Foresight: the 21st Century

Roger Coate challenged my class the other evening to identify the trends that will mark the 21st century. The following is a partial response. Comments are more than welcome.

Demographic Changes: The global population is growing and growing older. The demographic transition has resulted in low or negative population growth in most affluent countries, and in a different form in China. However, many countries still have rapid population growth, especially poor nations. There is a huge migration from rural to urban areas, and mega-cities are appearing and continuing to grow. Thus even by mid century, there will be a much larger world population, quite differently distributed.

Globalization: International communication, Transnational investment, international trade, and international travel are all growing rapidly. 100 years ago there was also a globalization processes in operation, but it was killed by two world wars and a global economic depression. If the world avoids a similar meltdown in the 21st century, these trends should continue. They may contribute to higher rates of international migration.

Economic changes: Average per capita GDP can be expected to continue growing, even as the world population grows. U.S. economic dominance of the world economy, that existed after World War II has been challenged by the restoration of European and Japanese economies in the second half of the century. China and India seem also likely to become major world economies in the 21st century. Thus we might think of three major economic regions -- Europe, North America, and Asia -- dominating the global economy later in the 21st century.

Technology: Mechanized manufacturing has been, and will probably continue to move to new regions with low wages. I suspect that materials technology, although fairly mature, still has surprises in store for mankind. Information technology has not fully matured, even after a half century, and will continue to offer major economic gains in developed nations; major ICT diffusion will take place to developing nations. Biotechnology (including genomics and proteomics) is probably just beginning to have its commercial impact. Nanotechnology and technologies from the cognitive and brain sciences seem to me likely to produce major economic benefits in the century. Alternative energy technology to that based on fossil fuel will be needed, and one hopes that fusion will become economically feasible.

Environment and Natural Resources: Global warming is a fact, and will continue more or less rapidly throughout the 21st century, depending on the success in policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Anthropogenic changes will also further promote desertification, destruction of coastal zones, deforestation, soil loss, and loss of biodiversity. Water shortages may be a major problem in some regions. Almost all all arable land is already under agriculture, and the ability to absorb more rural population by putting new land under cultivation will be severely limited. Fisheries will be depleted. Oil reserves will be depleted some time in the 21st century. Knowledge of the environment and natural resources will improve rapidly.

Health and longevity: There are lots of unknowns here. Communicable diseases still kill huge numbers of people each year; while the worst impacts are limited to poor people in poor countries, HIV/AIDS illustrates the threat that new and emerging diseases may pose. An aging population will increase the prevalence of diseases of aging, and the attendant medical costs. The development of mega-cities raises the possibility of new health problems. Increasing affluence raises the possibility of increasing problems such as substance addiction and problems stemming from obesity. It is possible that medical research will find ways to extend healthy life expectancy beyond "four score and ten" for those fortunate to escape the problems identified above.

Social Changes: Schooling life expectancy is increasing, and on the average people will be much longer schooled in the 21st century, but here too there will be great differences among nations. Westernization can be expected to continue reaching into regions and peoples who did not Westernize during the 20th century (or before). Many tribal and local languages will disappear, and the numbers of people able to speak at least one of a handful of global languages will increase. As the global information structure continues to improve, popular culture trends and phenomena will be disseminated still more widely, providing greater challenges to the maintenance of local intangible culture. There will continue to be cultural clashes over deeply held cultural values -- including religious, ethical, and political values -- as globalization increases the impacts of cultures on each other. Corporate cultures will increasing compete with national cultures.

Institutional Changes: Transnational and global markets will expand, proliferate and strengthen. More and bigger multinational corporations will exist. Civil society institutions will continue to expand and link regionally and globally. Intergovernmental organizations will continue to expand in authority and function. There will be a further transfer of function and authority from more to less geographically limited governing bodies, such as is taking place from European nations to the European Union. Treaties and conventions will play a greater role in protecting the environment, regulating international commerce, and other areas.

Further Comment: I can only hope that knowledge from the social science, humanities, natural sciences, and technological knowledge of the man-made environment grow sufficiently rapidly to help mankind deal with the changes that will occur in this century. Even more of concern is that people learn better how to utilize such knowledge, and that peoples, nations, and societies become more rational and better able to guide themselves into peaceful and productive lines of action and behavior. JAD