The World in 2050 - Scientific American Looks Forward

Scientific American [June 2010] lays out 12 events that are somewhere on the scientific horizon and estimates their chances of happening by the year 2050 - that is, affecting the teenagers of today as they go into retirement. In rough order of likelihood, they are:

• Classed as Almost Certain
  The synthetic creation of life
  A Pacific earthquake
• Classed as Likely
  The cloning of a human - seen as extremely difficult but also probably inevitable.
  Machine self-awareness
  Polar meltdown
• Classed as 50:50
  The discovery of new dimensions as research develops out of the cutting edge of particle physics
  Room temperature super-conductors
  A deadly pandemic
• Regarded as Unlikely or Very Unlikely
  The discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence
  Nuclear holocaust
  An asteroid collision
  Fusion energy

Of course, future research is rarely reliable as anyone who has studied the predictions of, say, the 1960s will know but it is not a bad starting point. The most exciting on the list for popular culture are those that are probably the least likely. We can quickly dismiss these.

The Blockbuster Events

It is fair to think that the sheer scale of space makes the alien visit hypothesis unreasonable (at least on the timescale of any reader of this posting) while international institutional structures are probably now robust enough to deter the use of nuclear arsenals by superpowers.

If scientists tell me that limitless fusion energy is unlikely in the next forty years or even a century, I am not inclined to disbelieve them but the small print on the asteroid collision is not exactly comforting.

No extinction event perhaps but an expectation that at least one asteroid hit could devastate the equivalent of a small city within the next 200 years.

This leaves us with eight scientifically-related changes that could reasonably affect our children's futures with five of those as probable. What would the world look like if they all came to pass?

Bear in mind that we are not including here what may be called changes in social reality - shifts caused in philosophical or spiritual perspective, by economic reorganisation or scarcity or through the cultural effect of earlier era technologies that are only now being fully implemented, such as the internet.

One of the few insights of Marx that has stood the test of time is that culture and politics are based on the economic organisation of society and that the economic organisation of society is fundamentally material in nature.

This is an over-simplification of the situation but science is about the understanding of matter and so scientific discovery or observation really does flow back into society and politics over the long term.

The type case is Darwinism which became Social Darwinism and was then perverted into racial politics. The scientists, in fact, were right about evolution but the extension of the idea was untenable. This did not stop its exploitation by non-scientists in disastrous ways.

Missing Jigsaw Pieces

Looking forward forty years, the message of Scientific American is that perhaps things may not change quite so dramatically as we think but the rational and sceptical mind-set of the Editors may fail to take into account how humans actually use information in their petty struggles for power.

Unaccountably missing from the list is the slow-burn effect of the discoveries in neuro-science and the cognitive sciences which could go in either one of two ways - towards authoritarian attempts to nudge us into social compliance or into radical libertarian reform as the cutting edge between brain science and philosophy confirms the insights of the phenomenologists and the existentialists.

Nor is there any mention of nanotechnology which strikes this writer as potentially as revolutionary as the internet on how we conduct our lives. To be fair, this is not an 'event' as such but the implementation of technology (like robotics) that is established already in its basics.

Similarly, the internet may seem as if it is now in its mature state of implementation rather than of innovation but the social and cultural effects of easy mass communications still look set to effect a cultural revolution as powerful and as uncertain as that instigated by printing.

Finally, there is the attempt at the application of the soft sciences (from psychology through to anthropology and political science) to problems of war, peace, policing and order.

The arms race in this area between authority and the street may lead to many new social and cultural forms and compromises. If the Editors of SciAm are sceptical of the status of the 'soft sciences', then so are we but warriors may still believe in their pretensions despite the rest of us.

Material Progress

But let's stick to Scientific American's hard science agenda. What will 2050 look like? This is our expectation based on their assessments of the science.

1. The security industry will have long since passed the stage where they manufactured threats out of synthetic biology to build budgets. Biological engineering of safer and less polluting household products and environmental services will be entering its mature, productive phase.
2. Human cloning is not going to be tolerated in the developed world even if cases will emerge in in permissive jurisdictions because the first 'experiments' are likely to horrify as cruel and unnnatural but the drive to clone will be part of a much broader range of discoveries in human healthcare. These will improve life chances and longevity in the West but increase emotional pain at those who die young or in pain at home and abroad.
3. Self-replicating intelligent robotic agents (AI) are going to present interesting 'human' rights and philosophical challenges that are likely to become political by the end of the period - less because they 'walk among us' but because we will be getting to the point where they may soon do so.
4. Even if room temperature superconductors are unproven as tools, the technology of energy production, distribution and conservation is already being driven by political as much as by free market conditions towards major innovation. The mature fruits of this will be well in place by 2050 and will probably have reduced much of the energy-driven instabilities in international affairs - at least in the West.

So, from a basic lifestyle perspective, scientific progress continues and the developed world is likely to be a better place to live in for most people - in terms of the environment, pollutants, waste, healthcare, automation and energy management.

New Philosophies

Where problems arise is where you would expect them - in the ability of people to find meaning as new discoveries cause the ground to shift from under their feet and in the debate over how much to 'give' in order to 'get' security from local under-classes and from less well served emerging populations.

This latter is at the heart of decisions about welfare provision and international aid.

Discoveries in particle physics that defy common sense, especially if matched by neuro-scientific investigation into 'spirit', may create new and paradoxical shifts in culture. Although by definition unpredictable, the logic is one of 'more spirit, less religion'.

This, in itself, may help to end the fruitless nineteenth century war between science and religion to replace it with a new tension between advanced thought and those wedded to both institutional authority and a scientific positivism that has become surplus to requirements philosophically.

The danger is of a major disconnect between the world views of the well-educated and the less well-educated that may create serious cultural and political tensions within the developed world and between it and the emerging world.

One suspects that Eastern culture is more adaptable than Western in this respect.

Aid as Insurance

Periodic natural disasters (not necessarily the 'big one' in California) such as earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions are not going to destroy civilisation but they will encourage increased global co-operation, equivalent to welfare insurance, to deal with the effects.

The real beneficiary here should be the poorer countries in the world with a concomitant positive effect on mass production and improved organisation of cheap sustainable urban infrastructures and new development models.

However nothing will be achieved without a root-and-branch reform of the shamefully corrupted and mismanaged 'aid business' - UN organisations and NGOs have moved in recent decades from being well-meaning bumblers into inefficient sanctuaries for the over-paid global middle classes.

There is a similar issue arising with pandemic. H1N1 taught us two things - these things can come out of the blue and they incubate (assuming they are not a lab creation) in messy urban poverty.

The world is now in no state to deal with these issues because of the credit crunch but as recovery returns, the developed world is going to have to decide between globalisation and healthcare security.

The logic of the situation is that Western Governments will start finding the money to keep people at home in the emerging world and to start treating disease at source by treating the vectors of disease - poverty, overcrowding and insanitary conditions.

The contentious issue of climate change also has to be put in the pot. We are not quite sceptics but we are cautious given the hysterical claims of political activists. Still, the ice caps are melting and this means major adjustments in some countries and, awkwardly, improvements for others.

We already have issues of mass economic migration arising from dislocations caused by globalisation and (regionally) by war - to add dislocation caused by environmental degradation, both man-made and natural, suggests a time of troubles ahead.

2050 In The Round

Whether the planet as a whole will be cleaner and less polluted may be doubted simply because so many people in the world will still be working their way through development phases that involve large-scale traditional manufacturing requiring raw materials that will be harder to mine or extract.

However, assuming that there is no disaster involving a natural or engineered organism, the West and the advanced East (and the pockets of prosperity in the South) will be set to be less polluted and less wasteful.

A reasonable prediction is that the world, pandemics, localised disasters and asteroids notwithstanding, will be, on balance, a better balanced and more prosperous place in 2050 than in 2010.

But we should be under no illusions - the poor will still be with us at home and abroad and the capacity of the global community to deal with this will be only a little less limited than it is today.

From the tension between scientific advance within a culturally volatile developed world and a vast wider population beginning to taste the prospect if not the actuality of material progress will arise many of the insurgencies, violence and petty wars of the mid-twenty-first century.

The Intentions Of Government

This note does not relate to the Queen's Speech today but to the intentions of the new Coalition Government - what it would do if it had the power and resources. It follows directly on from the last note on the 'ideology' (such as it is) underlying the new Coalition.

Limitations

The Coalition Government admits from the beginning that it has two serious constraints on delivery:

• the budget deficit, the reduction of which now appears to be somewhat of a race against time as the markets begin to wobble seriously over the state of the Eurozone; and,
• its full acceptance of devolved powers to Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales which means that many of its policies are applicable only to England.

If it meets its stated aim of decentralising executive power radically, the Coalition Government will also lose, over time, some of its control over the State's capacity to enforce action domestically (much of which power has been theoretical in any case).

The Nudge Approach

This helps to explain its overt appeal to the use of 'behaviourial economics and social psychology' in its Programme for Government, the so-called 'nudge' approach to managing the population.

This is most clearly expressed in the consumer choice and public health areas where Government will 'encourage behaviour change to help people live healthier lives'.

No mention is made here of the real problem - the lack of action to deal with the choices offered to people by manufacturers and retailers. The 'innovative techniques' are designed for us to take action, not the businesses who sell to us.

We have warned already that this belief in the efficacy of the new cognitive sciences in public administration is probably a case of 'clutching at straws'.

The public are probably not as easy to manipulate as the new wave of policymakers think but this is what the new Coalition believes is possible and so, efficacious or not, it will be attempted.

A Solid Popular Programme

As for the programme itself, most of it, perhaps two thirds of it, is unexceptionable by any standards - almost motherhood-and-apple pie stuff that expresses a very English irritation with an overweening State recently led by people who think we respond well to petty regulation.

This Government gets it right on the need for banking regulation, on taxation, on economic re-balancing, on government transparency, on international development, on social care and disability, on transport, and on consumer protection (subject to the caveat on the excessive faith on untested soft science)

It certainly gets it very right on deficit reduction, immigration, civil liberties and decentralisation.

There is no immediate quibble on Europe, political reform, policy on the NHS (though with caution on the detail), on environment, food and rural affairs, on crime and policing or justice and on defence (as a general principle rather than in regard to the political classes' obsession with Trident).

We are not qualified to write on the controversial education and universities policies at this early stage and the 'social action' programme, based on civil society assumptions that are far from proven, should perhaps be passed over in silence for the moment.

But where does the Government seem to have intentions that run counter not only to deficit reduction but to the limited state that it proposes? Where may we see strains as libertarians come up against those who still cling to Blairite glamour or Churchillian 'folie de grandeur'? Probably in four areas.

Government As Beacon of Culture

There is still a belief that Government has a role to play in 'excellence' in culture, media and sport. You do not have to be an avid reader of Friedrich Nietzsche to question whether Government can have anything to do with excellence, certainly not in matters of the imagination.

The promotion of 'excellence' has often involved massive transfers of funds from private budgets. It is arguable that personal choice is best when decisions are to made about art, games and the acquisition of information. Watching excellence is a lot less healthy than kicking a ball around a field.

What we appear to have here is an expensive continuation of public subsidy for a middle class elite that just happens to have a hold over the public policy agenda. This concession to Blairismo amongst radical libertarians is puzzling to say the least.

'climate change is one of the gravest threats we face'

In fact, graver threats may lie in serious economic dislocation and collapse of social cohesion. Government will be doing some very good things in the detail of environmental policy but it seems to be hinting that we will continue to be 'nudged' into environmentalist hysteria.

The question here is whether the new Government can resist the temptation to follow 'Blairismo' in using hype and fear as an instrument of policy.

Or whether we will see a pseudo-internationalism being promoted to effect a relatively few and sensible measures to deal with primarily national concerns - sustainability and food and energy security.

The Programme Statement suggests that hype has been locked into the mental model of the new Government from an earlier era and it may not be easily dislodged. Fortunately, the slashing of marketing and advertising budgets removes one of its tools at a stroke ...

Hidden Petards For Social Cohesion

The emphasis on the family definitely comes from the Conservative side of the equation but it begs many questions about what precisely a family is in the modern age, while the welfare issue is somewhat skated over in generalities that imply a toughness that is not fully stated.

We might also raise questions about what the equalities agenda really means but this is a complex ideological area and we can leave that to another time. The implication of the Programme is that the Coalition Government has not abandoned the progressive ideology of its predecessors.

In all these cases, what we are really talking about is an attempt to maintain social cohesion through a claim of strategies of inclusion and of support for social institutions in a back-handed compliment to the previous regime.

But it is clear that the previous Administration never had a cogent plan to deal with the budgetary effects of the major social changes created by consumer choice and media-led social liberalism. It made full employment into a mantra, did nothing and the deficit just grew and grew.

Everything now depends on what precisely the new Administration actually means by family and by equality but there is no incentive for Liberal Democrats and Conservatives to rock the boat by having that dialogue now, certainly not in public.

The definitions in the head of the politicians, the ones in the expectation of different constituencies and the ones required by society may take some time to reconcile. Eventually, decisions are going to have to be taken and then, and only then, will we know if this Coalition can stick.

This is the area in which the State comes up hard against issues of social cohesion since most people at most times are not concerned with the planet or arts policy or even foreign policy but with basic survival.

The implication remains that, for some people at the margins of society, the State will be patronising you if you are not conventional, attempting to 'nudge' you into normality and giving preference to others because of some attribute like gender or colour despite your talents.

If you add to the pot a commitment to protect pensions and even improve the care system (a highly laudable social aim), then the financial and electoral pressure to push the young into one place in order to protect baby-boomers as they age in another may store up some serious social order problems.

This is the ethos of the progressive authoritarianism of the previous administration but it is now combined with a determined and necessary deficit reduction programme where welfare (far more than Trident) is the biggest target for significant 'savings'.

'Folie de Grandeur'

On foreign policy and security, there is no point in going over old ground (just track through our postings) but the Coalition wants to be a player in the world within the old Atlantic system and this is a very expensive choice to make (especially when we add Trident to the mix).

Alongside this is another inheritance from the previous regime in which a particular anti-terrorist definition of national security (as opposed to one based on national sustainability) is stated to permit 'action to tackle terrorism, and its causes, at home and abroad'.

Put this determination to be a player together with the threats agenda of some of the security establishment and you see the potential for a continued drain on the limited resources of the State in order to allow politicians to carry on their game of playing the role of eighteenth century statesmen.

The Pressures

This basically sound and popular Coalition Programme contains its own inner contradictions. Apart from the sheer lack of easy money and the over-emphasis on soft science that is still in its infancy to offset a deliberate transfer of powers to lower levels in society, there are troubles brewing.

The Coalition Government is a creature of history as are we all and the burden of big culture, big rhetoric and being a big global player on limited budgets will place further pressure on the place where the deficit can be dealt with most decisively - welfare.

On top of the apparent necessity to deal with welfare costs lies an ill-formed cobbled together ideology surrounding the idea of society that tries to reconcile libertarians in both Coalition parties with a form of communitarianism that places direct pressure on individual choice and rights.

All this is taking place in a context in which an aging population of self-centred individualists is expecting the young to pay for its old age as a matter of right despite leaving their world in a bit of a mess.

We are in an extended honeymoon period for this Government because it is cutting the fat left by New Labour but the next round of cuts is likely to be brutal and to have aspects that imply class or even generational war. Fairness will dictate some pain for the middle classes to make it acceptable.