janelane wrote:
In my "Engineering Design" class, we have to figure out what the world of 2020 will be like.

Brilliant. This is the sort of question we all should be asking. I'd like to see the final results.

communication: No one will have a POTS line. You'll have a digital network connection in your house, maybe ip6, all voice traffic will be carried over that digital network, your cellphone will be like a sidekick, it might have thin parts that fold out to make the realestate bigger when you need it, it will use your home network when at home and other networks when not at home. It will be able to project content onto the wall. Long Distance will be included in the price of whatever you pay for network access. Its possible that the internet will submerge into a MMORPG style virtual reality environment, but it remains to be seen. There might be a standards war over that in 15 years.

The media industry will be quite blurred with blogs and independent music/film. The copyright battles will be near their peak at that time. Movies, music, and news will come as often from proam indies then from "industry," but you'll turn to the same source for both kinds of information and it may be hard to tell them apart. You'll have internet radio in your car. Reputation systems will matter more then editors.

Comptuer security problems will constantly plauge what we'd today call telecom and television infrastucture.

South Korea will do for communciations technology what Japan did for manufacturing in the 80s.

information availability: You'll search wikipedia instead of searching google. You'll pretty much have everything instantly available to a device that fits in your pocket. We're almost there today. A lot of the good information will be produced by proams.

geographic location: What do you want? Your digital devices will know where they are. Your cellphone will easily map your location, show you where you want to go, and give you directions. You'll be able to leave virtual notes for people connected to physical locations, like a bulletin board connected to every bar. Often, the way to get news about major events will be to ask an internet service what pictures were submitted from a particular physical location at a particular time. Everyone will have devices in their cars which report their driving habits to their insurance company, in exchange for a cost break for most. Some orwellian use of this technology will go on, particularly with regard to minors.

government structure: This is a US centric response: I don't see many structural changes occuring in a 15 year timespan, other then the final nails in the coffin of the idea that the commerce clause restricts federal authority. Politics will increasingly be influenced by internet based open information sources like blogs and wikipedia. Voters will be more informed about particular issues. You will see more ballot refer... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

Decius wrote:

janelane wrote:
In my "Engineering Design" class, we have to figure out what the world of 2020 will be like.

Brilliant. This is the sort of question we all should be asking. I'd like to see the final results.

communication: No one will have a POTS line. You'll have a digital network connection in your house, maybe ip6, all voice traffic will be carried over that digital network, your cellphone will be like a sidekick, it might have thin parts that fold out to make the realestate bigger when you need it, it will use your home network when at home and other networks when not at home. It will be able to project content onto the wall. Long Distance will be included in the price of whatever you pay for network access. Its possible that the internet will submerge into a MMORPG style virtual reality environment, but it remains to be seen. There might be a standards war over that in 15 years.

The media industry will be quite blurred with blogs and independent music/film. The copyright battles will be near their peak at that time. Movies, music, and news will come as often from proam indies then from "industry," but you'll turn to the same source for both kinds of information and it may be hard to tell them apart. You'll have internet radio in your car. Reputation systems will matter more then editors.

Comptuer security problems will constantly plauge what we'd today call telecom and television infrastucture.

South Korea will do for communciations technology what Japan did for manufacturing in the 80s.

information availability: You'll search wikipedia instead of searching google. You'll pretty much have everything instantly available to a device that fits in your pocket. We're almost there today. A lot of the good information will be produced by proams.

geographic location: What do you want? Your digital devices will know where they are. Your cellphone will easily map your location, show you where you want to go, and give you directions. You'll be able to leave virtual notes for people connected to physical locations, like a bulletin board connected to every bar. Often, the way to get news about major events will be to ask an internet service what pictures were submitted from a particular physical location at a particular time. Everyone will have devices in their cars which report their driving habits to their insurance company, in exchange for a cost break for most. Some orwellian use of this technology will go on, particularly with regard to minors.

government structure: This is a US centric response: I don't see many structural changes occuring in a 15 year timespan, other then the final nails in the coffin of the idea that the commerce clause restricts federal authority. Politics will increasingly be influenced by internet based open information sources like blogs and wikipedia. Voters will be more informed about particular issues... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

Decius wrote:

government structure: This is a US centric response: I don't see many structural changes occuring in a 15 year timespan, other then the final nails in the coffin of the idea that the commerce clause restricts federal authority.

Global commerce is linked to government structure by more than just federal changes in the U.S. I am thinking more about the interactions between countries of varying structures. E.g. U.S. companies have to jump through a lot of hoops to do business in China. Maybe I'm having trouble qualify this aspect?

Around the year 2020 there will be a major social crisis that is more along the scale of WWII then 911 or Katrina.

Crisis management is certainly going to be a hot topic for a little while. Just how long will it last in this country in the wake of Katrina is another story. How about crisis prevention planning in Southeast Asia following the tsunami? As much as a I want to believe that crises are drivers of the economic environment, I just don't think that they have much sticking power with Joe Schmoe. This is especially true when the media has such an influence over people and their perceptions of domestic problems.

language: English will continue to make progress as the, ehm, lingua franca, but progress in this area will be slow.

I was thinking in terms of language as interactions among people whether via translation software, coding languages, or open source projects. I want to step back from the spoken word to its contribution to culture and technology.

Good jobs in the US will be less and less knowledge based and more and more service based, focusing on proximity to clients.

I could not disagree more. We're already transition from a mindset of "the customer is always right" to "the customer doesn't know what they want, much less how they want it." My professor thinks that the U.S. will transition from manufacturing and commodities to services such as sustainability consulting. A service economy in a newer sense. Streamlining processes will be in high demand. But, I don't think it can happen by 2020 without a much more progressive administration. We can't help but approach your distopia unless we quit squashing new ideas at every turn.

Another big driver mentioned by the class that I didn't give as an example was population. I've read several reports on this issue that project a levelling off of growth around 2050. Could estimates of this phenemenon be more accurate in 2020? I doubt it; 15 years isn't enough time for the models to self-correct.

Keep those drivers/comments coming!

Thanks, Decius.

-janelane, intrigued

janelane wrote:
Global commerce is linked to government structure by more than just federal changes in the U.S. I am thinking more about the interactions between countries of varying structures. E.g. U.S. companies have to jump through a lot of hoops to do business in China. Maybe I'm having trouble qualify this aspect?

Companies will be able to pick and choose suitable societies for business and national governments will compete for them as local governments do today. Trade between China and US will be quite open (more trade will be liberalized in general) and Chinese society will seem more capitalist then it does today. China will be in the process of trying to change the lifestyle of millions of small farmers. China will be building super cities. Either the UN will adapt their proceedural structure or you might see a federation of democratic states that replaces some of it's legal functions. All of this stuff is going on now and I expect it to continue. The only thing that could have a major impact on the trend of international relations would be a sudden gas shortage which results in war or a bad split on anti-terror issues.

I was thinking in terms of language as interactions among people whether via translation software, coding languages, or open source projects. I want to step back from the spoken word to its contribution to culture and technology.

If you are looking for significant improvements in human speech recognition or translation technologies I think you'll be disappointed. Its not a straightforward matter of cost and processing power. The problem is really really complex. You'll see voice recognition in more consumer products over the next 15 years but thats about it I think... I think programming will still be Cish tools and Perlish tools. I don't know if Java is going to live for 15 more years except as a legacy product.

Good jobs in the US will be less and less knowledge based and more and more service based, focusing on proximity to clients.

I could not disagree more.

I don't really understand what you are objecting to.

We're already transition from a mindset of "the customer is always right" to "the customer doesn't know what they want, much less how they want it."

Where?

My professor thinks that the U.S. will transition from manufacturing and commodities to services such as sustainability consulting. A service economy in a newer sense. Streamlining processes will be in high demand. But, I don't think it can happen by 2020 without a much more progressive administration.

Perhaps, but my point was more about the services as opposed to manufacturing thing, of which sustainability consulting is only one example. The transition from manufacturing to services is well underway and is politically agnostic.

janelane wrote:
In my "Engineering Design" class, we have to figure out what the world of 2020 will be like. Specifically, we are figuring out design processes for globally distributed design and marketing environments. I am curious what you all think of how 2020 will turn out, and the professor encourages us to ask people with opinions varying from our own. I can think of no greater variety than the Memestreams readership. What do you think? What issues (either same or different) are we likely to face? What will drive the above environments?

In 2020, there will be no outsourcing. In 2010, a revolt of the workers causes all the CXOs to be chased off or murdered in the boardroom, leaving the middle managers who cave to the masses (they never had any backbone anyway) and return the means of production to the proletariat.

janelane wrote:
In my "Engineering Design" class, we have to figure out what the world of 2020 will be like. Specifically, we are figuring out design processes for globally distributed design and marketing environments. I am curious what you all think of how 2020 will turn out, and the professor encourages us to ask people with opinions varying from our own. I can think of no greater variety than the Memestreams readership. What do you think? What issues (either same or different) are we likely to face? What will drive the above environments?

Some of the ones I have so far include:
communication
information availability
geographic location
government structure
language
outsourcing

I am interested to know what you have to say.

-janelane, obliged

Excellent... no wonder I feel like i've been getting dumber since i left college. Being presented with interesting problems to solve makes a big difference.

Strangely, my first inclination when I read this is was that 15 years isn't really a very long time, which I guess is mostly just indicitive of the orientation of my mind (either immediate or *very* long term). Then I thought back 15 years. In 1990, I was 12. No one I knew owned a cell phone... We had just swapped our emergency phone call quarters from our Roos into our backpacks. i had seen a cell phone once and thought it was a nice idea but impractical without a car to haul it around in. There wasn't an internet, a few kids were rocking the BBS scene. I was not hardcore, because I owned a Mac. Especially in the realm of technology, the world was a hell of a lot different.

I'll try not to repeat Tom too much, but I think we share some opinions, and he's the only other poster to speak of.

I think in 15 years the "cell phone" will have been replaced again with a much richer appliance. We see the forerunners now, but it'll take time to get there. Personally, I forsee something a little bit bigger, with a useful screen and maybe a keyboard. Possibly a tablet, though people currently aren't moved by the concept. The phone portion will likely just be a headset, or a dumb device with screen and buttons like we have now, but with everything VOIP over the tablet or whatever. Things like PANs (either wireless or over smart cloth or skin) will spring up, though the level of use is debateable.

I think everything will be wireless, though the bandwidth needed for a lot of the rich content will likely still require wires to homes and offices. I agree that POTS will be mostly dead and VOIP will have eclipsed it for almost everyone. You'll have a phone number that can follow you in smart ways.

I think personal knowledge management will become indispensable. As the volume of available information continues to expand, people will become less and less capable of handling it effectively. Reputation systems will form a piece of th... [ Read More (0.5k in body) ]

Hrm... what do I think about 2020?

Well, here we go...

I think that in 2020 we will have more integration with our computers, smaller, faster, cheaper being the watch word. We will not be smart enough to solve the world hunger problems, yet we'll have a wearable 5Ghz processor with 4Gbytes of RAM and an "always on" high speed connection via cellular EDGE networks.

Forget talking on the cell phone while driving, as your hybrid car, running on a basic combustion engine, still running a fossil fuel, is sending massive amounts of data about your trip, it's efficiency, your speed, location, and any additional communications that you need, over a cellular EDGE connection to the internet. You can call, video call, and take photos, while you drive, thanks to the myriad of small, cheap CCD camera elements placed strategically around your car, inside and out.

With comfort and safety being the watchword, these small CCD elements will enable your on-board computer to warn you if you become too close to the car in front, change lanes into another vehicle or obstacle, or begin to move off the road...

As well, an Opensource version of On-Star(tm) functionality enables you to automatically call the police, fire, or emergency services, with the push of a button on the dash, steering wheel, remote control or whatever other convenient programmable interface you desire.

However, little else will have changed. Politicians will still be the most hated and most revered morons to inhabit our planet. They continue to wage "police actions" and "combat initiatives" while keeping us all out of a new "world war". These actions will be for new and better ways to keep our technilogical world afloat, and to "preserve our freedom" to spend and spend until we are dead.

The divide between the rich and the poor will continue to grow, while the poor may somehow figure out how to use the cast off technology of the "new" rich. This will bring some interesting new challenges, as the "poor" will become the newest breed of "hackers", that have a real need for information and control.

While in 2020, I will be 65, and retired (I hope), this vision of the future is disheartening... we'll be no "better" off as a country, society, or world... it will be the same as it has been since the late 90's... with no major breakthroughs to the betterment of humanity.

Sad... but I fear it true....

Just my 2¢, YMMV.

dc0de.

janelane wrote:
In my "Engineering Design" class, we have to figure out what the world of 2020 will be like. Specifically, we are figuring out design processes for globally distributed design and marketing environments. I am curious what you all think of how 2020 will turn out, and the professor encourages us to ask people with opinions varying from our own. I can think of no greater variety than the Memestreams readership. What do you think? What issues (either same or different) are we likely to face? What will drive the above environments?

Some of the ones I have so far include:
communication
information availability
geographic location
government structure
language
outsourcing

I am interested to know what you have to say.

-janelane, obliged

janelane wrote:

communication

Communication will be ubiquitous and rich worldwide. For affluent populations, everything will 'talk' all the time. Because of the intense need to boost productivity even further, these populations will have access to extremely efficient and powerful agents and services to assist them. Your fridge will know what you have (and don't have) to make that caserole for this friday's get together. It will order it through the local grocery's supply chain and the items will be delivered to your door or place of work just in time.

Personal communications will be embedded in your clothing and all the objects around you. Your alarm clock will be synced to NTP sources. Your jacket will have microphone and video displays built into the sleeves and collars, which will automagically combine with your identity device, which will allow for secure broadband communications for news, mail, video and voice streaming. All of these devices will be rooted in time and place, providing context for the user. So as you enter a store, your video display will allow you to securely purchase items. As you enter your doctor's office, your device will authenticate and allow for the exchange of health information, scheduling, and billing. The network will allow for the intelligent collaboration of the devices as an agent for you. As you are driving to an appointment, the devices will calculate your position and plot your estimated time of arrival, notifying your meeting mate that you will be late.

All services will be rooted in context, but there will be a conscious choice to allow this information to be captured and shared. Most segments of the world population that have access to these tools will enable this feature, deciding that the loss of privacy and anonymity is worth the productivity. In most cases, you will simply not be allowed to carry on commerce without them, since all commerce systems will require at least some form of electronic authentication. But the 'have-nots' or 'choose-nots' will emerge, bringing a section of the population which will not have access to the tools or chooses not to lose their liberty and independance and remain blank in the system. This sub-culture will be rooted in the Do-It-Yourself ethic in order to survive.

information availability

I think that information availability will be at the highest possible point imaginable for society. As I mentioned, I think that it will be split between those who are willing to trade productivity for liberty and those who aren't, but the degree of transparency will be unprecedented. Part of this will be because of the degree of productivity desired. Open systems provide the most fluid and friction-free environments for information exchange, commerce, and ultimately productivity. So when you think about simple things like buying groceries, having a clear shot through the entire supply chain will... [ Read More (0.8k in body) ]

janelane wrote:
In my "Engineering Design" class, we have to figure out what the world of 2020 will be like. Specifically, we are figuring out design processes for globally distributed design and marketing environments. I am curious what you all think of how 2020 will turn out, and the professor encourages us to ask people with opinions varying from our own. I can think of no greater variety than the Memestreams readership. What do you think? What issues (either same or different) are we likely to face? What will drive the above environments?

Some of the ones I have so far include:
communication
information availability
geographic location
government structure
language
outsourcing

I am interested to know what you have to say.

-janelane, obliged

Now for the voice of gloom and doom. What will the world be like? Yes, newer, smaller, faster computers, jobs wherever they are cheapest, national lines breaking down more and more.

Prior to 2020, I am afraid that I would consider "The Big One" likely. Either a massive earthquake at New Madrid, severing transportation from east to west, dropping buildings as far away as Chicago, and breaking dams all throughout the Tennesse river valley, ultimately making what Katrina just did to New Orleans look like a spring rain.

The alternate to that, would be one along the San Andreas similar to the one that caused the tidal wave across the Indian Ocean last Christmas. In that case 750 miles of crust moved, 200 miles greater than the distance from San Diego to San Francisco.

A California event would be less damaging because the effects would be far more localized, but as Katrina has demonstrated, we are not prepared in any way shape of form for even something orders of magnitude less damaging than either of those options.

Life in the middle ages was nasty, brutish and short. Without some serious action, so will life be in the United States in the 21st century.

janelane wrote:
In my "Engineering Design" class, we have to figure out what the world of 2020 will be like.
-janelane, obliged
decius wrote
government structure: This is a US centric response: I don't see many structural changes occuring in a 15 year timespan,

I don't see any structural changes to be likely since the constitution is designed to make fundamental change incredibly difficult however if the religious right has its way and Roe v Wade is overturned because Bush or a successor packs the Supreme Court then we almost move into Margaret Attwood The Handmaid's Tale territory. I see an even greater clash between the urban progressive elements and the fundamentalists. There does not seem much room for political compromise between the creationist, pro-life, anti-gay forces and liberal rainbow coalition eco-friendly pro-choice pro-diversity forces.

The EU could spin apart. The problems faced by various governments to ratify a constitution and may prove a landmark. It has in many ways a top down project imposed by a political elite. It has a fundamental logic ecomonically and politically but medium term there are huge hurdles. The Rupert Murdoch press and the political elite fudging the democratic imperitive of handing real power over to the directly elected body rather than the council of ministers and second hand failed politicians becoming Commissioners ( the senior EU bureaucrats ).

One of the major questions is China. A nuclear power, a dictatorship. Will the economic leap forward spread to other areas of China? Will economic liberty lead to increased calls to loosen the grip of the party, what will happen when the last of the old guard who marched on the Long March are dead? The political role of the Chinese Army is as ever key.

War, poverty, debt, diease in the developing world. HIV is devastating a generation in Africa. Dictators have saddled much of the developing world with huge debt and much of the planet is riven by violent political struggle of which Al-Qaeda is a religious veil for a deeper political and economic struggle. Choosing the World Trade Center was not a random act, it was a political focus which to them incapsulated "the enemy". Whether the divisions will increase between rich and poor I think depends on perspective. Internally to countries I think divisions will increase, as manual and low skill jobs are outsourced across borders. Jobs will continue to flow abroad but this will in turn enfranchise people in India, China and potentially Africa and continue the disenfranchisement of elements in the "West". Flint Michigan will only get back on its feet through education, which means sending its children into the military so they can go to college.
The US regained a lot of perceived ecomonic power through information technology. Where was America in the 70s and 80s? Brewing a technological revolution produced by the capit... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]

I don't see any structural changes to be likely since the constitution is designed to make fundamental change incredibly difficult however if the religious right has its way and Roe v Wade is overturned because Bush or a successor packs the Supreme Court then we almost move into Margaret Attwood The Handmaid's Tale territory. I see an even greater clash between the urban progressive elements and the fundamentalists.

I think greater national problems will draw attention away from the red/blue battle, but if Roe was overturned the result would be extremely devisive. I think you'd see a lot of migration as people look to ban abortion and people look to move out of areas where it has been banned.

The EU could spin apart.

I hope they get it together.