BUSINESS

Large scale corporations are overdue for extinction.  Such is the conclusion that can be drawn from the theories of John Naisbitt in "Global Paradox".  The internet provides the information required by Naisbitt's would be entrepreneurs.  Small internet business will be more efficient and flexible than large corporate distribution and sales organizations.  Within 20 years there will be nothing made that cannot be purchased direct from a small manufactory somewhere in the world, no raw material that cannot be ordered from the primary producer, no service that cannot be purchased from a local or international small partnership.  Local area and international transport and forwarding organizations are the largest potential growth market for the next few decades.

The stock exchange is in turmoil as investors seek to buy into the corporations that will succeed in transforming themselves to utilize the internet.  What those investors do not realize is that huge amounts of wealth is being destroyed by the internet.   This will happen as the sales and distribution corporations find themselves supplanted by the internet.  Examples are direct ticket sales by airlines, direct book sales by Amazon, direct car sales and the new B2B (Business to business) internet purchasing.

PREDICTION:  The overgoverned (overtaxed) regimes of Europe will continue to produce an economic decline among their people as their governments restrict their economies in an attempt to hold onto their declining tax base.  The government of China has already started to falter (Falan Gong) at the changeover to a liberal economy.  Within five years the five largest world corporations will have topped out with a capital value (each) that exceeds the GNP of China.    By 2022 these dinosaurs will have splintered or declined in the face of smaller & more nimble competitors cannibalizing their markets.

MEDIA.

In communication, Matt Drudge has shown that a single internet journalist can establish a domain that is just as reliable a source of interesting & innovative news as mogul owned billion dollar networks.   Matt's daily circulation is around one million.  There are no more than a handful of titles in the world with circulation figures to compare.  The wielders of political power of the internet era are the information & opinion disseminators who own the means of directly addressing their audience.

PREDICTION:  Advertising dollars will follow the audience.  The audience will follow the stars.  The stars of the future will be those people who have attained public recognition for their attributes & abilities, be they physical or intellectual, with emphasis on integrity.    Newsprint corporations will survive as the opinion fashion houses of the future, attracting clientele by their editorial policies.

CRIME.

Crime detection & punishment will become more precise and more relevant.  This is foreshadowed in the USA where hundreds of men serving long sentences for rape are being set free when genetic examination of the sperm (that has been kept frozen) shows that the person convicted was not guilty of the crime.  The huge number of fixed location video cameras installed is already assisting police in the tracing of criminals.  Extrapolating, it will probably become possible within ten or twenty years to use the satellite photographs to identify and convict individuals guilty of crimes performed in the present day.  For white collar crime the prospects are even more bleak.  Crimes committed decades past will be ferreted out by intelligent software and the (now wealthy) fraudsters and their heirs will be deprived of their ill gotten wealth.   Eventually crime will diminish to near zero as diagnostic and detection tools anticipate and identify criminal acts.

PREDICTION:  Contractual and tortious disputes between individuals and corporations will increasingly be settled by preagreed arbitrators.  Prenuptial agreements, marriage ceremonies and divorce arbitration will merge & become "packages" offered by competing religious and/or arbitration organizations.   Voluntary and compulsory treatment will effectively eradicate fraud and violence.  The expensive state system will evolve to enforcement and appeal matters.

HEALTH

The Human Genome project reaches completion in a few years.  The human life span will continue to increase, possibly accelerating faster than the passage of time, so that by 2020 the expected life span could increase by 60 years (to 150).  This will be accompanied by a large number of medical advances that will restore health and energy to older people.  Simple operations (like installation of a new mechanical heart) will become largely automated and take a few hours between walk-in walk-out, and cost a few thousand dollars.   Within 30 - 50 years technology will move from maintenance of health to restoration of youth.

PREDICTION:   Procedures that maintain health and restore youth will become available by 2030.

GOVERNMENT.

As the spotlight of publicity reveals the shortcomings and mismanagement of politicians, the people will demand reform.   A consequence will be a looser party structure and diminution of the power of party bosses.   The power of politicians in the leading liberal democracies will be diminished as voters select those politicians most responsive to their needs.

The collection of taxes will become more difficult as employees have their income paid in low tax states or countries, and organize their purchases from low sales tax states.

PREDICTION: Representative democracy will wither away and be supplanted by direct democracy.

EDUCATION

Education will eventually become privatized from infants through tertiary, with the federal government paying subsidies to providers on the basis of the number of students that attend the class.  For a short story about tertiary education in 2015, follow this hyperlink to "the teacher"

PREDICTION: Public (state) education will cease at year six.  A handful of international qualification organizations will come to dominate the secondary and tertiary qualifications market.

SCIENCE.

Progress is the utilization of applications in communication and energy.   Landmarks in communication were language (50k BC), writing (8k BC), printing (12th Century) electricity (19th Century).  Landmarks in energy were fire (40k BC?), wheel & lever (5k BC?), heat engine (17th Century).

1. Energy  technology will soon (between 2010 - 2030) produce an economic, carbon pollution free power source, probably based on photoelectric technology amalgamated with storage batteries or non carbon thermal fuels.  PREDICTION: Anyone with access to a few square meters of sunlight will eventually become self sufficient in energy.
2. Communication Technology.  On hardware trend analysis, sometime between about 2010 and 2030 communication technology will produce a computer with calculation power of the same order of magnitude as the human brain.  This computer will be the basis of an android or cyborg or "intelligence enhancement device".  (An "intelligence enhancement device" would probably take the form of an interface technology that coupled the neural cortex to a computing device having plastic silicon arrays that mimic neural architecture, that would effectively "add on" to thinking ability.)  PREDICTION: By 2030 technology will produce intellect enhancement devices that would give the user an intelligence that (if it could be measured) would be measured above IQ 1,000.

This page originated 24 September 1997, Updates 24 November 1998. Y2K added on 14 December '98, minor changes 24 Dec, 4 Jan, 4 April, 10 July/99;.8 Sept. 1999, major update 21 November 1999, reviewed 18 January 2000.  This update 20/29 February 2000

For corrections, complaints, comments, opinions email from "barvennon.com" page.