How do you see the future in 2043?
A global survey based on 15 themes: urban development, wealth, healthcare, corporations, big data, jobs, social media, arts, education, scientists, belief systems....
In case you’re not subscribed to my new publication Imaginize World, here is the first 2024 post “A Global Vision of 2043”. (You’ll find a subscribe link at the bottom of this post.)
Over June and July 2023, I took a journey with 200 people from around the world. I asked them to answer 15 questions about their vision of the future 20 years from now.
The goal of the survey was to bring together ideas from a wide range of people:
How do they see the future?
What specifically should we be thinking about?
What should we be doing now?
Participants ranked responses on a 5-step scale for 15 different subjects. This allowing measured analysis: better vs worse, this direction versus that direction, etc. Respondents also shared their thoughts about each question in free comments fields. I was astonished and grateful for the over 1200 comments from the 200 people around the world!
I broke the results into three categories:
A bright future
A future with the lights half on … or half off
A dark future
There are nuances, crossovers among topics and many qualified answers of “yes…but” as well as “no…and”. You can discover the detailed responses to all 15 questions using the link at the bottom of the page. In the meantime, here's the big picture:
The future will be bright....
New models of education will be focused on and controlled by learners, and not tied to the traditional places of education.
Increased faith in scientists as sources of validated information will make them the agents of change for our societies.
Job opportunities will not necessarily decrease, but will require new skills, some so radically different it will be hard for many people to keep up.
New forms based on AI will actually increase our appreciation of humans. However access may be decreased by limited funding.
The future will have the lights half on....
Cities and urban areas will grow in size to mega cities or extend into suburbs or become collections of villages. In some cases urban society will break down because of wealth gaps, polarization or silo isolation.
Healthcare will advance significantly thanks to AI and other innovations. It will not be available to everyone because of wealth gaps and privatization of health institutions.
Our belief systems may be either irrelevant for our future or become more spiritual to satisfy new needs. They may either trigger conflict. or be necessary to reach global unity.
The future will be dark….
Social media is already anti-social, polarizing and destructive in the eyes of many. This will continue over the next 20 years.
Wealth will remain in the hands of the few, and most organizations will be focused on profits for shareholders rather than social good for all.
Humans will consider themselves superior to other species with little motivation for building a sense of the “shared whole earth”.
Human nature is such that it will be very difficult to overcome the problems underlying climate change.
Global governance, attempting to balance the needs of many, has little chance of succeeding over self-interest-driven local governance.
Global upheaval, disaster. Needed to trigger change.
Many said that the only way change will happen is if there is a global upheaval or an earth-threatening disaster that forces change on us. The pandemic was not considered sufficient.
Youth. Our best bet for the future.
Respondents believe the youth of today will have a positive effect on many of our problems. They have different values and different visions of how they want to live..
Think about how you would answer the 15 questions and browse through the responses I have organized by theme in the sidebar.
What do you think of the big picture as I described it here? Share your comments and questions.
Note: People responded from 33 different countries on six continents.