1

The Future of Fashion

Technologies and tastes are converging with wireless to revolutionize the textile industry. Researchers in smart fabrics and intelligent textiles (SFIT) are working with the fashion industry to bring us color-changing or perfume-emitting jeans, wristwatches that work as digital wallets, and running shoes like the Nike +iPod that watch where you're going (possibly allowing others to do the same). Powering these gizmos remains a key obstacle. But industry watchers estimate that a $400 million market for SFIT is already in place and predict that smart fabrics could revitalize the textile industry.  --Patrick Tucker, The Futurist

2

The future of energy

Will renewable energy and efficient fuel technology take the place of the current dependence on hydrocarbons—or will political, economic, and societal based constraints lead to an increase in the use of coal? And what would this mean for our greater environment? Almost all oil reserves are controlled by state companies, and there are major geopolitical forces affecting energy security (potential civil war in Nigeria, sanctions on Iran, issues in the Caspian region, nationalization in Bolivia, etc.) as well as growing political opposition to offshore drilling. Meanwhile, we are edging closer to hydrogen power.

 A fuel station producing enough hydrogen to run householders' homes and cars has been unveiled in London and is due to go on sale within two years. It’s roughly the size of a heating boiler and will cost under £2,000. Futurists say it will revolutionise commuting, help homeowners slash energy bills, and give easy access to a fuel that does not produce carbon dioxide emissions. Peter Schwartz/Ray Hammond

3

The future of making babies

• Artificial wombs and experiments on human embryos grown in the lab will be commonplace and no big deal ethically in 30 years.

• Newborns and 100-year-olds alike could have children. Infertility will be eradicated.

• Labs will be able to generate sperm and eggs for anybody.

• Human embryos will be made from sperm and egg cells derived from pluripotent stem cells (the kind that can develop into any of the body's cell types).

• Foetuses will freely float in artificial placentas or uteruses of fluid, with umbilical cords attached to machines.

• "Genetic cassettes" will be inserted at the embryonic stage to correct diseases such as Huntington's.

• Since embryos will be grown in labs, mutations to embryos could be corrected and improvements could be engineered. Yet there will be no "designer babies" because no single gene is that predictive of a "perfect" child.

In vitro fertilization (IVF) will become as cheap as $100 and available for women in developing countries and those who are socially shunned or harmed because they are infertile.

From, "Making Babies: The Next 30 Years," Nature.

4

The future of Virtual Worlds 

Second Life, Google Earth, the hybrid house – are these really triggering a major info & techno revolution in how we work, play and live? Or is it a Milky Way of mindless distractions engineered by a multi-billion dollar global industry? Some argue that Second Life is better than our First Life, as it creates an immersive world of togetherness like nothing else. Will we learn to live in both world’s simultaneously?

5

The future of Transformation  

Global festivals such as Burning Man and the World  Social Forum are creating new thinking about tomorrow’s real-life communities. Human values are being re-arranged, and include self reliance, “radical self expression”, inter generational connectivity, Civic engagement, carbon neutrality, closing the Wealth Divide, the rise of “open source” design and public domain copyright, helping each other succeed. Are these gatherings doomed attempts to chase Utopia or brilliant exercises in preparing the ground for a post carbon future?

6

The future of thirst

Water will be in the twenty-first century what oil was in the twentieth century. Global fresh water shortages and drought conditions are spreading in both the developed and developing world. The supply of this blue gold has determined the fate of empires.There is no substitute for water in most applications. Our present energy system consumes and pollutes water along its entire resource chains. Oil extraction, coal production, transportation, gas processing and transmission as well as the nuclear fuel cycle consume massive amounts of water. To make things worse, the burning of fossil fuels prevents rainfalls. While desalination is becoming mainstream, it requires high inputs of energy. Impacts include :vast job losses in textile, agriculture,  and food industries; growth in humanitarian aid, disaster relief.•By 2030 without new infrastructure, water supplies for Melbourne & Sydney may drop 25%.Some predict imminent wars over access to water. Possible flashpoints include the Middle East, parts of Africa, and in many of the worlds major river basins, including the Danube.

7

The future for food

Could “cultured meat” capture the future and reduce the carbon footprint of livestock?  As of now, there are simply not enough internationally available vegetarian meats and egg replacement products to justify a huge global investment. But this could be changing, as a new ethic emerges that  “It’s time to stop killing meat and start growing it”. A new movement, Meat without Livestock focuses on possibilities for replacing animal products with products that are not derived from animals. For instance, Vegetarian Meats, Non-Dairy Milk Drinks and Egg Replacements are designed to simulate  the animal derived products of which there is a a wide variety available. Next on the horizon is "In-Vitro Meat" which is actual meat is produced without the use of animals. The aim is to reduce animal suffering, pollution, starvation and health risks, by no longer using billions of domestic animals as meat, milk and egg machines, and to replace these products with food that is healthier and produced with the highest ethical and environmental standards.

8

The future of globalisation

We have only seen the beginning of how globalization will change our world over the next decades.  The democratization of information via the Internet, the rise of middle class consumers in the developing world, the spread of outsourcing to professions like law and medicine, new competitors dislodging Fortune 500 firms in global markets, increased pressure on natural resources…the list will only grow longer as market forces and technology spread across our planet.

But can globalization support social justice, when  large companies erect barriers to protect their dominance? Or when intellectual property carpet-baggers steal patents from the developing world? And drug firms try to turn the WTO into a "royalty collection agency". Perhaps skilled workers who leave developing countries to work overseas should be taxed. It is mostly left to NGOs to act as watchdogs and turn on the heat when big companies behave badly. Michael Rogers/Richard Neville.

9

The Future or Robots

Human experience is marked by a refusal to obey our limitations. We´ve escaped the ground, we´ve escaped the planet, and now, after thousands of years of effort, our quest to build machines that emulate our own appearance, movement and intelligence is leading us to the point where we will escape the two most fundamental confines of all: our bodies and our minds. Once this point comes-once the accelerating pace of technological change allows us to build machines that not only equal but surpass human intelligence-we´ll see cyborgs (machine-enhanced humans like the Six Million Dollar Man), androids (human-robot hybrids like Data in Star Trek) and other combinations beyond what we can even imagine.

Electronically enabled teams in networks, robots with artificial intelligence, and other non-carbon life-forms will make financial, health, educational, and even political decisions for us. Reason: Technologies are increasing the complexity of our lives and human workers' competency is not keeping pace well enough to avoid disasters due to human error. --Ray Kurzweil/ Arnold Brown 

10

Is there a Future for Earth?

Many believe our planet is on the verge of a significant extinction event. The twenty-first century could witness a biodiversity collapse 100 to 1,000 times greater than any previous extinction since the dawn of humanity, according to the World Resources Institute. Protecting biodiversity in a time of increased resource consumption, overpopulation, and environmental degradation will require continued sacrifice on the part of local, often impoverished communities. Experts contend that incorporating local communities' economic interests into conservation plans will be essential to species protection in the next century. --World Trends & Forecasts, Nov-Dec 2006