Shostack + Friends Blog Archive

 

To the amazing chaos of the 2010s

I expect that there will be senseless acts of violence, planes destroyed and perhaps a city attacked with effective biological weapons. There will be crazy people with more power than we want to comprehend. There will be a billion malnourished, undereducated folks whose lives don’t improve. The first world will continue to be saddled with debt, the third world with mis-management and kleptocracies. Global climate change will continue to threaten us all.

There will also be heroic responses to that craziness. More effective aid will help hundreds of millions to help themselves. This may be the decade where we get a handle on malaria and hunger. Genetically modified food will improve nutrition for many of those on the edge. The best education in the world will be a free click away and watched on a cell phone. The Persians and Chinese may well end the decade with more freedoms.

There’s also going to be vaccines created within months of a new disease discovery, a global network that lets you talk to anyone, anytime, robots on mars, computers in our pockets. I’m also given to understand that we’ll be able to watch movies with plots in vivid 3d, and print 3d objects at home.

And there’s going to be things we can’t predict, which will emerge out of nowhere and blow all our minds. Maybe this will even be the decade that brings us flying cars and peace on Earth.

Whatever it brings, I’m looking forward to it.

Happy new year, and a happy new decade!