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 capitalist system working to innovate in combination with the universities and the military industrial complex. Biotechnology, stem cell research, nanotechnology, fuel cell technology are obvious candiates note 23rd December 1947 the first transistor from Bell Labs and how it relates to quantum mechanics. From pure research to a technological revolution in less than 100 years. So research on dark matter or the maths of string theory may throw up the next technological revolution. But what will it look like? I don't foresee space elevators (too dangerous see Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars novels) or auto pilot cars (people like to be in charge). I see contact lens screens and data gloves skipping across virtual keyboards. The struggle between information, entertainment providers and those seeking the death of copyright. Television production companies will bypass traditional providers and go straight to consumers. Online gaming will be the next great wave in entertainment after the novel, cinema and television see the growth in the Far East with their far faster internet connections, driven increasingly by gaming.
Will the Green House effect begin to kick in, the North Atlantic conveyor collapse freezing Britain and Northern Europe and mass starvation occur as crops fail across the planet as fertile zones shift, the thawing of Siberia and rising sea levels as the Poles melt? Will we see a return to nuclear power as the only short term replacement for fossil fuels? Will we see Cosmos One's successor get off the ground and see the new sport of space sailing, as foretold by Issac Asimov.
Will we see nuclear weapons delivered by cargo ship then onto trucks and thus the failure of deterence since there is no interballistic missile track?
Will Will Smith be the first black President? Will America elect an African-American as President? A woman ? An openly gay man or woman? Will Russia be taken over by the Russian mafia? Will cancer become a cureable disease? HIV vaccinations? Will smoking in public become a capital crime?(Attemped murder at least). Will the EU survive and continue its Borg like march east and assimilate Russia and Mongolia? Will they build a tunnel under the Bering Straits? Will the gorillas, rhinos and Blue Whales go extinct?
It will be better and worse than we can predict. Maybe George W Bush will have become a Buddist monk and Osama Bin Laden will personally apologise to every victim of his terror and do community service for them!

RE: The Year 2020