When faced with fresh challenges and the opportunities and threats posed by technological innovation, the human race has always evolved to live, work, and explore in new ways. Listed below are some of those rising social, industrial and organizational phenomenon that look set to trigger many changes in our lives and belief systems over the coming decades, and which have the potential to harbour significant benefits, if with them new avenues of conflict and division.

Please note that trends specifically linked to particular technologies and their development are included here in the future technologies section.

More Local Living

In the face of Peak Oil, wider resource depletion and regulatory measures being taken to try and combat climate change, it is all but inevitable that over the coming decades people will start to travel less and consume products (including food) that have been transported shorter and shorted distances. In a nutshell, as the 21st century takes hold we will therefore begin to live more locally. For more information, please see the more local living page.

Vertical Farming

Vertical farms are future skyscrapers in which we will grow crops and even raise animals. The idea behind such future 'agritecture' is to move at least some of our agricultural production to urban areas. This would reduce the need to transport food long distances (hence reducing food miles) and could make cities at least partially self-sufficient in terms of their food requirements.

Vertical farms could achieve year-round crop production, with no crop losses as a result of weather-related problems. Because they would grow crops without soil using either hydroponics or aeroponics, future vertical farms would use far less water than traditonal agriculture. They could also even use plants to purify brown water contaminated by human and other waste. In addition, future vertical farms may be used to harvest biofuels, bioplastics, biomedicines, and other products created via genetic engineering and future synthetic biology. For more information, please my future cities vide, the great website verticalfarm.com, or this great video.

Life Extension

Across history, improvements in healthcare, diet and the infrastructure of civilization have fairly consistently resulted in an increased average human life span. Today, potential measures for future life extension include the "re-programning" of our natural of biology to slow or prevent the ageing process, the augmentation of our natural self-repair and immune systems, transgenic and/or synthetic organ replacement, and cybernetic upgrading. In the very distant future the possibility may even exist for individuals to transcend natural biology entirely and to achieve potential immortality in cyberspace. For more information, please see the Life Extension Page or watch my Life Extension Video.

The New Industrial Convergence

The first industrial convergence occured as the computing, communications and content industries all adopted digital technologies and started to work in the same kinds of ways with the same kinds of tools and infrastructures. Today, we stand on the brink of a more more radical "New Industrial Convergence" in which traditional manufacturing, medicine, and the already converged media industries are starting to share some common ground. This is occuring due to developments such as nanotechnology, genetic engineering, synthetic biology, 3D printing and bioprinting, and which are all leading engineers, doctors and computer scientists to start working with the same kinds of technologies at the same kinds of scale. For more information, please see the New Industrial Convergence page.

More Women in Authority

For years futurists have been proclaiming that "the future is female". With cross-disciplinary developments such as the New Industrial Convergence requiring the attention of minds most accustomed to multi-tasking, and resource depletion also requiring far more holistic and socially-cohesive management perspectives, it is also hopefully easy to see why the human race would and will be better placed with a more even balance of men and women engaged in all forms of decision making at both the corporate and governmental level. For more information please see the More Women in Authority page.

The Death of Economics

Economics was one of the greatest blessings and yet the greatest blights of the 20th century. As capitalism won the battle against communism, both governments and business grew narrow-minded due to their obsession with always making the best economic decisions. The very positive side of all this was that prosperity ensued, whilst the very negative was that economic decisions, borders and regulation trod all-too-heavily over so many of those human values that allowed us to survive long before coin, note and e-banking website. As the financial calamity that occured in 2008 ought to have taught us, the balance has now well and truly begun to swinging away from the cold folly of economic logic. For more information, please see the Death of Economics page, and/or my Death of Economics Video.