For the last 18 months, I contributed to a project at the Institute for the Future where we took a broad look at how science and technology might progress over the next fifty years. A half-century is a very long time, so it was a particularly challenging and exciting project for all of us. The IFTF Delta Scan was supported by the Horizon Scanning Centre of the United Kingdom's Office of Science and Innovation. One of the outcomes is an online forum of 100 outlook pages exploring a wide range of scientific disciplines and technologies, from dark energy to climate change to technologies of cooperation to ecosystem modeling to programmable materials. Last night, the forecast forum was opened to the public. We hope you enjoy it and participate in the conversation by leaving comments on the outlooks.
From The Guardian's coverage of the project:
Piles of rubbish clutter the streets of the new urban sprawls. In overloaded hospitals, patients lie in corridors, victims of a pandemic. Water prices have rocketed, and temperatures have nosedived with a premature slowing of the Gulf stream.
Welcome to dystopian Britain, a thoroughly miserable snapshot of the country's woes come the middle of the 21st century. While the bleak scenario might seem unlikely at present, Sir David King, the government's chief science adviser, is urging policy-makers not to be complacent. A bleak future will only be avoided if they understand the threats and what new technologies might come to the rescue.
Professor King, a Cambridge chemist, decided more than 18 months ago that government departments needed to ensure their future policies were scientifically better informed. He set up two reviews, which have just been completed. One charted trends likely to affect Britain in the next 50 years or so. The other picked out emerging scientific and technological breakthroughs that will help shape that future. Link
From the Financial Times:
Chinese astronauts walk on the moon, the world has splintered into currency blocs after an international exchange rate shock, and even robots have the vote.
It sounds like the exaggerated vision – utopian or distopian according to taste – of a parlour futurologist. But these scenarios of what life might be like around the middle of the century have emerged from 270 rigorously researched papers commissioned by the government that together purport to be the world's most extensive look into the future.
The Horizon Scan covers a vast range of science and technology, politics, economics and society – from internet crime to robotics, banking to the computer-brain interface, stem cell research to "grey power" in an ageing population.
And it is intended to do far more than feed a human curiosity about what life may be like for our children or grandchildren. Sir David King, the government's chief scientist, argues horizon scanning will have a powerful influence on policy-making – and not only in Whitehall. "Although it was designed as a tool for government, I believe it will also have a broader use across the private sector," he adds. Link
Link to the Delta Scan: The Future of Science and Technology, 2005-2055
