TWENTY TRENDS FOR THE TWENTY-TENS by Rich Karlgaard
Here are 20 trends–good, bad and just plain weird–that might catch on during the next 10 years:
1. Vegan Republicans
All-plant diets, proselytized so far mostly by PETA punks, Prius drivers, old hippies and Jack Lalanne, go mainstream. The Engine 2 diet portends the future.
2. Backlash Against the Unfit
In looks-obsessed America, it’s never been easy to be overweight. Now it’s going to get harder. The unintended consequence of ObamaCare will be a backlash against couch potatoes who drive up health care costs for the rest of us.
3. Male Osteorporosis Will Explode
Call it revenge upon the nerds, the unhappy result of sitting in front of a computer all day long, fizzy drinks at the ready.
4. Almost All Cancer Becomes Manageable
The good news about health in the 2010s is that almost all cancers will become manageable events, assuming reasonably early detection.
5. Cars With “All-Glass” Dashboards
Not only will car dashboards look like those of modern jets, each driver will be able to customize the look of the dashboard. The family Ford crossover will take on custom cockpit appearances for the teenager, for Mom and for Dad.
6. Dow Hits 36,000
Finally.
7. Taiwan Welcomes Chinese Takeover
And poses a huge military, strategic and diplomatic challenge for the U.S.
8. Moore’s Law Keeps Going
Stuff on silicon will keep improving at the pace of 2x every two years. Chips will be 64 times more powerful at the end of the decade. Little cheap embedded processors will have enormous power, too.
9. Bandwidth Progress Continues
At the pace of 3x every two years. Look for somebody pushing a terabyte per second down a single wire by mid-decade.
9. One Cloud Company (Or Another) Becomes the Most Valuable Company on Earth
Moore’s Law continues at the pace of 2x every two years. Bandwidth improves 3x every two years. These trends predict ubiquitous cloud cover for planet earth. Who will own the giant fog machine? Google? Cisco? Microsoft? Amazon? Huawei?
10. 3-D Invades the Home
Not a stretch of imagination, given the trends above. Personally, I’m looking forward to thrumming bass guitar for the Beach Boys in a 3-D version of Xbox Rock Band.
All I can think to ask is, bass for The Beach Boys?
I am sorry but some of what you said grated. First, Gordon Moore revised his law forty years ago to 2X ever eighteen months or four times every three years, which has held up. Second, as far as pushing a terabyte down a fiber it has been done down three hundred miles of fiber already. Third, a prediction you should have made is thhat direct fiber connection to homes and offices will become a competitive issue between communities and countries as high-speed network connections increase in importance. Fourth, as a result fabrication will be farmed out across the world bring the problems of long supply chains with it. Fifth, Human interactive computers will become the norm. Prople who won’t talk to machines will have trouble by 2020.
21. Once again, futurists will look like idiots in hindsight.
How about the discovery of unobtanium, or Geeks fulfilling their robot-sex fantasies?
.. No cure for liberalism on the horizon though .. *sigh*
21. Go Green. Go Broke.
Technology will not improve as much as you think. We are only capable of taking on so much task tactfully. I have not noticed any impediment to my ability to rummage the internet. Therefore, I perceive that increased speed will not mean much for the developed world. We are all gardeners, essentially, and even if you can cut coupons with a laser there will not be a drastic change.
You left out the unwinding of much of the bloated cost structure, regulatory burden and freedom sapping legislation imposed by our political and governing class. Although I do not think their abuses have yet reached an apex, the forces against them are gathering. It is anyone’s guess as to when enough shoots of enlightenment will reach the average voter – like green shoots looking for sunlight through cracks in concrete – trowelled over the truth by a sycophantic media and a fully compromised academia.
Sorry, you are way too optimistic. There will be nuclear terrorism well before the end of the decade, as Iran develops nuclear weapons and uses them. A new dark age will begin as globalization comes to a crashing stop for fear the next shipping container has a nuke in it.
Islams war against the West will intensify as more and more Muslims join the Iran-Pakistan-Taliban-Al-Qaida-Hamas-Hezbollah Axis. Western Europe will become an Islamic colony in all but name. Ironically, the only country that might still hold on will be Russia under Putin.
Here in the USA, everthing will get worse and nothing will get better. Inflation and unemployment will be chronic and double-digit at least. Health care rationing will become a major if not the major cause of death among the elderly and those with chronic diseases that are not politcially correct. In other words, people with AIDS will bet medical care, but people with diabetes, heart disease and cancer will not.
Of course, the above optimistically assumes that Iran will not destroy the US by nuclear EMP attack.