Oracle mode (and mood): about 2050

 Everybody is a crystal-gazer these days, so why not me too? Here is what I anticipate about the world thirty years from now. Maybe some of my readers will still be around, and remember, and mentally tick off all the things that I got right.

1.    The population has stabilized everywhere except Africa, around 10 billion, but the metro cities are bursting, with some 40-50 million strong, and harsh limits have been imposed on entry and settlement by vast local support.

2.    If there hasn’t been a revolution of the French/Russian/Chinese type yet, the world is controlled by a thousand corporate CEOs and maybe fifty political honchos, all of whom personally have at least tens (some hundreds…) of billion dollars. Perhaps there are a few trillionaires already.

3.    ‘Strong’ men rule every major nation, and they are desperately trying to fend off assassination as well as all-out war with one another.

4.   If fossil fuels  and disposable plastic have not been almost totally replaced already, the air is becoming rapidly unbreatheable, and the soil, increasingly infertile.

5.   Water famines loom in most countries, and natural disasters like hurricanes, forest fires, tsunamis and earthquakes are becoming increasingly more frequent and more destructive.

6.   The world is politically so fractured along so many lines (gender, religion, caste, tribe, language, wealth) that traditional consensual democracy is on the verge of extinction.

7.    The old hugely outnumber the young in most advanced countries, and policies are having to be recast in their favour, because as an increasingly organized power with huge resources and influence, they affect politics profoundly.

8. Private transport is now a preserve of the super-elite, and increasingly self-sufficient gated communities with high levels of security have become the norm everywhere. Human driven vehicles have become a rarity.

9. China dominates Asia, having suborned all weaker nations into at least silent subservience, or impotent opposition. A Europe-America league is increasingly convinced that a modus vivendi with China is their best option.

10. Vast numbers live on the dole, addicted to the internet and other idle pleasures, probably kept on a tight leash from public misbehaviour everywhere.

11. The super-elite (the richest half million) are making grand plans for migrating to the moon, or even to nearby planets.

12. Many hundred million young people, thanks to the very new-fangled, experimental, hyper-liberal education they have received in school, are permanently unemployable.

13. Countless ageing parents are beginning to wonder whether the strict discipline insisted upon by schools and teachers in a bygone era might not have been a much better option, something that would have ensured that they did not have to bear with irresponsible, callous, self-obsessed, dependent, stupid and ignorant grown-up children.

14. AI and robots are becoming ubiquitous, and rebellious forces are organizing against them.

15. Resurgent religions are becoming an unavoidable force to contend with in every nation’s politics.

16. The traditional middle class is breeding itself out – their numbers falling rapidly everywhere.

I have only made some projections based on the current situation (as I have watched it developing over almost half a century). Many of these are likely to go wrong: I hope they will, so that my daughter’s generation might actually live in a far better world than I am here anticipating. I shall be long gone by 2050, but they will be only middle-aged,statistically fated to live on for another 30 years each on average. I hope they learn to cope well. My greatest fear is that too many of my projections are going to come true. And then there might be even nastier things that I did not anticipate…