Twenty Trends for the Twenty-Tens

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.

11. Smart Phones Produce New Sexual Revolution
Smart phone hookups are here and will go mainstream in the 2010s. Why did your wife just give that grocery stocker in aisle six the look?

12. Work Performance Drugs Boom
As high unemployment persists, and as nearly all of the world’s high-paying jobs are correlated to IQ and analytic processing skills, work performance drugs will boom.

13. Cosmetic Surgery Booms
Less for vanity, more for workplace competitiveness.

14. Technology Backlash Grows
It will take the form of a trendy Luddite Punk.

15. Eco-Anarchy Terrorism Waxes, Islamic Jihadism Wanes
By the end of the decade, eco-terrorism will be a greater threat than Islamic jihadism. The eco-terrorists will join forces with the Luddite Punks to form an unholy alliance that likes to blow things up.

16. Global Warming Worries Wane, Water Worries Wax
The world will regret having spent so much time debating global warming while the real ecological threat, access to cheap safe water, becomes obvious.

17. Assassinations Return to America
This is a prediction I hate to make. But I fear the trajectory of political hotheadedness in the U.S. will come to tragedy. Politicians and media bloviators will be vulnerable.

18. Woman Runs Sub Four-Minute Mile

19. African Mans Wins Tour de France

20. Canadian Dollar Worth Two American Dollars
U.S. won’t suffer hyperinflation in the 2010s, just a steady snip-snip-snip of the dollar’s value.