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 this puzzle, but the semantic web (or a derivative), flexible information categorization algorithms and software agents will fill in the gaps. All of this will travel with you at all times, certainly. As communication devices get better and understanding the world areound them, they can start talking to each other in interesting ways. If i have a meeting with you at 4, our devices know that. If it's 3:50 and i'm still 5 miles away, my gear can tell yours that i'm gonna be a little late... you can keep working and not wonder, and i can continue driving and not have to make additional unnecessary phone calls. My wife's data will update mine that soccer practice ran late, and i should get takeout on my way home. The number of operations you have to perform manually will decrease as automated systems take over some of that responsibility.

Improved communications tech will continue to decentralize the workplace. The changing job markets will probably be more amenable to flexible location and rapid response anyhow, so there will be efficiencies gained. The downside is that the line will further blur between "work time" and "personal time". Probably more than 15 years out, but ineveitably, i think, this trend will have to resolve itself in one of 2 ways : either people will reject the trend and require more rigid separations again, or else the employment procedures will change to allow people to more easily and naturally gravitate towards jobs they are most suited for and happiest to perform. Being "on the clock" 24/7 is only going to work out if people enjoy what they do. Outsourcing, per se, will become more standard. The job market will simply become global for everyone, in the same way that we now look for jobs all over the country via the internet. This does require a change in our modes of education, I think, since language barriers will remain a concern. I am not optimistic that electronic translation technology will become the norm within 15 years.

Bloggers and indie media will continue to grow, but will be fought desperately by the traditional media. I'm not sure it will be over in 15 years. TV, or whatever supplants it, will continue to have massive influence, and likely remain mostly inaccessible to indie media until late in the time frame we're discussing.

I think the EU has to be considered carefully in any kind of prediction about the global political/economic outlook. There's a great deal of potential in their system, which is similar in many ways to the foundation of the U.S. If they can work out their differences without a civil war or simple collapse, I believe the EU can easly become dominant in 15 or so years. I'm still thinking about the role China will play.

Space tech will increase in relevance. Commercial, private space flight will be getting off the ground (pun intended?), and we may even have made progress on this space elevator concept. These will drive progress in a few industries, I think, and also offer opportunities for international collaboration.

I think population growth will slow. We see trends that show less growth in industrial and post-industrial areas than in developing ones. As more of the world develops, there's reason to belive the trend will slow population growth. That's just a barely supported opinion, however... i can think of a lot of reasons that could change.

So much to say, but i've already been at "lunch" for almost 2 hours. We haven't even started in on biotech or medicine, two areas i think will be enormously influential over the next 15 years.

I can't wait to see where this discussion goes... come on everyone!

RE: The Year 2020