Four Scenarios for 2030 | World Future Society

Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds

Author(s): National Intelligence Council

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (2012)

Binding: Paperback, 166 pages

List Price: $10.99

Read Global Trends 2030 online at http://www.dni.gov/nic/globaltrends.

How will individual empowerment, diffusion of power, aging populations, mass urbanization, food and water scarcity, and accelerating change shape the world of 2030?

The National Intelligence Councils new report, Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds, explores these megatrends and shapes them into four very different scenarios for the world 17 years from today.

This succinct report is an analysis of core trends and potential game changers, including:

Most World Future Society members and practicing futurists have been studying and speaking on these trends for years, but breathless media coverage of this report suggests that these trends are still entering the intellectual bloodstream. And, if the delusional political discourse surrounding Americas recent elections is any indication, Americas political class may find this report jarring. Reality intrudes.

Policy makers and corporate leaders should closely study the four scenarios outlined in the NICs report. Each scenario creates valuable memories of the future that help leaders as they grapple with the long-term implications of todays decisions.

1. The Stalled Engines scenario is a worst-case scenario in which the Pacific Rim is engulfed in nationalistic brinkmanship and conflict, global growth slows, the EU disintegrates, the United States turns inward, and globalization unravels.

2. In the best-case Fusion scenario, an interconnected East and West work together to address the globes major challenges, innovation blossoms, and most players prosper.

3. In the Gini out of the Bottle scenario, gaping extremes define the global stage and within countries, as the best positioned reap all the benefits of the new world order.

4. And finally, there is the Non-State scenario, in which cities, NGOs, global elites, terror groups, and multinationals drive global change and chaos.

These four scenarios should provide decision makers plenty of food for thought. Although not hewing to the classic double uncertainty matrix as developed by the Global Business Network, these four scenarios are sure to be studied by practicing futurists and students of strategic foresight.

Yet, below the surface of the report lay significant tensions and large, open questions with very different outcomes dependent on their resolution. Four critical tensions emerge that deserve much wider discussion: (1) organizational; (2) East and West, North and South; (3) scarcity and abundance; and (4) technology and jobs.

Organizational tensions. Its Non-State scenario clearly demonstrates the NICs challenge with the unit of analysis in this study. Is the unit of analysis the traditional nationstate, invented in Europe and responsible for so much progress and pain in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? Is the unit of analysis the global hub cities housing most of what Richard Florida calls the creative class and responsible for most innovation and a large amount of the worlds economic output? Is the unit of measure human networks like NGOs, movements, and multinationals? Or is the unit of measure, as suggested by Russian contributors to this study, civilizations? Which one of these will be the driving force in the twenty-first century and the correct unit of analysis for this study today?

The answer appears less than clear. The authors of the NIC report clearly struggled with this issue. The easiest, most intellectually comfortable unit of analysis is the nationstate, but I am skeptical. We now have a global elite living in an interconnected, global network of hub cities for which the nationstate is an anachronism. And, with technology empowering the individual, the battle for the twenty-first century could just be the battle of the self-organizing swarm against the command and control pyramidthe cover story for a piece I recently wrote for the MENSA Bulletin. Think Wikipedia, Wikileaks, Anonymous, and Christian house churches in China. So, which is it? Which one of these is the primary right unit of analysis, the engine of change? This is the first tension.

East and West, North and South tensions. Assuming present trends continue, economic power will continue to shift eastward and southward. The NIC report features several graphs plotting the relative decline of U.S. and European economic power as the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) and the Next Eleven (South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, Turkey, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt, Iran, Mexico, the Philippines, and Nigeria) catch up and urbanize. But how will the West and the United States adjust to this tectonic change? How will our global institutions, built at the end of World War II by the victorious Americans, adapt to this new, multipolar world? The NICs report generally looks at this issue with an American orientation to the world. Will America return to its traditional, domestic, and North American focus, or will it retain a global focus, acting as a kind of first among equals?

Scarcity and abundance tensions. A significant focus of the NICs report is on future scarcity of water, food, and energy. Extrapolating future needs in these areas with significant technological progress presents a dark, dystopian future. But, if anything, technological progress appears to be accelerating. Will technological progress in genetically modified seeds, water filtration and conservation, hydraulic fracturing, and solar energy meet or exceed these needs? I am a technological optimist and believe they will. Malthus was proved wrong. Our species is impressively inventive and adaptive. We have a habit of innovating ourselves out of the box we find ourselves in. And yet only a fool would downplay the extreme needs of the future, especially water.

Technology and jobs tensions. So-called technological unemployment as anticipated in books like Race Against the Machine (by Eric Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, Digital Frontier Press, 2011) is only hinted at in the NICs report. The facts are that (1) algorithms will automate away many process-heavy white-collar jobs (potentially including many medical professionals involved in diagnosis) and (2) robotics will automate away most manufacturing jobs.

The creative class, highly skilled technology workers, and the intellectually agile will still thrive in this world, but what are the prospects for the others? If technological progress and change are accelerating, technological unemployment may knock many workers off the treadmill at the exact time that they should be picking up the pace. Could technological unemployment and the accelerating rate of change slow the rise of the global middle class and lead to a highly polarized global society based on intellect and creativity? Or will the creative destruction from software and robots be followed quickly by wholly new industries? The key question is if and how the displaced can retrain in an accelerating environment requiring higher levels of cognition and creativity. New categories of employment will be created, but will the displaced have the skills to step in? My sense is that technological unemployment will set off a revolution in learning, skill training and certification, and cognition enhancementnot an arms race, but a brains race.

How these four tensions will resolve themselves is difficult to say, but the answers will certainly define 2030.

Robert Moran is a partner in the Brunswick Group and leads the firms insights practice in the Americas. He frequently writes on trends in commerce, communications, and market research.

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Four Scenarios for 2030 | World Future Society