Future's so bright, I gotta wear Teflon

The future is a funny idea, when you think about it. Most of us will get there at some point, experiencing the future — for a while, anyway — so we’ll see firsthand how far-fetched people’s ideas about things are 10, 20 years down the line. After all, 50 years back people predicted we’d all be riding around the metropolis on jetpacks. Yet here we still are, trying to control the price of some precious liquid made from decaying animals. And don’t get me started on pet rocks and mood rings.

As we enter a new year, 2009, a pivotal moment in the Noughties, I thought it’d be interesting to take a gaze into the crystal ball with one of Britain’s leading “futurologists,” Ray Hammond, who recently gave an audience at Nokia World in Barcelona a glimpse into the mists of Things To Come.

Most of us were a little perplexed. How does one qualify as a “futurologist” anyway? I’ve concluded that it’s someone who reads up on the hottest trends in technology and world events, then guesses how these might affect us. Plus it helps to have a bit of showbiz skill. And, well, that’s pretty much it.

Anyway, Hammond cited seven trends that will shape our future, and as we enter the penultimate year before the onset of the Tens, let’s ponder their looming significance…

• World population explosion. Hammond notes the world’s population will jump from the current 6.7 billion to 8.2 billion by the year 2030. At the very least, in the future, this will make your Facebook site ridiculously hard to maintain. You will be receiving, on average, 1,932 friendship requests and 8,105 “Pokes” every single day. Someone better do something about this fast.

• Climate crisis. We have finally met the enemy in global warming, and it is… kangaroos. Yes, recent news reports suggest that Australia’s kangaroos — numbering 50 million right now, and God knows how many in 2030 — are major contributors to methane gases in the atmosphere (i.e., they fart a lot). “Flatulent livestock,” according to a Herald Tribune report, produce about 70 percent of Oz’s agricultural emissions. And you can just imagine how much farting goes on in America’s Heartland. 

• Energy crisis. This one will be solved in 2015 by Australian inventor Waldo Cosgrove, who will devise a strap-on kanga-carburetor that will transform the marsupial’s methane emissions into clean, renewable engine fuel. Now, if they could only do the same thing with the world’s politicians…

• Globalization. A few melamine scandals aside, Hammond believes that globalization — the shift of manufacturing to the third world so that well-off people can buy goods cheaper —is actually improving conditions on the planet. He calls it “the greatest force for world peace,” as it has enabled hundreds of millions in China to seek a better life. And that’s just counting the acrobats who appeared in the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympics.

• Stem cell research/DNA profiling. It’s interesting. Hammond noted that “all of you in this audience under the age of 50 are likely to live an extra 20 years, thanks to scientific advances.” He meant that stem cell research would allow us to replace certain body parts, and keep the old jalopy going a couple extra decades down the line. While we can all relish the possibility of having scads more time to, say, learn a foreign language or finally get around to organizing our sock drawer, I’m not so sure I want to replace body parts with replacements grown in a lab. Even the idea of Lasik surgery sort of freaks me out — or maybe it’s the (remote, but actual) possibility that my lasered eyeballs could pop out of my skull on a commercial flight due to air pressure and land in somebody’s cocktail. Eww.

• Artificial intelligence. We’ve all seen examples of “smart technology.” GPS systems. Spam filters that target every e-mail in sight. Madonna’s 50-plus body. Hammond tells us that technology is becoming more and more “self-aware,” and anyone who’s watched 2001 or Battlestar Gallactica will tell you that’s usually the point where humans start to get offed. By 2025, computer intelligence will match human intelligence — a point known as “singularity.” After that, who knows? We’re already slaves to our cell phones and social networking sites. It shouldn’t be too great of an adjustment to become slaves to computers and robots. Plus, Street Sweeper and Garbage Collector will be very marketable job titles once the global economy collapses under the robot regime.

• The bottom billion. Here, Hammond refers to the poorest people on the planet, who will number at least one billion by 2030. “If we don’t make them part of the information economy, they will come to get us,” Hammond warned. (It helps to throw a little George Romero-type fear into an audience if you’re a futurologist.) He warns that waves of terrorism will grow as people become disenchanted with living at the bottom of the food chain. At that point, we denizens of the information economy can stand up, hand over our brooms to the bottom billion and say: “Hey, you guys want to clean up after the robots for a while? Sure. Be our guests.”

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