus. The young people I meet around the country today are far more open about their religious practices than in years past. My guess? By 2030, religion will actually have a stronger hold on young people.
P.W. Singer
Cybersecurity specialist, fellow at new america.
Our cities, workplaces and homes will be “smarter” by 2030. That means nearly everything in our lives will be networked into profitable, energy-saving infrastructures — much of it prudently designed to ward off the worst of climate change. But the transition to an autonomous, always-watching-us internet of things will be bumpy. The economy, politics and even family life will struggle to master a world of evermore intelligent systems that operate in ways we understand less and less. Don’t expect the old sci-fi clichés of a robot uprising. Expect the rise of even more populist anger, driven by so much change so quickly; new crimes that exploit those very same networks; and a new generation of terrorists, able to hold an entire city hostage.
Larry David
Comedian, writer and producer.
Besides being a great bar mitzvah D.J. and amateur chemist, one of my unique talents is spotting trends. In 1964, I was the first to predict that jeans were going to be all the rage — and look how that turned out. That was also the same year I watched my friend get stoned and I immediately told everyone, “Hey, I think this marijuana thing could really catch on! People seem to love it!” Truth be told, I also predicted the demise of the bagel, but nobody’s perfect.
Be that as it may, I am prepared to state unequivocally that the next big trend will be outright, brazen, shameless lying. This, of course, originated in the White House and I’m already seeing signs of it everywhere. Even I, heretofore the George Washington of comedians, have succumbed.
Here’s just one example: Last week I attended the screening of a director friend’s new movie, which I hated. The next day, when he asked me what I thought of it, I told him I hadn’t seen it. He said incredulously, “What are you talking about? I saw you there.” I said, “No, you must’ve thought you saw me. There are always a lot of old bald guys at these screenings.” “But we spoke!” “Again, you’re confusing me with someone else.” At that moment, I saw him questioning his own sanity and I knew I was in. Three days later he was put in a straitjacket and taken to Bellevue. Yeah, this lying thing is going to be big.
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55 Transcript — “How To Make the World a Better Place by 2030” (2015) + Update (2018)
Do you think the world is going to be a better place next year? In the next decade? Can we end hunger, achieve gender equality, halt climate change, all in the next 15 years?
Well, according to the governments of the world, yes we can. In the last few days, the leaders of the world, meeting at the UN in New York, agreed a new set of Global Goals for the development of the world to 2030. And here they are: these goals are the product of a massive consultation exercise. The Global Goals are who we, humanity, want to be.
Now that’s the plan, but can we get there? Can this vision for a better world really be achieved? Well, I’m here today because we’ve run the numbers, and the answer, shockingly, is that maybe we actually can. But not with business as usual.
Now, the idea that the world is going to get a better place may seem a little fanciful. Watch the news every day and the world seems to be going backwards, not forwards. And let’s be frank: it’s pretty easy to be skeptical about grand announcements coming out of the UN.
But please, I invite you to suspend your disbelief for just a moment. Because back in 2001, the UN agreed another set of goals, the Millennium Development Goals. And the flagship target there was to halve the proportion of people living in poverty by 2015. The target was to take from a baseline of 1990, when 36 percent of the world’s population lived in poverty, to get to 18 percent poverty this year.
Did we hit this target? Well, no, we didn’t. We exceeded it. This year, global poverty is going to fall to 12 percent. Now, that’s still not good enough, and the world does still have plenty of problems. But the pessimists and doomsayers who say that the world can’t get better are simply wrong.
So how did we achieve this success? Well, a lot of it was because of economic growth. Some of the biggest reductions in poverty were in countries such as China and India, which have seen rapid economic growth in recent years. So can we pull off the same trick again? Can economic growth get us to the Global Goals? Well, to answer that question, we need to benchmark where the world is today against the Global Goals and figure out how far we have to travel.
But that ain’t easy, because the Global Goals aren’t just ambitious, they’re also pretty complicated. Over 17 goals, there are then 169 targets and literally hundreds of indicators. Also, while some of the goals are pretty specific — end hunger — others are a lot vaguer — promote peaceful and tolerant societies.
So to help us with this benchmarking, I’m going to use a tool called the Social Progress Index. What this does is measures all the stuff the Global Goals are trying to achieve, but sums it up into a single number that we can use as our benchmark and track progress over time.
The Social Progress Index basically asks three fundamental questions about a society. First of all, does everyone have the basic needs of survival: food, water, shelter, safety? Secondly, does everyone have the building blocks of a better life: education, information, health and a sustainable environment? And does everyone have the opportunity to improve their lives, through rights, freedom of choice, freedom from discrimination, and access to the world’s most advanced knowledge?
The Social Progress Index sums all this together using 52 indicators to create an aggregate score on a scale of 0 to 100. And what we find is that there’s a wide diversity of performance in the world today. The highest performing country, Norway, scores 88. The lowest-performing country, Central African Republic, scores 31. And we can add up all the countries together, weighting for the different population sizes, and that global score is 61. In concrete terms, that means that the average human being is living on a level of social progress about the same of Cuba or Kazakhstan today.
That’s where we are today: 61 out of 100. What do we have to get to achieve the Global Goals?
Now, the Global Goals are certainly ambitious, but they’re not about turning the world into Norway in just 15 years. So having looked at the numbers, my estimate is that a score of 75 would not only be a giant leap forward in human well-being, it would also count as hitting the Global Goals target. So there’s our target, 75 out of 100. Can we get there?
Well, the Social Progress Index can help us calculate this, because as you might have noticed, there are no economic indicators in there; there’s no GDP or economic growth in the Social Progress Index model. And what that lets us do is understand the relationship between economic growth and social progress.
Let me show you on this chart. So here on the vertical axis, I’ve put social progress, the stuff the Global Goals are trying to achieve. Higher is better. And then on the horizontal axis, is GDP per capita. Further to the right means richer. And in there, I’m now going to put all the countries of the world, each one represented by a dot, and on top of that I’m going to put the regression line that shows the average relationship. And what this tells us is that as we get richer, social progress does tend to improve. However, as we get richer, each extra dollar of GDP is buying us less and less social progress. And now we can use this information to start building our forecast. So here is the world in 2015. We have a social progress score of 61 and a GDP per capita of $14,000. And the place we’re trying to get to, remember, is 75, that Global Goals target. So here we are today, $14,000 per capita GDP. How rich are we going to be in 2030? That’s what we need to know next. Well, the best forecast we can find comes from the US Department of Agriculture, which forecasts 3.1 percent average global economic growth over the next 15 years, which means that in 2030, if they’re right, per capita GDP will be about $23,000. So now the question is: if we get that much richer, how much social progress are we going to get? Well, we asked a team of economists at Deloitte who checked and crunched the numbers, and they came back and said, well, look: if the world’s average wealth goes from $14,000 a year to $23,000 a year, social progress is going to increase from 61 to 62.4.
Just 62.4. Just a tiny increase.
Now this seems a bit strange. Economic growth seems to have really helped in the fight against poverty, but it doesn’t seem to be having much impact on trying to get to the Global Goals. So what’s going on? Well, I think there are two things. The first is that in a way, we’re the victims of our own success. We’ve used up the easy wins from economic growth, and now we’re moving on to harder problems. And also, we know that economic growth comes with costs as well as benefits. There are costs to the environment, costs from new health problems like obesity.
So that’s the bad news. We’re not going to get to the Global Goals just by getting richer.
So are the pessimists right?
Well, maybe not. Because the Social Progress Index also has some very good news. Let me take you back to that regression line. So this is the average relationship between GDP and social progress, and this is what our last forecast was based on. But as you saw already, there is actually lots of noise around this trend line.
What that tells us, quite simply, is that GDP is not destiny. We have countries that are
underperforming on social progress, relative to their wealth. Russia has lots of natural resource wealth, but lots of social problems. China has boomed economically, but hasn’t made much headway on human rights or environmental issues. India has a space program and millions of people without toilets. Now, on the other hand, we have countries that are over-performing on social progress relative to their GDP. Costa Rica has prioritized education, health and environmental sustainability, and as a result, it’s achieving a very high level of social progress, despite only having a rather modest GDP. And Costa Rica’s not alone. From poor countries like Rwanda to richer countries like New Zealand, we see that it’s possible to get lots of social progress, even if your GDP is not so great.
And that’s really important, because it tells us two things. First of all, it tells us that we already in the world have the solutions to many of the problems that the Global Goals are trying to solve. It also tells us that we’re not slaves to GDP. Our choices matter: if we prioritize the well-being of people, then we can make a lot more progress than our GDP might expect.
How much? Enough to get us to the Global Goals? Well, let’s look at some numbers. What we know already: the world today is scoring 61 on social progress, and the place we want to get to is 75. If we rely on economic growth alone, we’re going to get to 62.4. So let’s assume now that we can get the countries that are currently underperforming on social progress — the Russia, China, Indias — just up to the average. How much social progress does that get us? Well, that takes us to 65. It’s a bit better, but still quite a long way to go. So let’s get a little bit more optimistic and say, what if every country gets a little bit better at turning its wealth into well-being? Well then, we get to 67. And now let’s be even bolder still. What if every country in the world chose to be like Costa Rica in prioritizing human well-being, using its wealth for the well-being of its citizens? Well then, we get to nearly 73, very close to the Global Goals.
Can we achieve the Global Goals? Certainly not with business as usual. Even a flood tide of economic growth is not going to get us there, if it just raises the mega-yachts and the super-wealthy and leaves the rest behind. If we’re going to achieve the Global Goals we have to do things differently. We have to prioritize social progress, and really scale solutions around the world. I believe the Global Goals are a historic opportunity, because the world’s leaders have promised to deliver them. Let’s not dismiss the goals or slide into pessimism; let’s hold them to that promise. And we need to hold them to that promise by holding them accountable, tracking their progress all the way through the next 15 years.
And I want to finish by showing you a way to do that, called the People’s Report Card. The People’s Report Card brings together all this data into a simple framework that we’ll all be familiar with from our school days, to hold them to account. It grades our performance on the Global Goals on a scale from F to A, where F is humanity at its worst, and A is humanity at its best. Our world today is scoring a C-. The Global Goals are all about getting to an A, and that’s why we’re going to be updating the People’s Report Card annually, for the world and for all the countries of the world, so we can hold our leaders to account to achieve this target and fulfill this promise. Because getting to the Global Goals will only happen if we do things differently, if our leaders do things differently, and for that to happen, that needs us to demand it.
So let’s reject business as usual. Let’s demand a different path. Let’s choose the world that we want.
Bruno Giussani: Thank you, Michael. Michael, just one question: the Millennium Development Goals established 15 years ago, they were kind of applying to every country but it turned out to be really a scorecard for emerging countries. Now the new Global Goals are explicitly universal. They ask for every country to show action and to show progress. How can I, as a private citizen, use the report card to create pressure for action?
Michael Green: This is a really important point; it’s a big shift in priorities — it’s no longer about poor countries and just poverty. It’s about every country. And every country is going to have challenges in getting to the Global Goals. Even, I’m sorry to say, Bruno, Switzerland has got to work to do. And so that’s why we’re going to produce these report cards in 2016 for every country in the world. Then we can really see, how are we doing? And it’s not going to be rich countries scoring straight A’s. And that, then, I think, is to provide a point of focus for people to start demanding action and start demanding progress.
BG: Thank you very much.
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In 2015, the leaders of the world made a big promise. A promise that over the next 15 years, the lives of billions of people are going to get better with no one left behind. That promise is the Sustainable Development Goals — the SDGs. We’re now three years in; a fifth of the way into the journey. The clock is ticking. If we offtrack now, it’s going to get harder and harder to hit those goals. So what I want to do for you today is give you a snapshot on where we are today, some projections on where we’re heading and some ideas on things we might need to do differently.
Now, the SDGs are of course spectacularly complicated. I would expect nothing less from the United Nations.
How many goals? Maybe something tried and tested, like three, seven or 10. No, let’s pick a prime number higher than 10. Seventeen goals. I congratulate those of you who’ve memorized them already. For the rest of us, here they are.
Seventeen goals ranging from ending poverty to inclusive cities to sustainable fisheries; all a comprehensive plan for the future of our world. But sadly, a plan without the data to measure it. So how are we going to track progress? Well, I’m going to use today the Social Progress Index. It’s a measure of the quality of life of countries, ranging from the basic needs of survival — food, water, shelter, safety — through to the foundations of well-being — education, information, health and the environment — and opportunity — rights, freedom of choice, inclusiveness and access to higher education.
Now, the Social Progress Index doesn’t look like the SDGs, but fundamentally, it’s measuring the same concepts, and the Social Progress Index has the advantage that we have the data. We have 51 indicators drawn from trusted sources to measure these concepts. And also, what we can do because it’s an index, is add together all those indicators to give us an aggregate score about how we’re performing against the total package of the SDGs. Now, one caveat. The Social Progress Index is a measure of quality of life. We’re not looking at whether this can be achieved within the planet’s environmental limits. You will need other tools to do that.
So how are we doing on the SDGs? Well, I’m going to put the SDGs on a scale of zero to 100. And zero is the absolute worst score on each of those 51 indicators: absolute social progress, zero. And then 100 is the minimum standard required to achieve those SDGs. A hundred is where we want to get to by 2030. So, where did we start on this journey? Fortunately, not at zero. In 2015, the world score against the SDGs was 69.1. Some way on the way there but quite a long way to go.
Now let me also emphasize that this world forecast, which is based on data from 180 countries, is population weighted. So China has more weight in than Comoros; India has more weight in than Iceland. But we could unpack this and see how the countries are doing. And the country today that is closest to achieving the SDGs is Denmark. And the country with the furthest to go is Central African Republic. And everyone else is somewhere in between. So the challenge for the SDGs is to try and sweep all these dots across to the right, to 100 by 2030. Can we get there? Well, with the Social Progress Index, we’ve got some time series data. So we have some idea of the trend that the countries are on, on which we can build some projections.
So let’s have a look. Let’s start with our top-performing country, Denmark. And yes, I’m pleased to say that Denmark is forecast to achieve the SDGs by 2030. Maybe not surprising, but I’ll take a win. Let’s look at some of the other richer countries of the world — the G7. And we find that Germany and Japan will get there or thereabouts. But Canada, France, the UK and Italy are all going to fall short. And the United States? Quite some way back. Now, this is sort of worrying news. But these are the richest countries in the world, not the most populous. So let’s take a look now at the biggest countries in the world, the ones that will most affect whether or not we achieve the SDGs.
And here they are — countries in the world with a population of higher than 100 million, ranging from China to Ethiopia. Obviously, the US and Japan would be in that list, but we’ve looked at them already. So here we are. The biggest countries in the world; the dealbreakers for the SDGs. And the country that’s going to make most progress towards the SDGs is Mexico. Mexico is going to get to about 87, so just shy of where the US is going to get but quite some way off our SDG target. Russia comes next. Then China and Indonesia. Then Brazil — might’ve expected Brazil to do a bit better. Philippines, and then a step down to India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, and then Ethiopia. So none of these countries are going to hit the SDGs. And we can then take these numbers in all the countries of the world to give ourselves a world forecast on achieving that total package of the SDGs. So remember, in 2015 we started at 69.1. I’m pleased to say that over the last three years, we have made some progress. In 2018, we’ve hit 70.5, and if we project that rate of progress forward to 2030, that’s going to get us to 75.2, which is obviously a long way short of our target. Indeed, on current trends, we won’t hit the 2030 targets until 2094. Now, I don’t know about you, but I certainly don’t want to wait that long.
So what can we do about this? Well, the first thing to do is we’ve got to call out the rich countries. Here are the countries closest to the SDGs, with the greatest resources, and they’re falling short. Maybe they think that this is like the Old World where goals for the UN are just for poor countries and not for them. Well, you’re wrong. The SDGs are for every country, and it’s shameful that these wealthy countries are falling short. Every country needs a plan to implement the SDGs and deliver them for their citizens. G7, other rich countries — get your act together.
The second thing we can do is look a bit further into the data and see where there are opportunities to accelerate progress or there are negative trends that we can reverse. So I’m going to take you into three areas. One where we’re doing quite well, one where we really should be doing better and another where we’ve got some real problems.
Let’s start with the good news, and I want to talk about what we call nutrition and basic medical care. This covers SDG 2 on no hunger and the basic elements of SDG 3 on health, so maternal and child mortality, infectious diseases, etc … This is an area where most of the rich world has hit the SDGs. And we also find, looking at our big countries, that the most advanced have got pretty close. Here are our 11 big countries, and if you look at the top, Brazil and Russia are pretty close to the SDG target. But at the bottom — Ethiopia, Pakistan — a long way to go. That’s where we are in 2018. What’s our trajectory? On the current trajectory, how far are we going to get by 2030? Well, let’s have a look. Well, what we see is a lot of progress. See Bangladesh in the middle. If Bangladesh maintains its current rate of progress, it could get very close to that SDG target. And Ethiopia at the bottom is making a huge amount of progress at the moment. If that can be maintained, Ethiopia could get a long way. We add this all up for all the countries of the world and our projection is a score of 94.5 by 2030. And if countries like the Philippines, which have grown more slowly, could accelerate progress, then we could get a lot closer.
So there are reasons to be optimistic about SDGs 2 and 3. But there’s another very basic area of the SDGs where we’re doing less well, which is SDG 6, on water and sanitation. Again, it’s an SDG where most of the rich countries have already achieved the targets. And again, for our big countries — our big 11 emerging countries, we see that some of the countries, like Russia and Mexico, are very close to the target, but Nigeria and other countries are a very long way back. So how are we doing on this target? What progress are we going to make over the next 12 years based on the current direction of travel? Well, here we go … and yes, there is some progress. Our top four countries are all hitting the SDG targets — some are moving forward quite quickly. But it’s not enough to really move us forward significantly. What we see is that for the world as a whole, we’re forecasting a score of around 85, 86 by 2030 — not fast enough.
Now, obviously this is not good news, but I think what this data also shows is that we could be doing a lot better. Water and sanitation is a solved problem. It’s about scaling that solution everywhere. So if we could accelerate progress in some of those countries who are improving more slowly — Nigeria, the Philippines, etc. — then we could get a lot closer to the goal. Indeed, I think SDG 6 is probably the biggest opportunity of all the SDGs for a step change.
So that’s an area we could do better. Let’s look finally at an area where we are struggling, which is what we call personal rights and inclusiveness. This is covering concepts across a range of SDGs. SDG 1 on poverty, SDG 5 on gender equality, SDG 10 on inequality, SDG 11 on inclusive cities and SDG 16 on peace and justice. So across those SDGs there are themes around rights and inclusiveness, and those may seem less immediate or pressing than things like hunger and disease, but rights and inclusion are critical to an agenda of no one left behind. So how are we doing on those issues? Let’s start off with personal rights. What I’m going to do first is show you our big countries in 2015. So here they are, and I’ve put the USA and Japan back in, so it’s our 13 biggest countries in the world. And we see a wide range of scores. The United States at the top with Japan hitting the goals; China a long way behind. So what’s been our direction of travel on the rights agenda over the last three years? Let’s have a look. Well, what we see is actually pretty ugly. The majority of the countries are standing still or moving backwards, and big countries like Brazil, India, China, Bangladesh have all seen significant declines. This is worrying.
Let’s have a look now at inclusiveness. And inclusiveness is looking at things like violence and discrimination against minorities, gender equity, LGBT inclusion, etc… And as a result, we see that the scores for our big countries are generally lower. Every country, rich and poor alike, is struggling with building an inclusive society. But what’s our direction of travel? Are we building more inclusive countries? Let’s have a look — progress to 2018. And again we see the world moving backwards: most countries static, a lot of countries going backwards — Bangladesh moving backwards — but also, two of the countries that were leading — Brazil and the United States — have gone backwards significantly over the last three years.
Let’s sum this up now for the world as a whole. And what we see on personal rights for the whole world is we’re forecasting actually a decline in the score on personal rights to about 60, and then this decline in the score of inclusiveness to about 42. Now, obviously these things can change quite quickly with rights and with changes in law, changes in attitudes, but we have to accept that on current trends, this is probably the most worrying aspect of the SDGs. How I’ve depressed you …
I hope not because I think what we do see is that progress is happening in a lot of places and there are opportunities for accelerating progress. We are living in a world that is tantalizingly close to ensuring that no one need die of hunger or malaria or diarrhea. If we can focus our efforts, mobilize resources, galvanize the political will, that step change is possible.
But in focusing on those really basic, solvable SDGs, we mustn’t forget the whole package. The goals are an unwieldy set of indicators, goals and targets, but they also include the challenges our world faces. The fact that the SDGs are focusing attention on the fact that we face a crisis in personal rights and inclusiveness is a positive. If we forget that, if we choose to double down on the SDGs that we can solve, if we go for SDG à la carte and pick the most easy SDGs, then we will have missed the point of the SDGs, we will miss the goals and we will have failed on the promise of the SDGs.
Essentials for ENGL-121 Copyright © 2016 by David Buck is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.
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The world in 2030: UNESCO survey
How do you see the world in 2030? What are your main concerns for the future and what are the solutions that would make it possible to face them? Take part in the global survey to better understand the challenges and solutions!
In a context of profound upheaval linked to the COVID-19 pandemic and the urgent need to rethink many plans of our societies, UNESCO is launching an unprecedented global public inquiry entitled " The world in 2030 ". This survey will enable UNESCO to gain a better understanding of the public's opinion on the major global challenges for the years to come and the solutions necessary to face them. The results of the survey will help UNESCO define the global agenda on these issues and thus arrive peacefully in 2030.
Launched as part of UNESCO's Strategic Transformation , the survey is open to everyone and aims to obtain the largest possible number of responses worldwide, especially from young people.
The results of this survey will help UNESCO define global responses to these challenges in the next 10 years knowing what is important to you. Let us know what challenges you are most concerned about and what solutions you particularly want to see adopted, then answer a short series of general questions that will help us get to know you better.
The survey is available in all official United Nations languages and in at least 10 other languages. Help us set the course by answering this unprecedented global survey of the challenges we face and the solutions necessary for the world to offer us in 2030 a living environment that meets our wishes.
The next decade will be crucial for restoring confidence in international cooperation and putting in place the necessary mechanisms to respond effectively to the major challenges of the contemporary world. Make your voice heard ! CLICK HERE: https://fr.unesco.org/mondeen2030
Estimated response time: 6 minutes
This survey is anonymous. All data collected will be stored under conditions of security and anonymity in accordance with UNESCO’s online privacy policy.
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20 Amazing Ways Your Daily Life Will Be Different in 2030
For more than 90 years, The Kiplinger Letter has been alerting its readers to important emerging technologies and how they will impact businesses, consumers and investors.
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For more than 90 years, The Kiplinger Letter has been alerting its readers to important emerging technologies and how they will impact businesses, consumers and investors. ( See our Greatest Tech Forecasts of the Last 90 Years .)
Over the decades, the Letter has helped readers understand the implications of a wide array of technologies — from airplanes, televisions and satellites to the Internet, smartphones and much, much more.
Forecasting the future is no easy task. Kiplinger reporters and editors dig deep, leaning on experts in academia and the private sector. We tap our sources in government to understand how regulations will affect emerging technology. Moreover, we look at past and present trends and apply careful, considered judgment to forecast and analyze coming developments.
In the following slides, we highlight some amazing developments that will shape your world in 2030. While many of the picks seem right out of the realm of dazzling science fiction, prepare for them to eventually become commonplace.
Your Technology Will Emit Scents
A typical day in 2030 will begin with a soothing voice emanating from your iPhone (version 14 by then, we figure) to bid you good morning, while the room fills with light and a scent of your choosing: coffee? bacon? The devices, advanced version of today’s plugins, will attach to phones or work wirelessly. Personalized scents will deliver a cognitive boost or a restful waft when you need it. Online shoppers will be able to sniff flowers, food or cologne before buying. Leading the charge: Many start-up firms, as well as leading purveyors of fragrance sprays and other scent-emitting devices.
- ON YOUTUBE: This Phone Smells Like Popcorn
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Your Bed Will Adjust to You
In 2030, the only thing to blame for a bad night’s sleep will be yourself (or the kids/dogs/cats). You’ll generally sleep well, thanks to a bed packed with sensors that automatically adjust to your body’s pressure points. The bed also controls temperature and monitors sweat, stress and heart rate via sensors. Also included: a mobile app for combining sleep data with diet and exercise for personalized tips.
Your Fridge Will Handle the Grocery Shopping
Got milk? In 2030, your refrigerator will monitor inventory and order items you’ve requested to have on hand for dinner tonight. The Internet-enabled device will have a chip that allows it to pay for the items, too, without having to ask you for authorization.
Your Food Will Be Grown Vertically
In 2030, most food will look the same way it always has, but it will be produced much differently. Vertical agriculture will be all the rage — growing fruits, vegetables and grains in buildings controlled with artificial intelligence, rather than on horizontal land. Meat will be grown under laboratory conditions with stem cells taken from livestock.
The impact on agriculture, pollution and land-use trends will be profound. In 2015, nearly one-third of the world’s land was used to raise crops and livestock. By 2030, much of the arable land will be back to its natural state — a plus for the environment. Vertical farming recycles nutrients and dispenses with pesticides. Lab-grown meat reduces reliance on antibiotics. Reduced use of pesticides and antibiotics helps the environment.
And with food produced in growing facilities near population centers, there will be scant need to transport fruits and veggies across vast distances. Decentralized production will ensure fast delivery of fresh food, even pick-your-own, in the most remote and forbidding of places. In 2015, Alaskans welcomed the news of a commercial food-growing facility in Anchorage. In 2030, such facilities will be common.
- ON YOUTUBE: Vertical Farming Comes to Chicago
Drones Will Deliver Goods to Your Doorstep
A drone will deliver those groceries you ordered, right to your doorstep at an appointed time. Everything under the sun will be delivered by drones, as long as it is relatively light, under 10 pounds or so — things like books, chargers, batteries, medication and cleaning products. Need a summer outfit? Have a drone bring you shorts, sleeveless shirt, sunglasses and sandals. Forgot Valentine’s Day? Call in a drone to deliver flowers, a card and chocolate to your sweetie. Can’t find your kid’s soccer cleats before the big game? Order a new pair of shoes and have them delivered to the field. And so on — you get the idea. Many deliveries will take 30 minutes or less. Look for Amazon to lead the way with drone delivery.
- SEE ALSO: Surprising Jobs That Can Be Done by Robots
Your Wi-Fi Router Will Control Everything in Your House
Homes will be supersmart in 2030. Your Wi-Fi router will operate as a hub for controlling all of your appliances, entertainment screens, locks, lights, robotics, indoor and outdoor security sensors, heating and cooling systems, plus much more. Virtually every item in your home will contain a wireless chip that connects with your smart home system, allowing you to control appliances from anywhere.
Your Furniture Will Be a Shape-Shifter
By 2030, furnishings will be very movable. Imagine a bed, for instance, that stores against the ceiling during the day to create floor space. Or, floor-to-ceiling shelving that slides around to create separate rooms or one big one. Items will move with a gesture or light touch.
Furniture will transform itself, depending on your preferences. Tabletops will conform to securely hold various objects and even animate static objects.
Customization will be a hot trend, since living quarters in big urban areas are becoming smaller, partly to hold down living expenses and partly because many people no longer seek more room for “stuff.” Baby boomers, millennials and Generation Zers are downsizing, or not amassing things to begin with, renting goods and services as needed. Call it the “Uberization” trend.
- ON YOUTUBE: MIT Media Lab's Tangible Table
You Won’t Have to Drive (or Park) Your Car Yourself
Alas, still no flying cars in 2030. They’ll still be too pricey to incorporate into everyday use. Besides, there will already be enough things flying around (think drones of all kinds), not to mention larger fleets of airplanes.
But there will be lots of driverless cars, operated by a combination of artificial intelligence, very accurate electronic sensors, and advanced mapping and communications gear that lets cars “talk” with one another, and also with traffic lights and other infrastructure.
You will have the option to take the wheel yourself or to put the car on autopilot and let it take you where you want to go while you otherwise occupy your time.
What a relief it will be to negotiate streets effortlessly without coming to a dead stop in a traffic jam.
At your destination, you will exit the vehicle, and it will find a place to park itself. You might even program it to take a friend to the airport before returning for you.
- ON YOUTUBE: An Autopilot Ride in a Tesla Model S
Air Travel Will Be Much Faster
Supersonic jets will take you from New York City to London in about four hours. Jets will make the trip from NYC to Los Angeles in only two-and-a-half hours. Faster trips will entice more people to travel more often. Several passenger versions are on the drawing board, including at Boeing and at Europe’s Airbus. The Airbus version, dubbed “the Son of Concorde,” is projected to be able to fly at 1.4 times the speed of sound.
- ON YOUTUBE: Aerion/Airbus AS2 Animation
Facial Recognition Will Enhance Security
Getting through security checkpoints will be much swifter in 2030: no more handing IDs and boarding passes to security agents. Instead, facial recognition systems will confirm the identities of ticketed passengers as they steer their luggage toward its own screening.
By the way, hotel check-ins will be easy, too. You’ll access your room via your smartphone.
You Won’t Use Keys Anymore
Keys of all types will be pretty much outdated by 2030. Your mobile device will be programmed to lock and unlock doors at home, at the office and elsewhere. The secure software, which uses short-distance wireless signals, can be used on any mobile device. So if your phone runs out of juice, you’ll be able to borrow someone else’s device and log in with a fingerprint or facial scan. Phone stolen? Simply log in, and change the digital keys. Need to lend your “keys” to someone else, such as friends or contractors? Send a digital key to their smartphone, with a limited timeframe in which it will work — say, noon to 3 p.m.
- SEE ALSO: 8 Amazing New Military Technologies
Your Glasses Will Augment Reality
In 2030, a pair of lightweight virtual reality glasses will sell for as little as $200 to $400. They’ll help you function in your everyday world — seeing and hearing everything around you while receiving texts, interacting with talking 3-D images of people and more. Your gestures, eye movements and voice will direct the images you see in your VR glasses.
A real-estate agent might use such glasses to sell homes. Prospective buyers wearing augmented reality glasses will be able to visualize a building on an empty lot, for example — walking around it, seeing it with solar panels, etc. Doctors will wear them to read vital patient info while performing surgery. Heck, on the golf course, your glasses will tell you the distance to the hole, wind conditions, scores and more.
Wearers will even be able to lose themselves in an environment outside their surroundings. Experiences will include everything from climbing Mount Everest and visiting Mars to re-creating crime scenes and sitting down with an overseas relative in a virtual park.
- ON YOUTUBE: The Samsung Gear VR
Your Power Will Be Much Greener
In 2030, much of your power will come from blended sources, featuring natural gas (the biggest source), wind (number two), and smaller contributors such as hydro and nuclear in approximately equal amounts. Solar will be a smaller slice of the power mix, but far larger than it was in 2015. Wind and solar farms will operate at utility scale, with vast wind farms onshore and offshore and huge solar arrays in the southern U.S.
Coal use will continue to shrink, down by 2030 to about 20% of the overall U.S. energy supply, though that will still be a much bigger part of the country’s energy mix than solar power.
The blend will spell a much cleaner environment, at least in the U.S., with very little conventional air pollution from hyper-efficient gas-fired power plants, and none from solar, wind or nuclear facilities. There’ll be little pollution from most vehicles, either.
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Your Home Will Have a Battery
In 2030, home battery power will be prevalent. Batteries will be just another system, like your hot water heater or AC unit — a boxy, heavy object that lives in the basement or garage and gets replaced as needed but otherwise goes unnoticed.
Battery storage units will protect against blackouts and store excess power collected by solar panels, allowing your home to be much more self-contained.
Batteries will also allow property owners to avoid peak pricing for electricity that’s supplied by the electric grid during high demand. Tiered pricing systems will be standard, doing much to encourage conservation when the grid is stressed. In fact, most neighborhoods and homes in 2030 will be considered “microgrids.”
- ON YOUTUBE: Elon Musk on Tesla Energy
Your Water Will Be Recycled. . .
. . . over and over again. Your shower will reuse water as you wash, for instance. Such devices, adapted from showers used in space, filter out dirt, soap scum and other particles and save nearly all of the water used every time you shower. Likewise, water from sinks and toilets will be saved and purified for reuse.
Such closed-loop systems will be a big help in preserving critical water resources, mitigating once-growing worries about severe water shortages around the world.
- ON YOUTUBE: Recycling Water on the ISS
Implanted Microchips Will Make Sure You Take Your Pills
Wearable — and, get this, implantable (more on that in a moment) — technology will be a big help when you have health issues.
Fitness trackers will monitor your vital signs 24/7, taking electrocardiograms, checking and analyzing blood glucose levels, noting your blood pressure and more. They’ll communicate the data to your health care providers in real time.
Your wearables will also call 911 and alert your doctor and others as needed if the device senses you’re having a heart attack or a stroke, for example.
Implantable microchips will dispense medications on a prescribed schedule, ensuring that you and your loved ones get exactly the dose needed without fail.
You’ll Get Personalized Medical Care Tailored to Your Unique Genetic Makeup
Personalized medicine will be in full stride by 2030, thanks to the big drop in the cost of sequencing a person’s DNA, so that each and every individual’s medical care can be tailored to his or her own unique genetic makeup. Each newborn baby’s DNA will be sequenced in a matter of hours, providing a lifetime of personalized strategies for disease prevention, early detection (key to keeping down costs) and treatment. Prescription drugs and dosages will be exactly customized to a person’s genome profile.
Your Life-Saving Organ Transplant Will Come From a Dish
In 2030, organs grown in a petri dish will be a blessing to many people on transplant lists. Folks who need a new heart, liver or pancreas will be among those who will get new life.
- ON YOUTUBE: Will Lab-Grown Organs Cure Cancer?
Your Smartphone Will Record Every Word You Say — for Better or for Worse
Forget what your spouse told you last night to be sure to do today? That won’t be a problem in 2030, when you’ll simply ask your mobile device to remind you. “Get concert tickets.”
Your phone or some other gadget will continuously record all of your conversations, wherever you may be, and will instantly recall the parts you request. Helpful, yes. Creepy, too.
You Won’t Pay in Cash
Paper bills and coins, even the penny, will still be around, but mostly in the realm of collectors or confined to just a few outlier transactions. Checkbooks will also be close to extinct. Even the use of credit and debit cards will fade fast by 2030.
Most transactions will be electronic, with your bank account information stored in your mobile smart device, which you can use to pay for goods and services. The financial dealings you will make on mobile devices (smartphones, watches, etc.), plus ones made on your behalf (your grocery-buying fridge), will be secured by advanced biometrics, such as voice, fingerprint and face recognition.
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The Future of Work - How Work Will Look Like by 2030
A helping hand: Technology will make the future of work better in the optimistic scenarios Image: REUTERS/Hannah McKay
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Stay up to date:, future of work.
Will technology kill jobs and exacerbate inequality, or usher in a utopia of more meaningful work and healthier societies? What will the future of work be like in 10 years from now?
While it is impossible to know what tomorrow holds, research by global professional services company PwC explores four possible futures – or “worlds” – driven by the “mega trends” of technological breakthroughs, rapid urbanization, ageing populations, shifting global economic power, resource scarcity and climate change.
4 Different Scenarios for the Future of Work
We discuss different scenarios that will shape up the future of work in the coming decade.
The Red World – innovation rules
The world becomes a perfect incubator for innovation in one PwC scenario. Digital platforms enable those with winning ideas and specialist, niche profit-makers, to flourish.
However, PwC warns, the risks are high if innovation outpaces regulation. “Today's winning business could be tomorrow's court case.”
Projects will develop at a fast pace and specialists will only stay with them as long as they, or the business, last. There will be few in-house human resources teams, with outsourcers or automation providing the human services needed.
The future of work may see little regulation from companies that prevent them from doing what they like, while workers will enjoy fewer benefits like health insurance, pensions and long-term employment.
The Blue World – corporate is king
Corporations grow so big and influential that some become more powerful and larger than national economies.
In a frightening vision, almost worthy of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World , PwC predicts: “Human effort [will be] maximized through ... physical and medical enhancement techniques and technology and, along with automation, analytics and innovation, push performance in the workplace to its limits.”
While rewards for some will be high, the price will be people’s data, which will “predict performance and anticipate people risk [predict behaviour that may damage a business financially or reputationally]”.
In both the future of work scenarios i.e. the Blue world and Red World, people who have strong skills – and update them – will be in demand, those who do not will be discarded.
The Green World – companies care
“This is a world where corporate responsibility isn't just a nice-to-have, but it's a business imperative,” PwC says.
A strong social ethos places a heavy emphasis on diversity, human rights and the non-financial impacts of business on the planet and people’s lives.
Competition for talent in this future of work scenario is intense and financial rewards are still important, while incentive packages include “three weeks’ paid leave a year to work on charity and social projects”.
However, workers are expected to reflect their employers’ values at work and at home and travel is tightly controlled.
“In this world,” the writers say, “automation and technology are essential elements to protect scarce resources and minimize environmental damage … But ... technology is a double-edged sword: it allows organizations to meet their ethical and environmental agenda, but at what cost to humans?”
The Yellow World – humans come first
In the fourth scenario of the future of work, financial technology enables more crowd-funded capital to reach ethically “blameless” brands, while workers and companies seek greater meaning and relevance in everyday life.
Artisanal skills return, as do workers’ guilds, which protect members’ rights and train new craftspeople: “It's a world where humanness is highly valued,” says PwC.
Non-financial rewards are given in a trade-off for less money, work is often a fluid concept and the standard 9-to-5 working week is rare, while the divisions between home and work blur.
However, while the automation of tasks that are dull, damaging or impossible for humans continues, the writers say: “Conflicts remain around the use of technology, as people are less likely to take the downsides of automation without a fight.
“As more people are impacted by technical advances and see their skills become obsolete, disaffection and the push-back against policies that favour the elite grow.”
Which way to the future of work?
All of the four possible futures of work in PwC’s report share the common theme of increasing use of technology to assist, augment and replace human work.
Some foresee the dominance of global corporations, others predict the growth of smaller, more individual endeavours. All, however, depend on digital technology to link talent pools and customers, and create financially beneficial relationships, whether these are between individuals and corporations, or groups of people.
“By replacing workers doing routine, methodical tasks, machines can amplify the comparative advantage of those workers with problem-solving, leadership, emotional intelligence, empathy and creativity skills,” PwC says.
“Those workers performing tasks which automation can’t yet crack become more pivotal – and this means creativity, innovation, imagination and design skills will be prioritized by employers.”
Changing lanes
Any of these futures of work – or a combination of them – are possible, but how we reach 2030, and who will benefit, needs careful planning and consideration.
In the film Escape from the Planet of the Apes, a scientist compares reaching the future to a driver changing lanes: “A driver in lane ‘A’ may crash while a driver in lane ‘B’ survives. It follows that a driver, by changing lanes can change his future.”
Working out which lane will lead to a less fractured world is one of the greatest challenges facing policy makers and corporate leaders today.
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The World in 2030
The world is changing at an unprecedented intensity and rate. Policy makers, institutions and nations all over the world are finding themselves responding to these outcomes associated with these changes. Advances in science and technology have had profound impacts on society, which have played a crucial role in changing nearly all aspects of human life including how people relate, health, education, crime, governance. Communication, transport, entertainment, and sport among others. One of the most notable inventions that have changed human life is the Internet, which has been considered one of the most influential inventions of the 20th century. Moreover, the lives of people are being influenced by developments that were imaginable about 10 years ago. For instance, mobile devices like tablets and smartphones have revolutionized communications. Emerging technologies such as 3D printing, nanotechnology, robotics, genetics and artificial intelligence are poised to have significant impacts on the lives of people. Such advancements are likely to affect various domains of life at individual, national and global level. The aim of this paper explores the world outlook in 2030. To this end, this paper explores how politics, cyber warfare, cross-culture, terrorism hegemony and Internet will be different in 2030 when compared to the present.
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Globalization together with the increase in interdependence among countries is poised to change the balance of political power, which will make it challenging to individual countries to influence the course of events. There is no doubt that power is gradually shifting from the West to other parts of the world as well as to non-state and individual actors. It has been projected that, by 2030, the increase in middle powers will affect the balance of global and regional politics. A rising interdependence will affect security, technology and economic problems. As a result, a crucial attribute of global attributes will be energy and climate challenges as well as resource security. In addition, global politics will be rife with considerable security and conflict risks such as nuclear war and cyber warfare and cybercrime, which will still be prevalent as of 2030. An international political gridlock is a likely observation by 2030.
Another notable trend is that global governance institutions are increasingly becoming weaker. In addition, they are becoming less equipped with respect to managing societal, political and economic revolutions. With the weakening of international governance institutions, more governance layers that do not adhere to international values and norms will be established. It has also been projected that the future of the market-oriented and conventional liberal democratic order is uncertain. Countries having autocratic governance structures will report an increase in political as well as economic influence when compared to countries that will still be using democratic governance mechanism.
The world will witness a radical transformation in terms of global politics by 2030. The magnitude of change in global politics has been likened to the change witnessed during the French Revolution and the beginning of the Industrial Age albeit occurring at a more drastic speed. By 2030, Asia will be nearly regaining its global powerhouse status that it had before the 16th century. In this respect, it has been predicted that Asian countries will outshine the Europe and the US combined in terms of military power, population economy, technological investment, and overall power index. In spite of Asia being a powerhouse, it is imperative to note the likelihood of the diffusion of the global political leadership in the sense that no single nation or coalition will play a dominating roles as is the current state with the US that is dominating. In other words, by 2030, the international political environment will be multipolar, whereby various non-state and state actors and subnational actors like cities are posed to play crucial governance roles.
Cyber Warfare
In 2030, the threat level of cyber-attacks perpetrated by non-state actors will be higher than the current. In addition, the link between cyber warfare and weapons of mass destruction is likely to increase. It has been predicted that cyberspace will be characterized by an increase in non-state actors. This translates to an increase in access to disruptive and lethal technologies, which implies that people who are experts in technologies like cyber systems are likely to sell their systems to people who are willing to pay more including terrorists and competing state actors. The increase in cyber terrorism is a likely trend by 2030. Cyber terrorists will not focus on mass casualties; instead, they will place more emphasis on causing financial and economic disruptions. The vulnerabilities of cyber systems will also increase owing to the fact that only a few people will have an understanding of the crucial cyber systems. Three potential scenarios have been associated with cyber warfare by 2030s, which include causing mayhem, extensive financial and economic disruption, and using cyber systems for weapons of mass destruction. Causing mayhem already exists although it will be more prevalent in future. It is characterized by password theft, defacing of websites, and putting websites offline for a number of hours. Financial and economic disruptions are also being experienced currently. Their magnitude are expected to increase by 2030, whereby there will be frequent cases of theft of financial data such as the data belonging to largest securities exchange to an extent that it can trigger global financial crises.
Owing to the fact that the cyber economy is growing, disruptions in the Internet economy are poised to have significant impacts on the real economy. In addition, by 2030, cyber systems will be integrated in weapons of mass destruction. For instance, cyber terrorism will involve malfunctioning nuclear plants through the use cyber-attacks, disruptions of systems for air traffic control, and taking down the electricity grid among others. Currently, the level of these threats is low; however, the threat level is poised to increase with the societies increasing their dependence on software and the increase in the interconnected systems. The result is that the damage levels inflicted by cyber weapons will increase in magnitude and scope.
Cross-Culture
Globalization is having significant impacts on the families. It has a played a crucial role in increasing the number of multiracial families across the globe owing to the fact that it facilitates the global movement of people as well as interaction. With an increase in immigration, the rates of intermarriages are on the increase. As of 1960, only 1 percent of families in the US were interracial; however, as of 2008, 7.6 percent of American families were interracial. This trend has been increasing, not only in the US, but also across the globe. During 2010, about 3 percent of Americans identified themselves as multiracial. It has been predicted that the multiracial population in the US and across the world will continue to increase such that, by 2030, 20 percent of Americans will have a multiracial background. By 2030, the significance of race will have declined significantly. This will plays a crucial role in blurring the ethnic and racial lines because of the increase in people identifying themselves as multiracial. In addition, it has been predicted that the social stigma associated with being multiracial is posed to decline significantly by 2030s. By 2030, it is expected that the world will experience significant changes with respect to the ethnic and racial landscape, which can be attributed to increasing immigration across the globe facilitated by the interconnected nature of the world. It emphasizing the global multi-racial society that will be experienced by 2030, it is worth noting that, by the same time, the whites will no longer constitute the majority in the US. The world is increasingly becoming more diverse with the increase in the number of intermarriages. In the US alone, it is projected that the population of interracial individuals will increase threefold, which will render race labelling inapt.
Notable predictions have been regarding the state of terrorism by 2030. The first remarkable prediction is that the current trend of Islamic terrorism is expected to end by 2030. This will be attributed to the increase in political upheavals in the Muslim world and the emergence of new generation of Muslims who are less interested in the differences in fundamental aspects of the religion. Just as other terrorist waves reported in history such as the Anarchists (1880-1890s), anti-colonial terrorist movements that emerged after the Second World War, and New Left terrorists (1970s) ended, the current wave of religious terrorism is predicted to end as of 2030. The Arab Springs have helped in highlighting the moral legitimacy associated with a non-violent movement owing to fact that protesters in the spring championed for democracy and refrained from associating the protest with religion. Irrespective of the projected culmination of Islam-related terrorism, it is imperative to note that terrorism will not be eliminated altogether since other forms of terrorism such as cyber terrorism are likely to increase. Moreover, terrorism could emerge from other religions. Moreover, terrorist tactics is likely to change owing to the fact that terrorism will not focus on inflicting mass casualties; instead, emphasis will be on causing mayhem and disruption by going after important cyber systems.
It has also been projected that, as of 2030, majority of countries will have realized the tactical importance of Muslim terrorism, as is currently the case with Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other Muslim nations. Many countries will acknowledge that the only way of reversing the strategic liability associated with Islam terrorism into a strategic asset is through funding it and targeting their enemies with it. This is not a completely new strategy; however, it will be happening on a whole new scale, which is likely to result in an increase in the number of Islamic militias having vast resources, experience, weapons and training. In other words, there is the possibility of state-managed terrorism, whereby countries are likely to make use of terrorist movements because of apparent insecurity. As a result, terrorist movements are likely to be used as a means of deterring attacks. Nevertheless, it is imperative to note that state-funded terrorism is on the decline amidst an increasing international disapproval. Moreover, the costs of a state funding terrorist movement is increasing significantly with an increase in global cooperation against terrorism.
Projections indicate that the current US hegemony is poised to end by 2030; however, no any other country will have hegemonic power. As mentioned earlier, the global political environment will be multipolar, characterized by power distributed among states and non-state actors. There is the possibility that, after the US hegemony ends, Asia is likely to regain its global power. In a multipolar environment, the influence of the US will be same as the influence of other emerging countries that would have achieved a “great power” status. The influence of the US has stemmed from its economic weight, as well as its hard and soft power. However, with the emergence of other nations, the unipolar environment is coming to end, which marks the end of dominant role that the US played in various domains including political, economic and cultural hegemony. The underlying observation is that, despite the fact that US will remain powerful, the world is ultimately changing, and by 2030, power will be distributed to various state as well as non-state actors like corporations.
Internet remains one of the most disruptive technologies that change a faster pace. The Internet is increasingly becoming more integrated to human lives with the increase in inanimate devised connected to the Internet. Projections indicate that internet users across the globe will reach 5 billion by 2020. As of 2025, the internet penetration rate is expected to be 47.13 percent. Amidst the increasing number of internet users, more than 26 billion devices will be connected to the internet. Moreover, technological development will make internet speeds faster than the current speeds. Current fiber optic connections support a maximum of 1 Gigabytes per second (Gbps). This speed is expected to increase to about 100Gbps by 2030. With such developments in speed, it has been projected that the Internet TV will replace the conventional television broadcast as of 2030.
From the discussion, it is evident that world would be different in 2030 when compared to present on various aspects including politics, cyber warfare, cross-culture, terrorism, hegemony and the Internet. Energy and climate challenges, resource security, nuclear conflicts and cyber warfare are likely to be a common feature of global politics. Moreover, international institutions will be weaker than they are now resulting in governance layers not established in accordance to international laws. Cyber warfare by 2030 will be on a higher magnitude than it is now because of the vulnerabilities associated with increasingly interconnected systems. In addition, the number of multiracial individuals will also increase significantly by 2030 to an extent where racial labelling will be irrelevant. It has been foreseen that Islam-related terrorism will come an end by 2030. In addition, terrorists will focus on causing disruptions rather than mass casualties. No country will have hegemonic power. Moreover, there will be a significant upsurge in the speed and usage of the Internet.
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Home / Essay Samples / Life / 20 Years From Now / My Vision for the Future: a Fulfilling Life in 20 Years
My Vision for the Future: a Fulfilling Life in 20 Years
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- Topic: 20 Years From Now , Future Plan
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