Quote Society One Must Be Prepared to Be Taught Things You Already Know
1 Geopolitics: 'Rivals will take greater risks against the US'
No residuum of power lasts forever. Just a century ago, London was the centre of the world. Britain bestrode the earth like a colossus and just those with strong nerves (or weak judgment) dared challenge the Pax Britannica.
That, of grade, is all history, only the Pax Americana that has taken shape since 1989 is just equally vulnerable to historical alter. In the 1910s, the rising power and wealth of Germany and America splintered the Pax Britannica; in the 2010s, east asia will do the same to the Pax Americana.
The 21st century will run across technological alter on an astonishing scale. It may even transform what it means to be man. But in the curt term – the next 20 years – the earth will nonetheless be dominated by the doings of nation-states and the primal upshot volition exist the rise of the east.
By 2030, the world will be more complicated, divided betwixt a broad American sphere of influence in Europe, the Middle Eastward and south Asia, and a Chinese sphere in east asia and Africa. Fifty-fifty inside its own sphere, the United states volition face new challenges from former peripheries. The big, educated populations of Poland, Turkey, Brazil and their neighbours will come into their own and Russian federation will go along its revival.
Nevertheless, America volition probably remain the world'due south major ability. The critics who wrote off the U.s.a. during the depression of the 1930s and the stagflation of the 1970s lived to run into it bounce dorsum to defeat the Nazis in the 1940s and the Soviets in the 1980s. America's fiscal problems will surely deepen through the 2010s, but the 2020s could bring another Roosevelt or Reagan.
A hundred years ago, as Britain's authority eroded, rivals, peculiarly Deutschland, were emboldened to take ever-greater risks. The same will happen as American ability erodes in the 2010s-20s. In 1999, for instance, Russia would never have dared attack a neighbour such as Georgia but in 2009 it took just such a chance.
The danger of such an adventure sparking a dandy ability war in the 2010s is probably low; in the 2020s, it will be much greater.
The about serious threats will arise in the vortex of instability that stretches from Africa to key Asia. Most of the world'southward poorest people live here; climate change is wreaking its worst damage here; nuclear weapons are proliferating fastest here; and even in 2030, the bully powers will withal seek much of their energy hither.
Here, the take chances of Sino-American conflict will be greatest and here the remainder of power will exist decided.
Ian Morris, professor of history at Stanford University and the writer of Why the West Rules – For Now (Profile Books)
2 The U.k. economic system: 'The popular defection against bankers will go incommunicable to resist'
It volition be a second fiscal crisis in the 2010s – probably sooner than later – that will prove to be the remaking of Uk. Confronted by a second trillion-pound banking company bailout in less than ten years, it will exist impossible for the City and wider banking arrangement to resist reform. The pop revolt against bankers, their current business organisation model in which neglect of the existent economy is embedded and the scale of their bonuses – all to be underwritten by bailouts from taxpayers – will become irresistible. The consequent rebalancing of the British economic system, already underway, volition intensify. Uk, in thrall to finance since 1945, will interruption free – spearheading a second Industrial Revolution.
In 2035, at that place is thus a good prospect that Britain will be the near populous (our nascency rate will exist one the highest in Europe), dynamic and richest European state, the key state in a reconfigured EU. Our leading universities will go powerhouses of innovation, earth centres in exploiting the approaching avalanche of scientific and technological breakthroughs. A reformed fiscal system will allow British entrepreneurs to go the committed financial backing they need, condign the capitalist leaders in Europe. And, later on a century of trying, Uk will at last build itself a system for developing apprentices and technicians that is no longer the Cinderella of the didactics arrangement.
It will non exist plainly sailing. Massive political turbulence in China and its conflict with the Usa will define part of the next 25 years – and there will be a period when the world trading and financial system retreats from openness.
How far beggar-my-neighbour competitive devaluations and protection volition develop is hard to predict, but protectionist trends are there for all to see. Commodity prices will go much higher and there will exist shortages of key minerals, energy, h2o and some basic foodstuffs.
The paradox is that this will exist proficient news for Britain. Information technology volition force the state to re-engage with the economic system and to build a matrix of institutions that will support innovation and investment, rather as it did between 1931 and 1950. New Labour began this process tremulously in its last year in function; the coalition government is following through. These volition exist lean years for the traditional Conservative right, just whether it will exist a liberal One Nation Tory party, ongoing coalition governments or the Labour political party that volition be the political beneficiary is not yet sure.
The fundamental bespeak is that those 20 years in the middle of the 20th century witnessed great industrial creativity and an unsung economic renaissance until the country fell progressively under the stultifying grip of the City of London. My judge is that the aforementioned, against a similarly turbulent global groundwork, is nigh to happen once more. My caveat is if the Urban center remains potent, in which case economic decline and social division will escalate.
Will Hutton, executive vice-chair of the Work Foundation and an Observer columnist
3 Global development: 'A vaccine will rid the world of Aids'
Within 25 years, the earth will attain many major successes in tackling the diseases of the poor.
Certainly, nosotros volition be polio-free and probably will have been for more than than a decade. The fight to eradicate polio represents one of the greatest achievements in global health to engagement. Information technology has mobilised millions of volunteers, staged mass immunisation campaigns and helped to strengthen the wellness systems of low-income countries. Today, we have eliminated 99% of the polio in the world and eradication is well within reach.
Vaccines that prevent diseases such equally measles and rotavirus, currently available in rich countries, volition besides go affordable and readily bachelor in developing countries. Since it was founded ten years ago, the Gavi Alliance, a global partnership that funds expanded immunisation in poor countries, has helped prevent more than v meg deaths. It is piece of cake to imagine that in 25 years this work will have been expanded to save millions more than lives past making life-saving vaccines available all over the world.
I besides expect to see major strides in new areas. A rapid point-of-intendance diagnostic test – coupled with a faster-acting handling regimen – volition and then fundamentally modify the way nosotros treat tuberculosis that nosotros tin can begin planning an elimination campaign.
We will eradicate malaria, I believe, to the point where in that location are no human being cases reported globally in 2035. We will also have effective means for preventing Aids infection, including a vaccine. With the encouraging results of the RV144 Aids vaccine trial in Thailand, we at present know that an Aids vaccine is possible. Nosotros must build on these and promising results on other means of preventing HIV infection to help rid the world of the threat of Aids.
Tachi Yamada, president of the global health plan at the Nib & Melinda Gates Foundation
4 Energy: 'Returning to a world that relies on musculus power is not an option'
Providing sufficient nutrient, h2o and energy to allow everyone to lead decent lives is an enormous challenge. Energy is a ways, not an end, but a necessary means. With 6.vii billion people on the planet, more than l% living in big conurbations, and these numbers expected to rise to more than nine billion and fourscore% later on in the century, returning to a earth that relies on human and animal muscle power is not an choice.
The challenge is to provide sufficient energy while reducing reliance on fossil fuels, which today supply 80% of our energy (in decreasing order of importance, the rest comes from called-for biomass and waste product, hydro, nuclear and, finally, other renewables, which together contribute less than 1%). Reducing use of fossil fuels is necessary both to avoid serious climatic change and in apprehension of a time when scarcity makes them prohibitively expensive.
It will be extremely difficult. An International Energy Agency scenario that assumes the implementation of all agreed national policies and appear commitments to save energy and reduce the use of fossil fuels projects a 35% increase in free energy consumption in the next 25 years, with fossil fuels up 24%. This is virtually entirely due to consumption in developing countries where living standards are, happily, rising and the population is increasing rapidly.
This scenario, which assumes major increases in nuclear, hydro and wind power, evidently does not go far plenty and will intermission down if, as many await, oil product (which is assumed to increment 15%) peaks in much less than 25 years. We need to go much further in reducing demand, through ameliorate blueprint and changes in lifestyles, increasing efficiency and improving and deploying all viable alternative energy sources. It won't be cheap. And in the post-fossil-fuel era it won't be sufficient without major contributions from solar energy (necessitating toll reductions and improved energy storage and transmission) and/or nuclear fission (pregnant fast breeder and/or thorium reactors when uranium eventually becomes deficient) and/or fusion (which is enormously bonny in principle but won't become a reliable source of free energy until at least the middle of the century).
Disappointingly, with the nowadays rate of investment in developing and deploying new energy sources, the world volition nevertheless be powered mainly by fossil fuels in 25 years and volition not be prepared to do without them.
Chris Llewellyn Smith is a former manager general of Cern and chair of Iter, the world fusion project, he works on energy issues at Oxford Academy
v Advert: 'All sorts of things volition just be sold in plain packages'
If I'd been writing this five years ago, information technology would have been all almost technology: the net, the fragmentation of media, mobile phones, social tools assuasive consumers to regain ability at the expense of corporations, all that sort of stuff. And all these things are important and will change how advertizement works.
But it's becoming articulate that what'll really alter advertisement will be how nosotros relate to it and what we're prepared to let information technology practise. After all, when you wait at advertizing from the past the basic techniques oasis't changed; what seems startlingly alien are the attitudes it was acceptable to portray and the products you were allowed to annunciate.
In 25 years, I bet there'll be many products we'll exist allowed to buy but not come across advertised – the things the government will determine nosotros shouldn't be consuming because of their impact on healthcare costs or the environment but that they tin't muster the political will to ban outright. Then, we'll end up with all sorts of products in plain packaging with the production name in a generic typeface – as the government is currently discussing for cigarettes.
Simply it won't stop there. Nosotros'll also be nudged into renegotiating the relationship betwixt society and advertising, considering over the adjacent few years we're going to be interrupted by advertising like never earlier. Video screens are getting so cheap and dispensable that they'll be plastered everywhere nosotros go. And they'll have enough intelligence and connectivity that they'll see our faces, practice a quick search on Facebook to discover out who we are and straight a bulletin at u.s. based on our purchasing history.
At least, that'll be the idea. Information technology probably won't work very well and when it does piece of work it'll probably bulldoze united states mad. Marketing geniuses are working on this stuff right now, but not all of them recognise that beingness allowed to practise this kind of thing depends on societal consent – push button the intrusion besides far and people will button back.
Order once did a deal accepting advertising because it seemed occasionally useful and interesting and because it paid for lots of journalism and entertainment. It'due south non necessarily going to pay for those things for much longer then we might start questioning whether we want to alive in a Blade Runner world brought to us by Cillit Blindside.
Russell Davies, caput of planning at the advertising agency Ogilvy and Mather and a columnist for the magazines Campaign and Wired
half-dozen Neuroscience: 'We'll be able to plug data streams straight into the cortex'
Past 2030, we are likely to have developed no-frills encephalon-machine interfaces, allowing the paralysed to dance in their thought-controlled exoskeleton suits. I sincerely hope we volition not yet be interfacing with computers via keyboards, one forlorn letter at a time.
I'd like to imagine we'll have robots to do our behest. Merely I predicted that twenty years agone, when I was a sanguine boy leaving Star Wars, and the smartest robot nosotros have now is the Roomba vacuum cleaner. So I won't be surprised if I'thou wrong in another 25 years. Bogus intelligence has proved itself an unexpectedly hard problem.
Maybe we volition sympathize what's happening when nosotros immerse our heads into the colourful night blender of dreams. We will accept cracked the secret of human retentivity by realising that it was never almost storing things, but about the relationships betwixt things.
Will nosotros accept reached the singularity – the indicate at which computers surpass human intelligence and perhaps give u.s.a. our comeuppance? We'll probably be able to plug data streams directly into the cortex for those who desire information technology badly enough to risk the surgery. There will be smart drugs to raise learning and memory and a flourishing black market place among ambitious students to obtain them.
Having lain to rest the nature-nurture dichotomy at that point, we volition accept a molecular agreement of the way in which cultural narratives work their way into brain tissue and of individual susceptibility to those stories.
Then at that place's the mystery of consciousness. Will we finally take a framework that allows usa to interpret the mechanical pieces and parts into private, subjective experience? As it stands at present, we don't even know what such a framework could look like ("carry the ii here and that equals the feel of tasting cinnamon").
That line of enquiry volition lead us to face the question of whether nosotros tin reproduce consciousness past replicating the exact construction of the brain – say, with zeros and ones, or beer cans and tennis assurance. If this theory of materialism turns out to exist correct, then nosotros volition be well on our mode to downloading our brains into computers, allowing us to live forever in The Matrix.
Simply if materialism is incorrect, that would be equally interesting: perhaps brains are more like radios that receive an as-yet-undiscovered strength. The one affair nosotros tin be sure of is this: no matter how wacky the predictions we make today, they will look tame in the strange lite of the future.
David Eagleman, neuroscientist and author
7 Physics: 'Inside a decade, we'll know what dark affair is'
The adjacent 25 years will see key advances in our understanding of the underlying structure of matter and of the universe. At the moment, we accept successful descriptions of both, just we have open questions. For example, why exercise particles of matter have mass and what is the night matter that provides virtually of the matter in the universe?
I am optimistic that the answer to the mass question will be institute within a few years, whether or non it is the mythical Higgs boson, and believe that the answer to the dark matter question will be constitute within a decade.
Fundamental roles in answering these questions will be made by experiments at Cern's Large Hadron Collider, which started operations in hostage concluding year and is expected to run for most of the next 20 years; others will be played by astrophysical searches for night matter and cosmological observations such equally those from the European Space Agency'south Planck satellite.
Many theoretical proposals for answering these questions invoke new principles in physics, such as the existence of additional dimensions of space or a "supersymmetry" between the constituents of matter and the forces between them, and nosotros will discover whether these ideas are useful for physics. Both these ideas play roles in string theory, the best approximate we accept for a consummate theory of all the fundamental forces including gravity.
Will string theory be pinned down inside xx years? My crystal ball is cloudy on this signal, but I am sure that we physicists will take an exciting time trying to find out.
John Ellis, theoretical physicist at Cern and Rex's College London
eight Food: 'Russia will become a global food superpower'
When experts talk about the coming food security crunch, the date they fixate upon is 2030. By then, our numbers will be nudging 9 billion and we volition need to be producing 50% more food than we are now.
Past the middle of that decade, therefore, we will either all be starving, and fighting wars over resources, or our global food supply volition accept changed radically. The bitter reality is that information technology volition probably be a mixture of both.
Adult countries such as the U.k. are likely, for the most role, to have attempted to pull up the drawbridge, increasing national production and reducing our reliance on imports.
In response to increasing prices, some of us may well have reduced our consumption of meat, the raising of which is a notoriously inefficient use of grain. This will probably create a food underclass, surviving on a carb- and fat-heavy nutrition, while those with money scarf the protein.
The developing globe, meanwhile, will work to bridge the food gap past embracing the hope of biotechnology which the middle classes in the developed globe will have assumed that they had the luxury to reject.
In truth, any of the imported grain that we exercise consume will come from genetically modified crops. Every bit climate change lays waste matter to the productive fields of southern Europe and north Africa, more water-efficient strains of corn, wheat and barley will be pressed into service; likewise, to the north, Russia will become a global food superpower as the same climate change opens upwards the once frozen and massive Siberian prairie to food production.
The consensus now is that the planet does have the wherewithal to feed that huge number of people. It's but that some people in the west may find the methods used to do and then unappetising.
Jay Rayner, Television set presenter and the Observer'south food critic
9 Nanotechnology: 'Privacy will be a quaint obsession'
Twenty years ago, Don Eigler, a scientist working for IBM in California, wrote out the logo of his employer in letters made of private atoms. This feat was a graphic symbol of the potential of the new field of nanotechnology, which promises to rebuild matter atom by atom, molecule by molecule, and to give us unprecedented power over the material earth.
Some, like the futurist Ray Kurzweil, predict that nanotechnology will lead to a revolution, assuasive the states to make whatever kind of production for most nothing; to have computers so powerful that they will surpass human intelligence; and to lead to a new kind of medicine on a sub-cellular level that volition allow the states to abolish ageing and death.
I don't recollect that Kurzweil's "technological singularity" – a dream of scientific transcendence that echoes older visions of religious apocalypse – will happen. Some stubborn physics stands between us and "the rapture of the nerds". Just nanotechnology will lead to some genuinely transformative applications.
New ways of making solar cells very cheaply on a very large calibration offering us the best hope we have for providing low-carbon energy on a big enough scale to satisfy the needs of a growing earth population aspiring to the prosperity we're used to in the developed world.
We'll learn more most intervening in our biology at the sub-cellular level and this nano-medicine will give usa new hope of overcoming really difficult and intractable diseases, such equally Alzheimer's, that volition increasingly agonize our population every bit it ages.
The information technology that drives your mobile phone or laptop is already operating at the nanoscale. Some other 25 years of evolution will lead usa to a new world of cheap and ubiquitous computing, in which privacy volition be a quaint obsession of our grandparents.
Nanotechnology is a different type of science, respecting none of the conventional boundaries between disciplines and unashamedly focused on applications rather than fundamental understanding.
Given the huge resources being directed towards nanotechnology in China and its neighbours, this may also be the first major technology of the modern era that is predominantly developed exterior the Us and Europe.
Richard Jones, pro-vice-chancellor for research and innovation at the Academy of Sheffield
10 Gaming: 'We'll play games to solve problems'
In the final decade, in the US and Europe only particularly in south-eastern asia, nosotros have witnessed a flight into virtual worlds, with people playing games such as 2nd Life. But over the course of the adjacent 25 years, that flying volition be successfully reversed, not because nosotros're going to spend less time playing games, merely because games and virtual worlds are going to become more closely connected to reality.
There volition be games where the activity is influenced by what happens in reality; and in that location will be games that apply sensors and then that we tin can play them out in the real earth – a game in which your avatar is your dog, which wears a game collar that measures how fast it's running and whether or not it's wagging its tail, for instance, where you play with your dog to advance the narrative, as opposed to playing with a virtual character. I tin imagine more physical activity games, too, and these might be used to harness free energy – peripherals like a trip the light fantastic pad that actually captures energy from your dancing on top of it.
Then in that location will be trouble-solving games: there are already a lot of games in which scientists try to teach gamers existent science – how to build proteins to cure cancer, for example. I surprising trend in gaming is that gamers today prefer, on average, 3 to 1 to play co-operative games rather than competitive games. Now, this is really interesting; if yous think virtually the history of games, in that location really weren't co-operative games until this latest generation of video games. In every game you tin can recollect of – carte du jour games, chess, sport – everybody plays to win. But now nosotros'll see increasing collaboration, people playing games together to solve problems while they're enjoying themselves.
There are likewise studies on how games work on our minds and our cerebral capabilities, and a lot of science suggests you tin utilise games to treat depression, anxiety and attention-deficit disorder. Making games that are both fun and serve a social purpose isn't easy – a lot of innovation will be required – but gaming volition get increasingly integrated into gild.
Jane McGonigal, director of games enquiry & development at the Found for the Hereafter in California and writer of Reality Is Cleaved: Why Games Make Us Happy and How They Can Assist United states Change the World (Penguin)
11 Spider web/cyberspace: 'Quantum computing is the hereafter'
The open web created past idealist geeks, hippies and academics, who believed in the gratuitous and generative flow of knowledge, is being overrun by a spider web that is safer, more controlled and commercial, created past problem-solving pragmatists.
Henry Ford worked out how to make money by making products people wanted to ain and buy for themselves. Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs are working out how to make money from allowing people to share, on their terms.
Facebook and Apple are spawning deject commercialism, in which consumers allow companies to manage information, media, ideas, coin, software, tools and preferences on their behalf, holding everything in vast, floating clouds of shared information. We will exist invited to trade invasions into our privacy – companies knowing ever more about our lives – for a more than personalised service. We will exist able to share, but on their terms.
Julian Assange and the movement that has been ignited by WikiLeaks is the most radical version of the alternative: a complimentary, egalitarian, open and public web. The fate of this motion volition exist a sign of things to come up. If it can command broad back up, then the open web has a chance to remain a mainstream force. If, even so, it becomes little more a guerrilla campaign, so the open web could exist pushed to the margins, along with national public radio.
By 2035, the web, as a single space largely fabricated upward of webpages accessed on computers, volition be long gone.
As the web goes mobile, those who pay more volition go faster access. We will be sharing videos, simulations, experiences and environments, on a multiplicity of devices to which we'll pay every bit much attention as a light switch.
Notwithstanding, many of the big changes of the next 25 years will come from unknowns working in their bedrooms and garages. And by 2035 we will be talking nigh the coming of breakthrough calculating, which volition take us beyond the earth of binary, digital calculating, on and off, black and white, 0s and 1s.
The small town of Waterloo, Ontario, which is home to the Perimeter Institute, funded by the founder of BlackBerry, currently houses the largest collection of theoretical physicists in the world.
The bedrooms of Waterloo are where the side by side web may well exist made.
Charles Leadbeater, writer and social entrepreneur
12 Manner: 'Engineering science creates smarter clothes'
Fashion is such an important part of the manner in which nosotros communicate our identity to others, and for a very long time it'due south meant apparel: the fabric garments on our torso. But in the coming decades, I think there'll be much more emphasis on other manifestations of fashion and different ways of communicating with each other, different ways of creating a sense of belonging and of making u.s.a. feel great about ourselves.
We're already designing our identities online – manipulating imagery to tell a story about ourselves. Instead of meeting in the street or in a bar and having a conversation and looking at what each other is wearing, we're communicating in some depth through these new channels. With wearable, I think it's possible that we'll see a polarisation between items that are very practical and those that are very much about display – and maybe these are non things that you own but that you infringe or share.
Technology is already beingness used to create clothing that fits better and is smarter; it is able to transmit a degree of information dorsum to yous. This is partly driven by customer demand and the desire to know where wearable comes from – so we'll meet tags on garments that tell you where every part of it was made, and some of this, I suspect, will be legislation-driven, as well, for like reasons, specially as resource become scarcer and it becomes increasingly important to recognise water and carbon footprints.
Withal, it'due south not simply an issue of functionality. Fashion'south gone through a large cycle in the last 25 years – from being something that was treasured and cherished to being something that felt disposable, because of a drop in prices. In fact, we've completely changed our human relationship towards clothes and there'south a real feeling amidst designers who I work with that they're trying to work back into their designs an element of emotional content.
I think there'south definitely a place for technology in creating a dialogue with you through your clothes.
Dilys Williams, designer and the director for sustainable fashion at the London Higher of Fashion
13 Nature: 'We'll redefine the wild'
We all want to live in a world where species such every bit tigers, the great whales, orchids and coral reefs can persist and thrive and I am certain that the commitment that people have to maintaining the spectacle and diversity of life will go on. Over the past fifty years or and then, in that location has been growing support for nature conservation. When we sympathise the causes of species losses, expert conservation actions can and do reverse the trends.
Simply it is going to become much harder. The human population has roughly doubled since the 1960s and will increase by another third by 2030. Demands for nutrient, water and free energy will increase, inevitably in competition with other species. People already use up to 40% of the earth's master production (energy) and this must increment, with of import consequences for nature.
In the United kingdom, some familiar species will become scarcer as our rare habitats (mires, bogs and moorlands) are lost. We will exist seeing the effects from gradual warming that will allow more continental species to alive here, and in our towns and cities we'll probably take more than species that take become adjusted to living alongside people.
We tin can conserve species when nosotros really endeavor, and then I'k confident that the charismatic mega brute and flora will mostly still persist in 2035, only they will be increasingly restricted to highly managed and protected areas. The survivors will be those that cope well with people and those we intendance virtually enough to save. Increasingly, nosotros won't exist living as a part of nature but alongside it, and nosotros'll take redefined what we mean past the wild and wilderness.
Crucially, we are still rapidly losing overall biodiversity, including soil micro-organisms, plankton in the oceans, pollinators and the remaining tropical and temperate forests. These underpin productive soils, clean water, climate regulation and disease-resistance. We take these vital services from biodiversity and ecosystems for granted, care for them recklessly and don't include them in any kind of national accounting.
Georgina Mace, professor of conservation science and director of the Natural Environment Research Council's Centre for Population Biology, Imperial College London
14 Architecture: What constitutes a 'metropolis' will change
In 2035, almost of humanity will live in favelas. This volition not exist entirely wonderful, as many people will live in very poor housing, just information technology will have its practiced side. It will mean that cities will consist of serial of modest units organised, at best, past the people who know what is best for themselves and, at worst, by local law-breaking bosses.
Cities volition be too big and complex for any single ability to understand and manage them. They already are, in fact. The discussion "metropolis" will lose some of its meaning: information technology will brand less and less sense to describe agglomerations of tens of millions of people as if they were 1 place, with ane identity. If electric current dreams of urban agriculture come up truthful, the distinction betwixt boondocks and state will blur. Attempts at command won't be abased, nonetheless, meaning that strange bubbling of luxury volition announced, similar shopping malls and office parks. To be optimistic, the human genius for inventing social structures will hateful that new forms of settlement nosotros can't quite imagine will brainstorm to sally.
All this assumes that environmental ending doesn't drive the states into caves. Nor does it describe what will happen in United kingdom, with a roughly stable population and a planning policy dedicated to preserving the status quo as much as possible. Britain in 25 years' time may look much every bit it does now, which is not hugely different from 25 years ago. Rowan Moore, Observer architecture contributor
15 Sport: 'Broadcasts volition use holograms'
Globalisation in sport volition continue: it'south a tendency nosotros've seen by the pick of Rio for the 2016 Olympics and Qatar for the 2022 World Loving cup. This will mean changes to traditional sporting calendars in recognition of the demands of climate and time zones across the planet.
Sport will take to reply to new technologies, the speed at which nosotros process information and apparent reductions in attending span. Shorter formats, such every bit Twenty20 cricket and rugby sevens, could aid the development of traditional sports in new territories.
The demands of TV will grow, equally volition technology's role in umpiring and consuming sport. Electronics companies are already planning broadcasts using live holograms. I don't think nosotros'll run across an acceptance of performance-enhancing drugs: the trend has been towards aught tolerance and long may it remain so.
Mike Lee, chairman of Vero Communications and ex-director of communications for London'southward 2012 Olympic bid
16 Transport: 'There volition be more than automated cars'
It'due south not difficult to predict how our send infrastructure will await in 25 years' time – it can take decades to construct a high-speed rail line or a motorway, so we know now what's in shop. Just there volition be radical changes in how we think almost transport. The technology of information and communication networks is changing rapidly and cyberspace and mobile developments are helping make our journeys more seamless. Queues at St Pancras station or Heathrow airport when the infrastructure tin't cope for whatever reason should go a matter of the past, but these challenges, while they might appear trivial, are significant because it's not easy to organise large-scale information systems.
The instinct to travel is innate inside us, just we will have to practise information technology in a more carbon-efficient fashion. It's hard to be precise, but I think nosotros'll exist cycling and walking more; in crowded urban areas we may see travelators – which we run across in airports already – and more than scooters. There volition be more automatic cars, similar the ones Google has recently been testing. These driverless cars volition exist safer, but when accidents practise happen, they may exist on the scale of airline disasters. Personal jetpacks will, I think, remain a niche choice.
Frank Kelly, professor of the mathematics of systems at Cambridge University, and former chief scientific adviser to the DfT
17 Health: 'Nosotros'll feel less salubrious'
Wellness systems are generally quite conservative. That'south why the more radical forecasts of the recent past haven't quite materialised. Contrary to past predictions, we don't carry smart cards packed with health information; most treatments aren't genetically tailored; and health tourism to Bangalore remains low. Only for all that, health is set to undergo a slow but steady revolution. Life expectancy is rising about three months each year, merely we'll experience less healthy, partly because nosotros'll be more than aware of the many things that are, or could exist, going wrong, and partly considering more of us volition be living with a long-term condition.
We'll spend more than on health but also want stronger activeness to influence health. The The states Congressional Budget Office forecasts that US health spending will ascension from 17% of the economy today to 25% in 2025 and 49% in 2082. Their forecasts may be designed to shock but they contain an of import grain of truth. Spending on health and jobs in health is bound to grow.
Some of that spending will keep the problems of prosperity – obesity, alcohol consumption and injuries from farthermost sports. Currently fashionable ideas of "nudge" will have turned out to be far likewise weak to change behaviours. Instead, we'll be more in the realms of "shove" and "push button", with cities trying to reshape whole environments to encourage people to walk and cycle.
By 2030, mental health may at last be treated on a par with physical health. Medicine may accept establish smart drugs for some conditions but the biggest impact may be achieved from lower-tech actions, such as meditation in schools or encephalon gyms for pensioners.
Healthcare volition wait more like education. Your GP will prescribe you a brusk course on managing your diabetes or heart condition, and when yous get home there'll be an e-tutor to help y'all and a vast array of data about your status.
Almost every serious observer of health systems believes that the great general hospitals are already anachronistic, but because hospitals are where so much of the ability lies, and so much of the public attachment, information technology would exist a brave forecaster who suggested their imminent demise.
Geoff Mulgan, main executive of the Young Foundation
18 Faith: 'Secularists will flatter to deceive'
Over the next two and a half decades, it is quite possible that those Brits who follow a faith will proceed both to fall in number and also become more orthodox or fundamentalist. Similarly, organised religions volition increasingly work together to counter what they see equally greater threats to their interests – creeping agnosticism and secularity.
Another 10 years of failure past the Anglican church building to face up downwardly the African-led traditionalists over women bishops and gay clerics could open the question of disestablishment of the Church of England. The country'south politicians, including an increasingly gay-friendly Tory party, may detect it difficult to see how country institutions can continue to exist associated with an paradigm of sexism and homophobia.
I predict an increase in argue around the tension between a secular calendar which says information technology is merely seeking to remove religious privilege, end discrimination and split up church and state, and organised orthodox religion which counterclaims that this would corporeality to driving religious voices from the public square.
Despite ii of the three political party leaders beingness professed atheists, the secular tendency in this state still flatters to deceive. There is, at nowadays, no organised, non-religious, rationalist movement. In dissimilarity, the forces of organised religion are amend resourced, more organised and more than politically influential than ever before.
Dr Evan Harris, author of a secularist manifesto
19 Theatre: 'Cuts could strength a new political fringe'
The theatre will weather condition the contempo cuts. Some companies will close and the repertoire of others volition be prophylactic and cautious; the art form volition emerge robust in a decade or then. The cuts may force more than young people outside the existing structures back to an unsubsidised fringe and this may breed different types of work that will challenge the subsidised sector.
Student marches will go more frequent and this mobilisation may breed a more than politicised generation of theatre artists. We volition run across onetime forms from the 1960s re-emerge (like agit prop) and new forms will be generated to communicate ideology and politics.
More women volition emerge as directors, writers and producers. This modify is already visible at the flagship subsidised business firm, the National Theatre, where the repertoire for bigger theatres like the Lyttelton already includes directors similar Marianne Elliott and Josie Rourke, and soon the Cottesloe will start to comprehend the younger generation – Polly Findlay and Lyndsey Turner.
Katie Mitchell, theatre director
20 Storytelling: 'Eventually there'll exist a Twitter classic'
Are you reading fewer books? I am and reading books is sort of my job. Information technology's but that with the multifarious delights of the internet, spending 20 hours in the visitor of one author and ane story needs motivation. It's worth doing, of course; like exercise, its benefits are many and its pleasures great. And yet everyone I know is doing information technology less. And I tin can't run across that that trend will opposite.
That's the bad news. 20-five years from at present, nosotros'll be reading fewer books for pleasure. But authors shouldn't fret too much; east-readers will make it easier to impulse-buy books at 4am fifty-fifty if we never read past the first 100 pages.
And stories aren't becoming less pop – they're everywhere, from adverts to webcomics to fictional tweets – nosotros're just starting time to explore the exciting possibilities of web-native literature, stories that really exploit the fractal, hypertextual way we use the internet.
My gauge is that, in 2035, stories will be ubiquitous. There'll be a tube-based soap opera to tune your iPod to during your commute, a tale (incorporating on-sale brands) to savor via augmented reality in the supermarket. Your employer will bribe y'all with stories to focus on your task.
Most won't be swell, merely then most of everything isn't slap-up – and eventually at that place'll be a Twitter-based classic.
Naomi Alderman, novelist and games author
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2011/jan/02/25-predictions-25-years
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